kalshi

According to Cointelegraph, a recent poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos shows that a majority of American respondents oppose betting on U.S. elections and other government actions through prediction markets. The survey indicates that 69% of Democratic respondents and 61% of Republican respondents oppose using prediction markets to bet on election outcomes. The survey was conducted from September 30 to October 5, covering 4,506 adults nationwide.Aside from elections, even regarding betting on professional sports events, 43% of respondents expressed opposition, while only 29% indicated support. The prediction market industry is currently dominated by platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi, which allow users to bet on U.S. elections, government policy trends, and sports events, and has sparked multiple lawsuits regarding regulatory authority.The Trump administration is pushing for federal regulation of the industry through the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), while several states have expressed opposition to this. Previously, on October 8, Cointelegraph reported that 39 states and the District of Columbia submitted an amicus brief, indicating that the conflict between the CFTC and state authorities over prediction market issues has created a "national turf war" that cannot be resolved without a Supreme Court ruling.

According to Bloomberg, the New Taipei District Court in Taiwan has authorized Taiwan's communication regulatory agency and internet registration agency to block domestic access to Coinbase and the prediction market platform Kalshi, due to allegations of providing election betting services.This blockage occurs a few weeks before the local elections in Taiwan, which will test the public support for President Lai Ching-te's government. Some Coinbase users in Taiwan have reported that they have been unable to access the platform normally since Wednesday.

According to Bitcoin.com analysis, the U.S. prediction market platform Kalshi saw a single-day nominal trading volume of up to $3.9 billion over the weekend, with combo bets contributing about 70% of the weekend's nominal trading volume.The analysis also pointed out that nominal trading volume measures the face value scale of contracts and does not equate to the actual cash invested by buyers, nor does it represent the number of new users on the platform. Therefore, this metric cannot directly reflect Kalshi's actual capital inflow or user growth situation.

The media and conference organization NEXTPredict announced that it has executed the first trade in the flight cancellation market through Kalshi to hedge investments for its October summit, locking in $3 million in guarantees. The company paid a premium of $12,000, and if the cancellation rate of flights arriving at New York's Kennedy International Airport on October 21 exceeds 50%, the contract will automatically pay out, covering the summit costs, as October 21 is the main travel day for attendees. Susquehanna acted as the market maker for this transaction.Kalshi launched the flight cancellation market after self-certifying the contract with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on July 14, allowing participants to trade on whether the cancellation volume at specific airports exceeds preset thresholds. This market does not target individual flights and has clear anti-manipulation clauses. NEXTPredict is a media and event platform focused on the global prediction market industry, launched by the NEXT.io team. Its flagship event, the "Global Prediction Market Summit," will be held from October 22 to 23, 2026, at Convene Hudson Yards in New York, bringing together founders, executives, investors, and policymakers.NEXTPredict and Kalshi position this trade as institutional hedging, similar to how airlines hedge against fuel costs or farmers hedge against crop yields, rather than betting on the fate of the summit.

According to a report by The Block citing The Wall Street Journal, the prediction market platform Kalshi is investigating several trades that correctly bet on Trump appointing Katie Zacharia as White House Press Secretary before the announcement was made. Trump confirmed the appointment in a post on Truth Social on Friday afternoon, with Zacharia replacing Karoline Leavitt.At least three bets totaling approximately $173 were placed before the media reported on the candidate, with the market expected to pay out about $9,600 in total after settlement. One bet of about $19 was placed around 10:42 PM (Eastern Time) on Thursday, with an expected payout of $1,896; two other bets of approximately $74 and $80 were placed around 1:41 PM on Friday, with expected payouts of $3,689 and $4,023, respectively.The report stated that a few days before the news broke, Kalshi traders assigned a probability of about 1% to Zacharia. This investigation comes after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission reached a settlement in August with a former White House teleprompter operator who had traded on markets related to Trump’s speeches on Kalshi.

According to Bloomberg, on October 11, 2026, the prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket saw record trading volumes over the weekend driven by NFL and NCAA events, with a total of $8.56 billion over two days, data compiled by Dune Analytics shows. The combined trading volume of the two platforms reached $22.2 billion that week, also setting a record.The prediction markets previously allowed users to trade on a variety of events, from Federal Reserve decisions to pop culture. This season's American football season shows that its growth is increasingly reliant on sports trading. The surge in NFL trading on Kalshi and Polymarket has prompted a review of sports betting regulations.

