what's kalshi?
Kalshi is a federally regulated prediction market platform that enables users to trade contracts on the outcomes of real-world events, such as elections, economic indicators, and cryptocurrency prices. Founded in 2018, it operates as a U.S.-based exchange approved by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), allowing participants to speculate on yes/no questions with cash-settled contracts. The platform has achieved significant growth, processing billions in trading volume and recently surpassing competitors like Polymarket to become the world's largest prediction market by volume. In October 2025, Kalshi raised over $300 million in a Series D funding round led by Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, valuing it at $5 billion and fueling plans for global expansion to over 140 countries. Key features include seamless crypto integrations for deposits via Solana and Avalanche, real-time market data, and partnerships with platforms like Robinhood to broaden accessibility. While no native token has been launched, the platform is actively engaging crypto influencers and hinting at potential airdrops to incentivize user growth in Q4 2025.
Kalshi explores $20B valuation, reports $1.87B weekly volume & $1-1.5B revenue run rate.
Links
x.com/kalshiExploring a new funding round that could value the company at around $20 billion, approximately double the most recent valuation from late 2025.
Processed $1.87 billion in weekly volume during early March 2026.
Reached an estimated $1-1.5 billion revenue run rate as of early 2026.
Charges approximately 7% fee on winnings for prediction market trades.
Partnered with ARK Invest to identify investment opportunities using crowd-driven insights from prediction markets.
Fox News is adding Kalshi prediction market odds to its coverage.
Integrated with Sei Network as their official prediction market integration.
Reached 3.13 million transactions on the most recent day reported.
Reached $464.8 million in volume on the most recent day reported.
Reached $13.07 billion in prediction market notional volume during March 2026, gaining over 50% since 2025-12-25.
Reached $293M in market volume during the week ending April 7, 2026.
Handles $58.3B volume in 2025, 46% of the $63.5B total prediction market volume shared with Polymarket and Opinion. Sports drives 83% of its volume.
Received a Third Circuit appeals court ruling that blocks New Jersey from shutting down its sports markets, with the court determining that the Commodity Exchange Act preempts state gambling laws and prevents state enforcement against the platform.
Reached approximately 10% user penetration of Arizona's population.
Crypto markets now represent approximately 10% of total exchange volume as of end of Q1 2026.
CFTC and DOJ filed lawsuit against State of Illinois to block state-level regulation of Kalshi, asserting exclusive federal authority over designated contract markets.
Paradigm invested nine figures in Kalshi according to speculation about their prediction markets strategy.
Received over $1.5B in funding during March 2026, representing more than 50% of total crypto venture capital deployed that month alongside Polymarket.
Achieved $2.73B in notional volume for the week ending approximately March 31, 2026.
Processed 292 million trades across 327,000 contracts, as analyzed in Bayesian hierarchical model research by Nam Anh Le.
Data quality validated in a Federal Reserve paper, as referenced in practical guide by Isar Bhattacharjee.
Faces lawsuit from Washington state alleging prediction market contracts constitute disguised gambling and bypass the state's online gambling ban.
Received CFTC approval November 2020, launched July 2021, and operates legally in the U.S.
Generated $290 million in lifetime revenue as of March 2026.
Charges 1-2% fees on transactions.
Reached $3.40B in notional volume for the week ending 2026-03-26, representing a 15.73% increase from the previous week.
Becomes the first platform banned for Congressional staff use by Rep. Moulton alongside Polymarket.
Received a SABEW reporting prize for a feature article covering the Kalshi-Polymarket dispute.
Achieved $200B+ annual volume run rate in 2026, recording 72.1 million trades and $18.26 billion in February 2026 trading volume (combined with Polymarket), up from under $2 billion in August 2025.
Reaches volume surging past $2.2 billion between 9PM and 11PM EST, with quiet activity until evening hours showing concentrated trading patterns.
Holds approximately 35% of trades in the $10-100 range and over 8% exceeding $10,000.
Launches institutional prediction market clearing in partnership with FIS.
Integrated markets into CoinMarketCap's Prediction Market tracker on 2026-03-24.
