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SPOKANE, Wash (Gambling911.com) - Following the devastating wildfires that burned hundreds of homes in Western Washington, one Washington congressperson has introduced legislation to stop prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket from offering trading options on wildfires.
Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane, introduced the bill this week. Critics say betting on wildfires is, at best, grotesque and could incentivize arson and other illegal acts.
“We’ve already had enough problems with arsonists causing wildfires in Eastern Washington, we don’t need betting markets giving potential big financial incentives to start fires,” Baumgartner said in a statement. “When a wildfire threatens a community, every effort should be focused on protecting families, homes, and first responders. Congress should draw a clear line and make sure federally regulated markets cannot facilitate wagers on the devastation of American communities.”
Polymarket seems to have learned its lesson after reportedly offering trading on last year's deadly Palisades fire. Gambling911.com was unable to independently confirm that either Polymarket or Kalshi offered wildfire-related trading markets last year.
With Polymarket last year, the scale was larger than just one or two novelty bets. WIRED reports that Polymarket listed almost 20 wildfire-related questions during the Southern California fires. Collectively, reporting puts the amount traded on the wildfire markets at more than $1 million during the year 2025.
In the weeks since 37-year-old Aaron Farinacci allegedly started the Old Trails fire on Aug. 1, police have arrested four more suspected arsonists in Spokane County.
In a news release announcing his bill, Baumgartner noted there is no evidence the alleged arson in Spokane County is connected to prediction markets but, he said, “the risk is too obvious to ignore.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and eight other Democratic senators sent a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) August 3 citing public reports that Polymarket accepted more than $1.2 million in bets related to the Palisades and Eaton fires in January 2025, which together killed 31 people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures.
“Prediction markets have been enabled to expand rapidly, increasingly inviting speculation on war, political violence, disasters, and public emergencies that raise ethical and public policy concerns,” the senators wrote to Michael Selig, the CFTC chair. “These markets risk creating perverse incentives, undermining public trust and commodifying human suffering in ways that warrant careful scrutiny.”
Last month, Gambling911.com reported on how one rather obscure prediction market appears to be set up exclusively to take bets on wildfires.
The California-specific wildfire betting market, Wyldfyre, took its site down following a backlash after being profiled in an Alaska Beacon article.
“Imagine what a bad actor might do,” Ann Skeet, the senior director of leadership ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, told The Alaska Beacon. “A market that might support that kind of activity, I think, is a dangerous market.” Examples might include firefighters or land managers with exclusive information about a fire’s behavior or an agency’s firefighting plans could even be tempted to bet on a fire, which would be considered insider trading.
The Wyldfyre website was back online as of August 21.
Wyldfyre. Its map and account-registration pages were crawled recently and are accessible. The current version explicitly describes itself as a free, play-money wildfire prediction game, with no real-world value.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
