The Missing Piece
The last dispatch, Who Owns the Odds, said the largest hole in the record was lobbying, because the Senate's disclosure system had returned errors. It answered this time. The Old Goat queried the federal Lobbying Disclosure Act database for Kalshi, Polymarket's legal entity Blockratize, 1789 Capital, QCEX and related names. The saved file is lda_prediction_markets_2026-10-09.csv, 63 filings.
Polymarket's Lobbyists
DOCUMENTED. Blockratize, Inc. is registered as a client of Advocus Partners, LLC. The first filing is a registration in the first quarter of 2025. Every quarterly report since then, six in all through the second quarter of 2026, shows $90,000 in income to Advocus, $540,000 in total. The lobbyists named are David Urban, Patrick Ames and, in some reports, Andrew Lewin. The filings say the work is to "provide strategic counsel and advocacy regarding development of digital asset policy and information markets," and list the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the House, the Senate, and in later reports the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Treasury Department as the targets.
REPORTED, not from the filing: Urban is described in news reports as a former Trump campaign adviser. The earlier summary the Old Goat read called Polymarket's second lobbyist "Keaghan Ames," a former CFTC official; the filings spell the name "Patrick Ames." The Old Goat does not know whether these are the same person and is not asserting it. A retry on Oct. 10 found a lobbyist named Patrick Ames in older filings for BGR Government Affairs (2023, clients including Deutsche Bank USA, Credit Suisse, Prudential and MetLife) and for the Institute of International Bankers (2021 to 2022). That search stopped partway, and it is not established that this is the same Patrick Ames as the Advocus filings. Nothing the Old Goat read gives a CFTC background for any Patrick Ames. Polymarket's registration came before 1789 Capital's reported investment, which was announced in August 2025, and before ICE's $1.0 billion on Oct. 7, 2025. The third-quarter 2026 report is not yet due.
Kalshi's Lobbyists
DOCUMENTED. Kalshi's lobbying is older and much bigger. Its first registration was in the fourth quarter of 2021, with Rich Feuer Anderson. Across the filings the Old Goat found, outside firms and Kalshi itself reported about $2.96 million: $20,000 in 2021, $180,000 in 2022, $270,000 in 2023, $670,000 in 2024, $825,000 in 2025 and $990,000 in the first half of 2026. The outside firms were Miller Strategies ($510,000, 2024 to 2025), Capitol Counsel ($400,000, 2022 to 2024), Lincoln Policy Group ($300,000, 2024 to 2025), Rich Feuer Anderson ($240,000, 2021 to 2023), Tower 19 ($90,000), Dow Solutions ($30,000) and Alva Elliott Partners ($30,000). Lincoln Policy Group's registered lobbyists include Blanche Lincoln, the former Democratic senator from Arkansas.
Starting in the third quarter of 2025, Kalshi registered as its own lobbyist and its in-house spending took over: $190,000 for the third quarter of 2025, $175,000 for the fourth, $490,000 for the first quarter of 2026 (an amendment replaced an earlier $430,000 report) and $500,000 for the second, $1.355 million in four quarters. The lobbyist named is Sara Slane, and the stated subject is "Matters affecting prediction markets." The outside-firm money largely stopped as the in-house budget rose.
What The Filings Do Not Show
Zero is a claim, so the Old Goat is specific. No client named Polymarket, 1789 Capital, QCEX or Farvahar returned any filing. A registrant search for 1789 Capital, rerun on Oct. 10, completed with zero filings, as did searches for 1789 and for clients named QCEX or Polymarket US. A later retry on Oct. 10 completed registrant searches for Blockratize, Blockratize, Inc., Polymarket and QCEX, each with zero filings, so no lobbying firm is registered under those names. A second Kalshi pull stopped partway and returned a subset of the first, so the Kalshi totals rest on the first complete pull. The Kalshi totals depend on every one of the filings coming back, which the Old Goat could not fully verify. The filings give quarterly totals and general issue areas, not who was met or what was asked.
What the Old Goat Thinks It Means
This part is opinion, labeled as opinion. The timeline reads like an industry that grew into its regulator. Kalshi hired lobbyists in 2021, under a different administration, and kept hiring through the change. By the Old Goat's reading of the filings, its in-house spend went from $175,000 to nearly half a million a quarter between the end of 2025 and the spring of 2026, the same months its Google advertising ramped up, starting in March 2026. Polymarket added a lobbying firm, with a lobbyist reported to be a former Trump campaign adviser, before the family-linked money arrived. The Old Goat's INFERENCE is that both companies have been buying access in parallel with buying exposure, and that the Trump family's position as paid adviser to one and fund-partner to the other sits on top of two lobbying efforts on the same regulatory questions.
Counter-evidence, plainly: lobbying is routine for a regulated industry, Kalshi's program began before the current administration and has used Democratic and Republican hires, and the Old Goat found nothing in the filings that links any lobbyist to the Trump family or to any decision. The filings do not say what Advocus or Kalshi asked for or received.
You can follow a company's priorities by its registrations. Follow its checks next.
The Old Goat will update this dispatch as new filings arrive, and welcomes corrections to any figure above. The Old Goat's prediction-market tab tracks the markets themselves.