Expanded insider trading screening to include athletes and politicians, amid accusations of insider trading and new US bills.
Former employees raising 5c(c) Capital, a $35M prediction market VC fund, invested in by Kalshi CEO, Polymarket CEO, and Marc Andreessen.
U.S. lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill in the US Senate on March 23, 2026, to ban sports-related contracts on CFTC-regulated prediction market platforms, affecting 70-85% of weekly volume, facing NFL pressure to remove football betting markets due to manipulation concerns.
Halted prediction market contracts in Nevada by temporary restraining order after judge ruled sports contracts 'indistinguishable from gambling' amid CFTC legal clash.
Received 20 misdemeanor counts from Arizona AG for illegal election wagering and unlicensed bets, plus a Department of Gaming lawsuit over sports betting citing tribal casino monopolization. DOJ and CFTC filed a temporary restraining order to halt the Arizona case, arguing contracts are federally-regulated derivatives/swaps, following a federal judge's prior rejection of moving the case to federal court.
Achieved $2.93B notional volume for the week ending March 19, 2026, ranking first among prediction markets with a 2.68% weekly increase.
Processed 19.75 million transactions, ranking second among prediction markets in the weekly period ending March 18, 2026.
Reached monthly trading volume of $10.4 billion in February 2026.
Won lawsuit against CFTC in October 2024, enabling legal U.S. election and political event betting and participation by professional algorithmic market makers.
offers $1 billion prize for March Madness
Reached over 1,000 autonomous trades executed through Predictwithoshi integration on the platform.
Partnered with Cash App to enable funding Kalshi accounts via Cash App Pay.
Reached $1.1 billion in trading volume for the week ending March 13, 2026.
Processed 8.1 million transactions for the week ending March 13, 2026.
Reached $497.0 million in open interest, ranking first among prediction markets.
Gains access through Clear Street as a prime broker, with the first trade expected to clear on 2026-03-31.
Plans to offer access through Marex Group as a prime broker in the coming months.
paid out $1.51M in incentives
Partners with XP Inc., Brazil's largest brokerage, for international expansion, offering yes-or-no contracts relating to Brazil's economy to millions of users.
Raised $1 billion Series E led by Coatue Management at $22 billion valuation in March 2026; exploring new funding round at potential $20 billion valuation.
Generated $110M prediction market revenue over 30 days ending around March 21, 2026, representing 90% of industry total, and projects annualized revenue run rate above $1 billion by early 2026.
Kalshi is included in a third-party data aggregation platform (marketmotionxyz) that maps real-world signals to live markets across multiple trading venues, providing cross-venue market data access.
Hosting a conference in NYC on 2026-03-31, with invitations prioritized for market makers, traders, and institutions.
Achieved $1.08 billion in weekly trading volume for the week ending March 6, 2026.
Achieved 7.8 million transactions for the week ending March 6, 2026.
Faces potential prohibition from listing war, assassination, and death-related prediction markets under the proposed "Death Bets Act" by U.S. lawmakers. CFTC submitted to the White House on March 4, 2026, specifically naming Kalshi and proposing classification of prediction market event contracts as a new financial asset class. CFTC also released an ANPR and advisory for prediction market exchanges, opening a 45-day public comment period for a federal regulatory framework.
Featured as an example usecase in a Phantom/Dflow Claude Code Skill demonstration video for building AI-powered prediction markets dashboards and trading bots on Solana.
Integrated as an execution venue within ConvergeMarkets aggregation platform.
Grew volume by 16% over a 30-day period ending 2026-03-04.
Achieved $4.54B in trading volume over the 30-day period ending March 3, 2026, and $1.2B in weekly volume, representing the highest volume among prediction markets.
Recorded $1.2 billion monthly crypto volume in March 2026, with weekly volume growing from $30M in January to $300M by March over a 100-day period ending April 3, 2026. Crypto is the second largest category behind sports.
Partnered with Bezel for a prediction market on Rolex, Omega, Cartier, Tudor, and Patek Philippe watch brands, enabling bets on luxury watch prices.
