Americans were briefly able to place legal wagers Thursday on which political party would win control of Congress in the November elections -- until the government stepped in and shut it down.
New York startup company Kalshi began taking bets on the election after a judge in Washington ruled that the wagers could be legally allowed.
"You could go on their website and it would say trading is now open on the presidential election. Trading is open on congressional elections. And you could you could actually place bets. Now, when you go on the Kalshi website, it says trading is paused on elections," ABC's Cheri Preston told WBEN. "It was open for a hot second."
That's because following the judge's ruling to allow election betting, the government immediately took the case to the appeal's court, which issued a freeze on trading just hours after it went live.
"What the appeals court did is say, 'Hold on a second, we got to take a much closer look at this, make sure everything's on the up and up,'" said Preston. "The government really, really did not want this to happen. And they were saying this opens up a whole bunch of problems for our democracy, which some people have said is tinkering on the brink already."
Opponents to election betting say it's just a bridge too far.
"Here's what it does; it will let you hedge your bets. Let's say you're a hotel owner and you live on the Gulf Coast and you're going to bet that there's going to be a really bad hurricane season. If that comes through to offset what you would lose in hotel bookings, you could make money back because it was a bad season. OK, that's one thing," said Preston. "But imagine, when big money interests get their hands in this and start betting on whether Kamala Harris is going to win or Donald Trump's going to win because it's better for their business purposes."
Supporters say you can bet on the outcome of our election if you're in other countries, so it should take place legally here, too.
"You can't, as a U.S. citizen in the U.S., bet on the U.S. elections. You can if you're in Britain. You can if you're in many other countries. But you can't in this country. And what [Kalshi] is saying, 'Hey, you can do it everywhere else. Why can't you do it here,'" Preston explained. "The appeals court and the federal government said, 'Hold on. We got to give this a much, much, much deeper look.'"
Reports indicate the court could rule on whether to allow betting to resume as soon as Monday.
"It's a stay as of now. And we will have to wait and see if they win this appeal and let it go through," said Preston.