Brazil has blocked access to Kalshi, Polymarket and 25 other prediction market sites over concerns about illegal gambling, dealing a blow to one of the world's youngest billionaires. Brazilian Luana Lopes Lara, co-founder of Kalshi, had been pushing to bring the platform to her home country. Finance Minister Dario Durigan announced the restrictions, meaning Latin America's largest economy will largely remain out of bounds for prediction markets that let users wager on political and sports outcomes.

Lopes Lara, 29, trained as a ballet dancer in Brazil before attending MIT. She became one of the youngest female self-made billionaires last year, with a current net worth of about $2.1 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. "Brazil is very important for me given that I'm Brazilian," she told business paper Valor Economico late last year. "I really want us to go there." The ban illustrates how regulators worldwide are viewing prediction markets with skepticism even as founders insist their offerings differ from gambling.

One potential workaround exists through a partnership between Kalshi and Brazilian brokerage XP Inc., which allows some users to place yes-or-no bets on economic events tied to Brazil through XP's interface. The restrictions don't prohibit wagers on economic and financial benchmarks as permitted by Brazil's securities regulator CVM, though the extent of that carve-out hasn't been fully defined. Lopes Lara has said the company remains committed to finding a way into the market.