Prediction markets spent years trying to present themselves as smarter, better, and more useful than straight-out gambling.Then sports arrived and did what elections, inflation contracts, and policy wagers never quite managed: it brought scale. They turned what was essentially a niche event trading activity into a mass product, and pushed the industry into a dangerous identity crisis.Sports made prediction markets popular, but they also made them politically vulnerable.On March 12, the CFTC opened a formal rulemaking process for prediction markets, putting manipulation, oversight, and contract structure under the federal...