(Bloomberg) -- Kalshi Inc. started taking wagers on the 2024 congressional elections less than an hour after a federal judge allowed the exchange to let Americans bet as much as $100 million on the outcome.

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Kalshi posted new event contracts at 12:15 p.m. Thursday after a hearing concluded with US District Court Judge Jia Cobb denying the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s repeated requests to block the listings. The CFTC had sought a stay of Cobb’s ruling from Friday in Kalshi’s favor to allow the trading of elections-linked derivatives.

“Now is finally the time to allow these markets to show the world just how powerful they are at providing signal amidst the noise and giving us more truth about what the future holds,” Kalshi Chief Executive Officer Tarek Mansour said in an emailed statement.

Kalshi had been preparing to launch the elections-themed derivatives earlier this week, extending its current offering of event contracts on monetary policy, lunar landings and music awards. But the company was held up after the judge granted a temporary pause Monday sought by the CFTC, which said that it would be nearly impossible to unwind the contracts once they went live.

The CFTC has appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. A spokesperson for the CFTC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The CFTC said in recent legal briefings that if the court allows the elections contracts to move forward, the agency would have little power to prevent other exchanges that are already registered with the swaps and futures regulator from doing the same. Opponents of the elections-based swaps say they make US elections more vulnerable to manipulation and trading on insider knowledge.

At least one other platform has indicated it will also jump into the fray. Interactive Brokers Group Inc. plans to launch an election betting market starting Monday, the company said. Fellow retail brokerages Robinhood Markets Inc. and Charles Schwab Corp. don’t have immediate plans for similar offerings, according to spokespeople for the companies.

The use of event contracts to wager on which political party would control the House and Senate next year is a “significant moment,” said Laurian Cristea, a partner at Barnes & Thornburg specializing in exchanges, clearinghouses and event contracts. “The CFTC’s proposed rulemaking on event contracts is now in question, CFTC-registered exchanges have a potential new suite of products to offer, and proponents of onshoring political markets have a bit more clarity.”