The prediction market platform Kalshi's Kalshi Research released a report titled "Who Trades Prediction Markets?", with a subtitle focusing on community income, background, and probability reasoning, marked for publication in October 2026. The report studies the composition of prediction market traders, with data sourced from administrative records and surveys, and compares it to a general population sample.The administrative data covers the residential ZIP codes of each direct trader on Kalshi since January 2026, and aligns with the median household income from the American Community Survey. The survey was distributed in September 2026 to the highest profit and loss traders across various market categories, excluding sports and special categories, targeting 2,360 accounts, with 325 completed responses, resulting in a response rate of 13.8%.The report states that the median income reflected by traders' residential locations is close to the national level, with a modal range crossing $80,734, and only 6.3% residing in ZIP codes with median incomes above $150,000. Among the highest profit and loss traders, 82% have never worked full-time in investment banks, hedge funds, private equity, or proprietary trading firms, 91% are not full-time traders, and 65% claim to have learned about markets and probabilities primarily or entirely on their own. In comparison to 1,005 American adults, this group scored an average of 2.42/4 on the Berlin Mathematical Test, while the public scored 0.62, with a proportion of 93% resisting the gambler's fallacy, compared to 57% in the public.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the prediction market platform Kalshi is investigating betting activity related to "Trump's press secretary candidate" on its platform. Three bets, amounting to approximately $19, $74, and $80, appeared before the reports of Katie Zacharia being selected were published.The report states that the contract ultimately settled at "yes," but it remains unclear whether the related accounts are subject to withdrawal restrictions.

On October 8, the oracle network Pyth released its third-quarter update: As of the end of the third quarter, the active ARR was $11.49 million, a quarter-over-quarter increase of 86.5%, driven by exchanges, prediction markets, and AI; the net new ARR for the third quarter was $5.33 million. By the end of September, Pyth Pro had an operating ARR of $9.68 million, Pyth Indices had $1.81 million, covering 16 active clients, with a total of 276 paid accounts across all services, and terminal self-service contributed $500,000 in new ARR in September.In terms of exchanges, the trading volume of the real-world asset perpetual market in the third quarter was $2.09 trillion, with Pyth-supported venues accounting for 94.1%. Coinbase uses Pyth data to support the continuously priced thematic market, and the index calculated with Pyth data supports the listing of stock index futures on Coinbase Derivatives; Trade[XYZ], OKX, and Lighter also use Pyth's Pro and Indices data. In the prediction market sector, Kalshi uses Pyth prices to cover the stock and commodity markets and listed Pyth as the sole data source for gold and silver perpetuals on its CFTC-registered exchange in its September filing; Pyth also provides data for Polymarket's real-world asset market.

Polymarket's CEO Shayne Coplan stated during a fireside chat at the Token2049 conference in Singapore that cryptocurrency trading is evolving into a game of "irrational exuberance," where traders compete to be the first to find the next hundredfold token. He pointed out that people think they are buying something valuable, but in reality, it is worthless; however, as long as there is a possibility of it rising to 100 times, they want to sell before it goes to zero. Coplan mentioned that some traders can gain considerable wealth through this strategy, but it is essentially a game of "irrational exuberance and hot potato," where rising asset prices will eventually fall back.Coplan indicated that the continuous growth of Polymarket's user base shows that some traders are looking for betting opportunities with more predictable odds, rather than the next skyrocketing cryptocurrency. He explained that trading these markets on Polymarket does not have exponential upside potential, but informed traders will continue to place bets on future events with more predictable odds. According to data from DefiLlama, Polymarket is the second-largest prediction market, with a trading volume of $1.21 billion in the past seven days, while the largest market, Kalshi, had $2.3 billion.The growth of prediction markets has also attracted more attention from U.S. regulators. It was reported that JPMorgan terminated its banking relationship with Polymarket on August 14 due to regulatory concerns but expressed interest in acting as an underwriter if Polymarket seeks to go public.

The prediction market platform Kalshi launched its 15-minute gold contract in August, generating an estimated fee of approximately 5 million dollars in September, nearly double the 2.6 million dollars from Ethereum contracts during the same period. According to Predict Charts data, the gold contract had a trading volume of 542 million contracts that month, surpassing Ethereum's 318 million contracts. Bitcoin remains the dominant market, with estimated fees reaching 60.4 million dollars.The growth of the short-term gold market accompanies the overall expansion of Kalshi's commodities business. The company stated in September that commodity trading volume reached 400 million dollars within seven months, more than four times the trading volume generated by its crypto market in the same period. Kalshi noted that the crypto market demonstrated the potential for new categories on the platform to grow from tens of millions of dollars to billions of dollars in monthly trading volume. Data shows that the 15-minute Bitcoin contract, which will launch in December 2025, became Kalshi's largest market series outside of parlay bets in July; the 15-minute Ethereum contract grew from 6.1 million contracts to 233 million contracts between January and July 2026.The short-term financial market is taking up a larger share of Kalshi's business. Analysis released by InGame shows that in the seven days ending October 5, the 15-minute crypto, commodities, and financial markets generated 20.4 million dollars in fees, accounting for 80% of the platform's non-sports fees during the same period. The analysis also found that the short-term market contributed 13% of Kalshi's trading volume but accounted for 20% of the fees.