Faces class-action lawsuit over voided trades in its Ali Khamenei market, which reached $54M trading volume, alleging failure to pay $54M to users who bet on him leaving office before March 1, 2026, citing a "death carveout" clause; co-founder Luana Lopes Lara said all users were reimbursed. Paused trading on Iran-related markets February 28, 2026.
Listed on Binance pre-market futures contracts, features leveraged prediction betting, eyes margin trading.
Added to Coinbase listing roadmap.
Holds approximately 30% market share of the prediction market sector as of February 2026.
Achieved over $1 billion in total trading volume across Pre-TGE prediction topics, with 16 individual topics exceeding $10 million each.
Accounts for 76-90% of trading volume in sports-related betting.
Reached $2.86B notional volume for week ending March 11, 2026, ranking first among prediction markets, up 4.71% from previous week.
Processed 18.73 million transactions for the week ending February 27, 2026.
Reached $1.4 billion in weekly trading volume for the week ending February 27, 2026.
Recorded 9.9 million transactions during the week ending February 27, 2026.
Integrated with Omina Bot, a Telegram-based mobile trading terminal for instant execution, market discovery, and portfolio tracking.
Achieved product-market fit alongside Polymarket in prediction markets, mentioned at FIA Boca derivatives conference on March 10, 2026.
200 insider trading probes have been opened on Kalshi.
Contributed 85 to 90 percent of $44 billion prediction market volume in 2025 alongside Polymarket.
Beast Industries employee accused of insider trading on Kalshi.
Established $2M fund with Solana for prediction market builders, integrated DFlow Protocol for Solana trading.
Implemented insider trading ban on 2026-03-24, prohibiting athletes, coaches, and political candidates from trading on their own events. Fined and suspended a MrBeast editor $20,000 for insider trading.
Hired Andy Ross as a senior executive, who previously served as Global Head of Prime Financing at Standard Chartered and held senior roles at Morgan Stanley including Head of OTC Clearing for Europe.
Removed non-employee X Account Affiliated Badges from external partners, promoters, and community members on February 24, 2026, in response to X's new paid promotion disclosure policy.
Offers prediction markets on U.S. crypto market structure legislation, with odds at 75% for passage before 2027 as of February 23, 2026.
Achieved $6.50 billion in trading volume during the week ending February 20, 2026.
Reached 44.12 million total transactions as of February 20, 2026.
Reached $2.59 billion in notional volume for the week ending February 24, 2026, a 6.75% increase.
Integrated with Dome API (acquired by Polymarket), providing unified prediction markets data access through API and SDK.
Partnered with Tradeweb, which takes a minority stake and integrates prediction market data for institutional event contracts on its rates and credit platform, with $2.6T daily trading volume.
Reached $125M trading volume on 2026 LPL Championship prediction topic, with individual strikes exceeding $1M.
Referenced in Federal Reserve FOMC minutes as a source for macro probabilities and economic forecasts, outperforming Fed funds futures and professional economist surveys, matching actual fed funds rate on every FOMC meeting day since 2022.
Faces lawsuit from Nevada gaming regulators and trading halt after Federal Court sent dispute back to state court, ruling Commodity Exchange Act does not preempt state law.
Won preliminary injunction from Tennessee judge blocking state enforcement actions, with court determining sports contracts qualify as swaps under CFTC preemption. CFTC filed amicus brief.
Polymarket surpassed Kalshi in trading volume, achieving $1.13 billion over a 7-day period.
Reached 17.38 million transactions for the week ending February 20, 2026.
Susquehanna entered as a market maker, delivering a 30x liquidity increase and compressing spreads to sub-3 cents.
Server crashed and became corrupted on February 14th, requiring a complete rebuild before resuming operations with funds.
Resolved a Super Bowl Anthropic advertisement market against users who correctly predicted the ad would air, excluding the ad from counting because it lacked Anthropic's logo despite the ad running, generating approximately $1.2 million in trading fees while users collectively lost around $2 million.
Implements new weekly claimable reward boxes for traders, with eligibility based on trading activity, partner campaigns, and referrals.