Emma Kinery
Emma Kinery is a finance and fintech policy reporter at State Affairs, covering how state governments regulate digital assets, prediction markets and gaming across the United States. Her beat sits at the intersection of finance, technology and law, following legislation, tax policy and court decisions that shape crypto, stablecoins and wagering markets. She focuses on the concrete mechanics of regulation, explaining what new rules mean for operators such as Kalshi and Coinbase, state banking associations and retail-facing crypto services.
Prediction markets and gaming enforcement
A defining strand of Kinery’s work is sustained coverage of prediction markets and how state and federal authorities police them. She tracks litigation involving Kalshi and other operators across multiple jurisdictions, following cases from early enforcement actions through appeals and related regulatory moves.
Stories such as her “play by play” on prediction markets sparring with states in court show her step-by-step approach to timelines, rulings and procedural turns.
She reports on decisions like a Connecticut judge ruling against Kalshi and Coinbase, a Michigan fight over prediction market rules, and a Washington state order barring Kalshi from operating, outlining how each ruling constrains or reshapes these markets. She also follows the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s involvement when it amends lawsuits or issues orders that intersect with state gaming laws, connecting state enforcement to federal oversight.
Beyond Kalshi, she covers legislation such as a sweepstakes gaming ban facing setbacks in a state house, signalling her attention to the broader gaming policy environment around prediction markets.
Crypto taxation and state-level crackdowns
Kinery devotes significant coverage to how states tax and restrict cryptocurrency, focusing on the details of proposed statutes and their market impact. Her piece on Illinois imposing the first crypto tax in the United States examines a budget measure awaiting the governor’s approval and situates the tax within a wider battle over how prediction markets and digital assets should be treated under state law.
In related reporting on a federal lawsuit against Illinois, she highlights how new tax provisions on sports event contracts become part of the legal dispute, linking specific tax rates and statutory language to arguments made by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and state officials.
She also covers legislation in New Jersey that would ban cryptocurrency ATMs, detailing proposed penalties for businesses that install or manage such machines and explaining how lawmakers aim to curb retail access points to crypto. Across these stories, she treats crypto not as a standalone technology but as a financial product shaped by tax codes, enforcement tools and consumer protection concerns at the state level.
Stablecoins, banking law and digital infrastructure
Another recurring focus in Kinery’s reporting is the intersection of stablecoins and traditional banking.
She covers initiatives such as 40 state bankers associations teaming up to launch a stablecoin blockchain network, showing how established financial institutions experiment with digital asset infrastructure rather than leaving it solely to crypto-native firms. Her coverage explains the structure of these collaborations and which states and banking groups are involved, emphasizing the multi-state nature of the project.
In a separate story on Delaware revamping its banking laws for the digital age, she examines statutory updates aimed at modernizing how banks operate and supervise technology-driven products, tying legal changes to the needs of an industry facing fintech competition and new forms of money. Together, these pieces show her attention to how legacy banking systems adapt to digital currencies and distributed ledgers, and how state legislatures and regulators write rules to accommodate or constrain that evolution.
Format, scope and reporting style
Kinery’s beat spans finance, fintech and crypto policy, and she consistently frames individual stories within a multi-jurisdiction landscape. Many of her State Affairs articles carry tags for several states and Washington, D.C., reflecting a habit of tracing how similar regulatory questions play out across different venues rather than treating each case as isolated.
Her “play by play” court coverage uses a chronological, procedural structure, while pieces on legislation and tax policy focus on bill language, enforcement mechanisms and practical implications for market participants. She also conducts interviews with key figures, such as Kalshi’s chief regulatory officer and general counsel, to surface how companies present their regulatory posture and respond to adverse rulings. Public professional bios describe her as a finance and fintech policy reporter with experience covering politics, business and technology, and her recent work reflects that blend by following how political decisions and legal arguments translate into concrete rules for financial platforms.
Across her archive, the through-line is a close, technical look at state-level regulation of emerging financial technologies and how those rules affect the businesses and markets operating in that space.
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