The American compliance prediction market platform Kalshi has launched the US 500 perpetual futures contract, which has no expiration date, utilizes a daily funding fee payment mechanism, and uses futures account assets as collateral.According to The Defiant, Kalshi displayed a maximum leverage of 15.3 times on the day of the launch.

On Tuesday, Coinbase added short-term up-and-down contracts to its prediction market, covering Bitcoin, Ethereum, and 8 other tokens, allowing for bets on crypto price direction at 15-minute and hourly intervals.These contracts are listed by the prediction market platform Kalshi, which previously operated the same 15-minute market on its own exchange.

According to CNBC, U.S. Democratic Congressman Don Davis proposed the "No Betting on Your Own Race Act," which aims to prohibit federal office candidates from trading prediction market contracts related to their own election results.Under the bill, violators will be fined at least $10,000 or three times the net profits from the related trades, whichever is higher. Before this proposal was introduced, Davis's Republican opponent in North Carolina's 1st Congressional District, Laurie Buckhout, was fined nearly $2,600 for trading Kalshi contracts related to her candidacy and was suspended from trading on Kalshi for three years.

According to CoinDesk, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has submitted two rules for review to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). One rule aims to include event contracts within the regulatory definition of swaps, while the other is a "temporary final rule" that seeks to exclude "casino-style gambling products" from the scope of swaps.These two rules were received by the OMB this week, with the document dated September 28. OMB review is typically the last step before rules are submitted for public comment, and the temporary final rule will take effect immediately while allowing for subsequent public input and revisions.This move comes as the CFTC engages in a tug-of-war with multiple states over the nature of prediction markets. Event contracts are typically binary yes-or-no bets on measurable outcomes such as sports events and elections. Last week, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Kalshi's sports contracts do not fall under swaps and should be governed by state gambling regulations, while the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals made a similar ruling; however, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals previously determined that the CFTC has jurisdiction over prediction markets, creating a legal divergence at the federal level. CFTC Chairman Mike Selig believes that the CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction over prediction markets.If event contracts are classified as swaps and not as gambling products, it could weaken the positions of various states in multiple lawsuits against prediction market platforms like Kalshi. The CFTC is legally required to consist of five commissioners, but President Trump has yet to nominate additional commissioners, leaving Selig as the sole commissioner, who is unilaterally advancing regulatory and policy decisions. Additionally, information disclosed by the OMB indicates that the CFTC recently submitted a "pre-rule" focusing on cryptocurrency regulation to the White House.

According to Politico, citing three informed sources, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating former Illinois Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, related to his trading on the prediction market platform Kalshi. The relevant trades occurred between December 2024 and January 2025, completed through a Kalshi account associated with Kinzinger. He confirmed to the media that he had placed bets on contracts regarding whether he would receive a presidential pardon, while also betting on another contract about whether Biden would issue preemptive pardons before leaving office.In the final moments before Biden left office in January 2025, he issued preemptive pardons to Kinzinger and other members of the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot. Screenshots provided by Kinzinger show that he made a profit of $823 from approximately 25 trades, most of which were losses. He denied any wrongdoing, stating that he had been out of office for two years at the time of the bets, was neither a congressman nor a candidate, and had "no insider information." He also stated that he had read Kalshi's rules in advance and understood that they prohibit users from trading contracts directly related to their own interests. Kalshi prohibits users from betting on contracts in which they are direct participants, and the CFTC also prohibits the use of significant non-public information in its regulated markets.Kalshi had previously handled similar cases, suspending three congressional candidates in April for betting on their own campaigns, and freezing former Congressman George Santos's account, which was referred to the CFTC and the Department of Justice, leading to a lifetime ban at the end of August.

Cathie Wood's Ark Invest currently holds a direct position in Kalshi through three ETFs: ARKK, ARKW, and ARKF. Ark Invest expects that the annual trading volume in the mid-term forecast market will reach between $1 trillion and $5 trillion.Ark Invest stated that although Kalshi is still a private company, it hopes to allow its investors to participate early.