Is Crypto.com legal in Connecticut?

The department attached the order, Case No. 2025-324, to a December 3, 2025 release announcing three such letters, to KalshiEX LLC, Robinhood Derivatives, LLC and Crypto.com. The original is two pages, went out by certified mail and email, and carries the signature of the department's Director of Gaming.

The department builds its case in five steps:

• What the product is. A Crypto.com user buys a contract on an outcome "such as a specific team winning a game, division, or championship" and is paid on the result. The department says that fits the state's definition of sports wagering in Conn. Gen. Stat. § 12-850(34), which covers risking something of value on a live sporting event or an athlete's statistics (p.1).
• The license it lacks. Public Act 21-23 let only licensed entities take online sports bets. Crypto.com holds no online gaming operator's license under § 12-857, and none of the exceptions in § 53-278g fit it, according to the letter (p.2).
• What a license would not cure. Even with a license, the department says, the contracts would still break state law because Crypto.com lets people under 21 place wagers and allows wagers on Connecticut intercollegiate teams, citing §§ 12-863(a)(1) and 12-850(30) (p.2).
• Void as a wager. It calls the contracts void under § 52-553, the statute that voids wagering contracts (p.2).
• Unfair competition. Under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act, it says Crypto.com's conduct is deceptive and that working outside the state's rules gives it "a competitive advantage over appropriately licensed entities" (p.2).

The command itself, on page 2: "Crypto is hereby ordered to immediately cease and desist advertising, offering, promoting, or otherwise making available Contracts or any other form of unlicensed online gambling to Connecticut residents." In the letter, "Contracts" means Crypto.com's "online sports event contracts" (p.1). It names no other category, such as elections or economics, and does not say whether its catch-all for other unlicensed gambling reaches them.

The letter closes by warning that failure to comply "may result in additional action," naming civil penalties under the trade practices act and criminal penalties under §§ 53-278b and 53-278d. It is a regulator's order, not a judgment of any court. As of November 3, 2026, we found no penalty imposed under it, no court order enforcing or setting it aside, and no notice withdrawing it; we could not determine whether it remains in force. The December release names the three platforms Connecticut licenses for sports wagering: DraftKings (Foxwoods), FanDuel (Mohegan Sun) and Fanatics (Connecticut Lottery).

Foris DAX Asia Pte. Ltd., doing business as Crypto.com, at 1111 Brickell Avenue in Miami (p.1). The letter shortens that to "Crypto" throughout. It never mentions North American Derivatives Exchange, Inc., the exchange the CFTC designated a contract market, which the commission's amended designation order of September 29, 2025 describes as doing business as Crypto.com | Derivatives North America (p.1). The letter does not mention the CFTC at all.

The federal government reads the same letter differently. Its complaint against Connecticut counts it among letters sent to "two CFTC-registered DCMs: KalshiEx and Crypto.com" (¶60, p.18), and it identifies "Crypto.com" as North American Derivatives Exchange, Inc., which it says Foris DAX Markets, Inc. acquired in March 2022 (¶23, p.6). That is the complaint's description; the order is addressed on its face to Foris DAX Asia Pte. Ltd. We could not determine from public documents why the department chose that addressee, and we found no reply to the order from any Crypto.com company.

The order answers this one directly. "Crypto must, however, allow all Connecticut residents to withdraw any funds currently held by Crypto" (p.2). That is its only term about customer money: it is silent on open positions, on deposits and on how contracts already bought would settle.

We could not determine whether Crypto.com has limited anything for Connecticut accounts. Its Sports Event Trading help page, read November 3, 2026, says the feature "is currently available in the United States only" and does not mention Connecticut. How Crypto.com stands in every other state is on its legal page.

Both point to federal regulation; the state disagrees.

Crypto.com. Its help page says sports event trading "is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)" and calls trading sports contracts on Crypto.com | Derivatives North America legal. Its prediction page describes each contract as "a derivatives product offered by Crypto.com | Derivatives North America (CDNA), a CFTC-regulated exchange." Those are the company's statements, not a ruling.

The United States and the CFTC. They sued the state, its governor, its attorney general and its gaming officials on April 2, 2026, in United States v. Connecticut, No. 3:26-cv-00498, saying they acted "in response to Defendants' sending of cease and desist letters to various CFTC-regulated entities" (complaint, ¶1, p.1). Their position is that federal commodities law bars states from "invading the CFTC's exclusive jurisdiction over event contract transactions offered by and executed on federally regulated DCMs" (¶8, p.3). They ask for a declaration and an injunction against Connecticut's gambling laws "as applied to CFTC-Designated Contract Markets" (p.26). The plaintiffs are the two federal parties; no Crypto.com company is one.

Connecticut. The attorney general's August 26, 2026 release says the CFTC is "recycling Kalshi's legal theories" and that "Connecticut has moved to dismiss the lawsuit." We did not read the docket for this check, so we cannot say whether the court has ruled or whether a Crypto.com company has asked to join.

In a separate case, a federal judge in Connecticut denied Coinbase a preliminary injunction against the state's gaming laws on August 10, 2026, adopting his companion ruling in Kalshi's suit. Crypto.com is not a party to either; Coinbase in Connecticut and Kalshi in Connecticut follow those cases.

On September 10, 2026, the governor's office said the department had issued "nine cease-and-desist orders to companies illegally operating prediction markets in the state" that week, which is the state's characterization. Crypto.com is third on its list, after Polymarket and Coinbase. According to the release, all nine must stop offering "sports event contracts" or any other unlicensed online gambling to residents. The release also announces subpoenas to licensed gaming service providers, app stores, payment companies and media outlets, which it says are not under investigation.

The September order to Crypto.com has not been published. The release says copies "are available upon request to DCP" through its GovQA portal, and we have not obtained one, so we cannot say which Crypto.com company it names, whether it is a fresh letter or the December one counted again, or what it says about withdrawals. The release itself does not settle that last point: after naming nine companies it says "DCP also ordered all three platforms to allow Connecticut residents to withdraw any funds currently held by the platforms," word for word the sentence the December release used for its three orders.

Yes, and the papers name different companies. Missouri's attorney general wrote on September 16, 2026 to Foris DAX, Inc., which that letter calls Crypto.com. Wisconsin's suit in Dane County names Foris DAX Markets, Inc. and North American Derivatives Exchange, Inc. The Illinois Gaming Board's April 1, 2025 letter went to Crypto.com's executives at a Singapore address. In Nevada, North American Derivatives Exchange, Inc. is the one suing, and it has asked the Supreme Court to review the Ninth Circuit's ruling against it; the Supreme Court page follows that petition.

Within Connecticut, the department's December 2025 letters to the other two companies are covered on Robinhood in Connecticut and Kalshi in Connecticut.

The department's order decides who may offer sports wagering in Connecticut, and a state gambling order is not a ruling on federal income tax. How the common ways people file event contracts work, with no IRS guidance on them, is in the prediction market tax guide.