Meta Starts Testing a Prediction Market App Called Takes as the Fight Over Kalshi and Polymarket Escalates

Meta has started testing a prediction market app with its own employees, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, putting one of the world's biggest tech companies on the edge of a market that crypto platforms like Polymarket helped make mainstream.

The app is called Takes. According to the Journal's report, as summarized by The Block and Investing.com, employees use it to predict the outcomes of questions and events with points instead of real money.

The news landed on the same day the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused states of trying to jail prediction market executives, and a House committee floated banning government officials from betting on these platforms altogether.

What Meta is testing

Users on Takes stake "cred," short for credibility. Correct predictions earn cred and wrong ones lose it, people familiar with the matter told the Journal. No cash changes hands.

Investing.com reported that questions in the test have included whether former Apple CEO Tim Cook will become Nvidia's next chief executive, the kind of tech-industry gossip market that fits an office full of Meta engineers.

The project is not new. The Block noted that in June, reports said CEO Mark Zuckerberg had directed employees to build a standalone prediction market app that would use points. Back then it went by the name Arena, and Meta had not ruled out eventually allowing real-money betting.

The Journal's report does not say whether real-money contracts are still on the table. Meta declined to comment or give a timetable for a public release, according to The Block, and the app is not available to the public.

Why a points-only app matters

Using points rather than cash is the key detail. Because Takes does not involve money, it sits outside the event contract model that Kalshi and Polymarket run, as RG.org pointed out in its write-up of the report.

That model is exactly what is under legal attack. States are suing the real-money platforms and arguing that their contracts, especially sports contracts, are illegal gambling. The platforms say their products are federally regulated.

A cash-free version lets Meta test the product and see how people use it without stepping into that fight. If it ever added real money, it would walk straight into the same legal questions.

The audience is the other reason Meta cares. Prediction markets are drawing younger users, with just over 60% of their users under 35, according to an S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan survey cited by Reuters. Investing.com noted that this is the crowd Meta is trying to win.

A market big enough to tempt Big Tech

The money flowing into real-money prediction markets explains why a company like Meta is paying attention. Kalshi raised $1 billion at a $40 billion valuation in October, as we covered when Kalshi closed its $1 billion Series G.

Crypto exchanges have piled in as well. Coinbase said its prediction markets business passed $200 million in annualized revenue in the third quarter, RG.org reported, one of the brighter spots in Coinbase's otherwise rough Q3 results.

For Polymarket, Kalshi and the exchanges now listing event contracts, a Meta product would be a different kind of rival: one that starts with a huge built-in audience, even if it only plays for points.

Washington's fight keeps getting louder

Takes arrives in one of the most heated weeks yet for the sector. Speaking at the Cantor Convergence conference on Friday, CFTC Chair Michael Selig called state lawsuits against the platforms "really egregious," The Block reported.

"We're seeing states bring criminal charges, essentially trying to lock up founders and CEOs of these companies that are offering lawful products under a federal regime," Selig said.

"Somebody says it's gambling, somebody says it's a derivative," he added. "That's not something that should be at the risk of going to jail."

The CFTC is in disputes with roughly a dozen states and cities over whether event contracts are illegal gambling, according to The Block. On Thursday, the Justice Department and the CFTC sued Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin to block his action against Kalshi, and Louisiana filed a lawsuit targeting Kalshi, Polymarket, Robinhood and Coinbase.

RG.org reported that a Louisiana judge on Thursday temporarily barred Kalshi, Polymarket, Robinhood and others from offering event contracts in the state. In an interview with CNBC cited by the outlet, Selig was blunt: "We're going to fight this up to the Supreme Court if that's where it's going."

Congress turns to insider trading

Also on Friday, the House Oversight Committee released a staff memo with findings from its investigation into insider trading on Kalshi and Polymarket. The committee said it obtained nearly 1,700 pages of documents and received five bipartisan staff briefings from platforms.

The memo says Congress should consider limiting which contracts federal personnel, members of Congress and congressional staff can trade, at a minimum those tied to government actions or political outcomes, or banning them from prediction markets outright. It notes the Senate already passed a resolution in April 2026 barring Senators and their staff from participating.

"Congress must consider additional reforms to prevent public corruption and restore the American people's trust in government," Chairman James Comer said in the committee's release.

The report was not all criticism. It credited Polymarket and Kalshi with steadily improving their surveillance, and said Polymarket hired a former law enforcement expert and rolled out a monitoring system called PolyGraph in partnership with Chainalysis.

What happens next

For Meta, the open questions are simple: will Takes ever leave the employee test, and will it stay points-only? Neither the Journal's report nor Meta has answered either one.

For the real-money platforms, the action is in the courts. Beyond the new Arkansas and Louisiana cases, Crypto Briefing reported that the CFTC issued guidance on November 5 telling regulated exchanges to remove geofencing within 30 days, which runs against state court orders in places like Michigan and Nevada.

The wider crypto market offers little cheer in the background. Bitcoin was down 3% at $67,239 on Saturday morning, Investing.com reported, after breaking below $68,000 earlier in the day.

For now, Takes is a test played with pretend money. But when a company of Meta's size starts building in a market, Kalshi, Polymarket and the regulators fighting over them all have a reason to pay attention.