Dan Patrick, Lieutenant Governor and President of the Senate in Texas, has included a study of prediction markets and crypto and blockchain as part of legislative priorities for the state’s next legislative session, scheduled to begin in January.
In a Friday announcement, the lieutenant governor’s office issued 2026 interim charges for Texas Senate committees to study in preparation for the next legislature. Patrick said that the charges were intended to “advance the priorities of Texas’ conservative majority,” including an analysis of prediction markets and digital assets.
According to the charges, Patrick wants lawmakers to focus on “closing gambling loopholes” by studying “the sudden inundation of prediction market gambling and the exploitation of federal law to circumvent Texas gambling prohibitions” on elections.
As part of an initiative on financial technology, he called for an evaluation of the state’s “coordination with federal rules” on crypto and blockchain and examination of crypto kiosks in the Lone Star state.
Texas has some of the strictest laws in the country concerning sports betting and gambling, which is largely restricted to casinos on Native American reservations and the state’s lottery system. Many gaming authorities in other US states have filed lawsuits against prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket over sports and election wagers, but Texas was not among them as of Tuesday.
Related: What’s at stake for crypto as primaries begin in 3 US states
The Texas legislature meets every two years and is scheduled to return for a 140-day session in January 2027. In its 2025 legislative session, lawmakers proposed a Bitcoin reserve bill, which was signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott in June.
AI is also under scrutiny as Anthropic plans Texas expansion
Among Patrick’s charges included a study of the “impact of AI on the Texas workforce and its implications for economic competitiveness.”
The notice came as reports suggested that Google would support a multibillion-dollar data center in Texas leased to Anthropic. The project, expected to exceed $5 billion initially, comes as many mining companies in the US are pivoting to AI and high-performance computing amid increasing mining difficulty and falling crypto prices.
Magazine: Nobody knows if quantum secure cryptography will even work