Prominent lawyer makes big move
An iGaming attorney whose legal firm has represented President Donald Trump in multiple high-profile legal cases has applied to launch a prediction market platform.
News emerged Thursday that federal agency litigation and white collar defense attorney Jeff Ifrah has applied to the federal Commodity and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for designation as a Designated Contracts Market.
Ifrah has named the prediction market platform RSBIX.
partnership with Matchbook
A landing page for the brand confirms the CFTC application in partnership with Matchbook, while stating RSBIX’s vision is to become America’s “most trusted sports event trading platform.”
Confluence of interests
The RSBIX.com webpage stated that the partnership with Matchbook, a UK-licensed betting exchange owned by Zeljko Ranogajec’s offshore betting giant Triplebet, also included “close collaboration with stakeholders across multiple sectors.”
Who those stakeholders are, is unknown.
What’s known is that Ifrah’s RSBIX has been chipping away at the sports events market coalface since 2018. RSBIX even tried to self-certify and launch NFL prediction markets in 2020 through ErisX, a derivatives exchange and clearinghouse it has since sold.
The NFL bid faced stiff opposition from the CFTC, leading RSBIX to withdraw its application in 2021.
While there technically may be no conflicts of interest, the NFL bid opens up a confluence of interests, starting with Brian Quintenz, a CFTC Commissioner at the time of the RSBIX move.
Quintenz was essentially on RSBIX’s side over the NFL bid, as he was in favor of allowing the CFTC to regulate sports event contracts. Quintenz is also President Trump’s nominee to be the next head of the CFTC, but his appointment hearing has been long delayed. Last week, Quintenz released private messages with the President of New York crypto exchange giant Gemini, claiming the exec has blocked his CFTC appointment over a prior beef.
influencing the CFTC’s lack of oversight”
Against Quintenz are opinions that, because he sits on the board of prediction market frontrunner Kalshi, he’s “influencing the CFTC’s lack of oversight.”
Enter the Trumps
Donald Trump Junior is also on the Kalshi board as a strategic advisor.
Adding a further twist to RSBIX’s confluence of interests is that Ifrah earlier this year launched NexusOne Consulting, a new government relations firm that sits directly opposite the White House and aims to help AI and crypto firms “shape US policy.”
President Trump, meanwhile, has been a client of the busy iGaming attorney’s legal firm, Ifrah Law, on several occasions, most notably the case that prompted an FBI sting on Mar-a-Lago in Florida on August 8.
