New York seeks to ban Kalshi, Turkey pursues up to 39 years in Paymix iGaming payments case, and Bulgaria targets affiliates and online payments

Across seven separate headlines, regulators and lawmakers kept coming back to the same two pressure points: prediction markets and payment flows into offshore gambling. For PSPs, acquirers, and high-risk operators, the useful part is not the noise — it is where enforcement is turning into licensing, payment, and criminal exposure.

1. New York’s attorney general has asked to ban Kalshi in the state over allegedly illegal bets. That puts a prediction-market venue squarely into the same category regulators often use for unlicensed wagering, which matters for anyone structuring sports, event, or binary-style betting products under a different label.
2. Turkey is seeking prison terms of up to 39 years for 57 defendants in a case involving payments through Paymix in support of offshore iGaming platforms. The case is a reminder that payment processing can be treated as the core offense, not just a side service, when authorities go after offshore gambling access.
3. Binance.US said it will file to launch a prediction exchange in the U.S. in August 2026. For market operators, that is a sign that prediction products are still being treated as a separate regulatory lane in the U.S., even as state-by-state and federal boundaries remain the thing that matters.
4. In Russia, lawmakers proposed legalizing online casinos to improve the effectiveness of self-exclusion. On paper, self-ban tools are meant to reduce harm; in practice, legalization would change the payment and licensing picture for any operator thinking about that market.
5. Bulgaria is planning tighter rules for affiliates and online payments in an effort to fight the offshore market. That is the line high-risk PSPs should watch: once a government starts focusing on affiliates plus payments at the same time, the compliance burden tends to move upstream to processors and acquiring partners.
6. Myanmar’s parliament approved the death penalty for forcing people to work in scam centers and life imprisonment for crypto fraud. This is one of the clearest signs yet that scam operations are being treated as serious criminal infrastructure, with crypto rails sitting inside the enforcement target.
7. Polymarket has started taking bets on Wildberries bankruptcy. The platform keeps expanding into corporate-event markets, which is useful context for anyone tracking where prediction markets are drawing the line between finance, news, and betting exposure.