SiaPredict

Methodology and Editorial Policy

Where the coverage comes from, how it is reviewed, and what it does not claim to be.

In short

Every tracker entry traces to a public primary document. Drafting is AI-assisted. Newsletter issues and blog posts are published only after a person reviews and approves them. Tracker entries are added by automated jobs that must first locate the primary document and pass duplicate checks. Risk scores are comparative editorial judgments, not measurements.

Sources monitored

Collection runs against agency feeds, court APIs, and registration databases on a daily cycle, supplemented by targeted research where a source publishes no machine-readable feed.

Federal regulators

  • CFTC press releases, speeches, and testimony
  • SEC press releases and public statements
  • Federal Register notices and comment dockets

Courts

  • Federal dockets via the CourtListener RECAP API, tracked by keyword for new prediction-market litigation
  • Published opinions and orders in the preemption and enforcement cases

Registration and licensing

  • NFA BASIC, for Futures Commission Merchant registration activity
  • CFTC registers of Designated Contract Markets and Swap Execution Facilities

State authorities

  • Gaming boards and commissions, including New Jersey, Nevada, Ohio, Maryland, New York, and Illinois
  • Attorney general offices in the states with active proceedings
  • State consumer-protection and securities regulators

Trade press

  • Sector reporting, used to surface developments and locate primary documents, never as the sole basis for a tracker entry

How an item becomes a page

  1. 1Collection. Automated monitoring surfaces candidate items from the sources above and from the newsletter research. Each candidate is checked against the existing trackers by source URL, case or release number, and headline, so the same development is not recorded twice. Anything that cannot be verified is held back rather than dropped.
  2. 2Verification against the primary document. An item is only recorded once the underlying order, filing, docket entry, or registration record has been located. Trade-press reporting can point to a development; it does not substitute for the document.
  3. 3Classification. Each item is assigned an agency, a topic, and a severity. These are editorial categories applied for filtering and comparison, not labels used by the regulators themselves.
  4. 4Drafting with AI assistance. Summaries and analysis are drafted with AI assistance, working from the source documents.
  5. 5Review. A person reviews and approves every newsletter issue and every blog post before it is published. Tracker entries are published by the automated jobs once they have passed the verification and duplicate checks above. If an entry does not match its primary source, tell us and the entry is corrected.

What the risk scores mean

The regulatory risk score on each operator profile is a comparative editorial judgment on a 0 to 100 scale of the operator's regulatory exposure, as visible in public information. It reflects three things.

  • Licensing posture. Whether the operator holds, is waiting on, or lacks the federal registrations its products rely on (DCM, SEF, FCM, no-action relief), and whether any filing has stalled or been denied.
  • Exposure to active proceedings. Open lawsuits, enforcement actions and state cease-and-desist orders naming the operator or its affiliates. The live counts on each profile come from the Legal & Enforcement tracker.
  • Jurisdiction strategy. How the operator deals with state law: reliance on federal preemption, state-by-state licensing or geofencing, and where its position is being contested.

How it is set

Sia analysts set one score per operator from public information. It is a single comparative judgment, not the output of a formula, and there are no published weights. It is revisited whenever a material event is recorded for the operator, such as a court ruling, a licensing decision, an enforcement action or a change of ownership.

Reading the number

  • 0 to 33, Lower. Settled federal footing and little contested state exposure.
  • 34 to 66, Moderate. Some open questions: a pending filing, a contested state, or a live case.
  • 67 to 100, Higher. Significant unresolved exposure across proceedings, licensing or states.

Higher means more regulatory exposure, not a weaker business. It is not a probability, a credit assessment, a compliance rating or a prediction of any outcome, and it should not feed an investment, credit or underwriting decision. Two operators with the same score are not equivalent. Read the profile, not just the number.

Corrections

Regulatory records get amended, dockets move, and classifications can be wrong. If something on the platform does not match the primary source, tell us through the contact button on any page and include the document. Corrections are made to the underlying entry so the trackers and any future briefing reflect the fix.

Scope and limits

  • Coverage is US-focused. Non-US regimes are only noted where they bear directly on a US proceeding.
  • Nothing on the platform is legal, investment, or tax advice, and reading it creates no advisory relationship.
  • Classifications, severities, and scores are interpretive. Where a page states a legal conclusion, that conclusion belongs to the cited court, regulator, or filing, not to Sia.
  • Coverage is not exhaustive. State-level activity in particular moves faster than any monitoring cycle can guarantee to capture in full.

Scoring is illustrative and based on public information. SiaPredict does not provide legal advice.