Kalshi PreStocks (KALSHI) on Solana

The Roosevelt Institute, a New York City-based think tank, has published a report titled "The Hidden House: Prediction Markets and How They're Shaping Society," arguing that everyday Kalshi users have lost approximately $583.5 million since the platform's 2018 launch. Co-author Brad Lipton contends retail traders operate at a structural disadvantage because they unknowingly compete against professional traders using sophisticated methods, with no transparency about who sits on the other side of their bets.

Kalshi pushed back sharply on the report's methodology, arguing the study misclassifies high-frequency institutional market makers as "ordinary users" and casual users as "professional traders," and that the platform functions as a financial exchange matching orders peer-to-peer rather than running a house edge. The dispute lands alongside broader regulatory and media scrutiny of prediction markets: Wall Street Journal reporting has found that most Kalshi and Polymarket users lose money with profits concentrated among a small number of accounts, while separate analysis found informed traders generated $143 million in "anomalous" profits on Polymarket since 2024.

Goldman Sachs has issued an internal memo restricting — but not banning — employee participation on prediction platforms Kalshi and Polymarket. Staff may only place bets in sports and entertainment categories; wagering on elections, interest rates, or other market-moving events is off-limits under the policy, and repeated violations could result in termination. The bank cited compliance concerns tied to employees' potential access to material non-public information, which creates regulatory risk when speculating on economically sensitive outcomes.

The policy is a notable signal for Kalshi's institutional ambitions: Goldman's decision to restrict rather than prohibit entirely suggests the platform has grown prominent enough to warrant a formal compliance response, while stopping short of a full ban reflects its legitimacy as a regulated venue. Kalshi has been pushing into financial services with block-trading operations and is reportedly targeting a $40 billion valuation. Both Kalshi and Polymarket tightened their own insider trading and market manipulation rules following scrutiny of suspicious wagering patterns linked to real-world events, moves that appear to be building the compliance infrastructure institutions need before they can engage more openly.

Federal Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York denied Kalshi's request for a preliminary injunction in KalshiEX LLC v. Williams on July 8, 2026, ruling that New York state gambling laws are not preempted by the Commodity Exchange Act and apply to the platform's sports event contracts. The court rejected Kalshi's argument that its contracts qualify as CFTC-regulated swaps, allowing New York to proceed with enforcement rather than deferring to federal oversight.

The decision opens the door for New York Attorney General Letitia James to pursue a civil enforcement action against Kalshi seeking restitution, disgorgement, financial penalties, and injunctive relief. The ruling is a significant setback for the broader prediction markets industry, shifting legal momentum against platforms at the state level despite ongoing CFTC support at the federal level, and could influence similar regulatory battles in other jurisdictions.

Spotify removed more than 500,000 artificially generated streams from indie-pop artist Malcolm Todd's track "Earrings" after the song's suspicious rise from No. 4 to No. 1 on the platform's daily U.S. chart attracted scrutiny. The surge — a roughly 70% jump in U.S. streams over a single day — was linked to prediction market activity on Kalshi, where traders had placed bets on which song would top the chart. Kalshi traders flagged the anomalous streaming behavior on social media, and Spotify confirmed that the streams appeared to originate from bots and would not generate royalties.

Kalshi, which had already distributed payouts to traders who bet on the June chart winner, said it is investigating the incident in coordination with Spotify. The episode highlights an emerging risk for platforms that track discrete, gameable metrics: when financial stakes attach to specific outcomes like chart rankings, bad actors gain an incentive to manipulate the underlying data. Spotify also requested that Kalshi and rival platform Polymarket remove its branding and make clear that no partnership exists between them.

Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour pushed back on criticism that prediction markets enable insider trading, arguing the opposite is true compared to traditional stock markets. In stock markets, Mansour explained, the link between private information and a trade is obscured by the many factors influencing a stock price — an insider who knows about an upcoming product launch buys a company's stock, but that connection is buried in noise. In prediction markets, the signal is direct: a trader with foreknowledge of a specific outcome bets on that outcome, making the information-to-trade relationship transparent and far easier to flag.

The comments come amid scrutiny following a federal investigation into former Rep. George Santos, who made trades on Kalshi around the State of the Union address in February. Mansour noted that Kalshi has implemented employment verification requirements, whistleblower mechanisms, and rapid investigation protocols as safeguards against abuse. The regulatory environment remains unsettled, however: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed a statewide ban on prediction market contracts in May 2026, and several other states are weighing similar restrictions.
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Traders on Kalshi's prediction market are pricing in a softer-than-expected June nonfarm payrolls print, putting less than 60% odds on job growth surpassing 100,000 and only about 42% odds on clearing 125,000. That's well below the Dow Jones consensus of 118,000 and a sharp step down from May's 172,000 — which itself more than doubled Wall Street's prior estimate. On unemployment, Kalshi traders are more aligned with consensus: a 71% chance the rate comes in above 4.2%, but only a 30% probability it exceeds the current 4.3%.

The data illustrates Kalshi's growing footprint as a real-time economic barometer. By aggregating crowd-sourced bets on macro outcomes, the platform surfaces a market-implied probability distribution for labor data that differs meaningfully from sell-side point estimates — and which, in the case of May's payrolls, proved closer to the outcome. The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the June jobs report Thursday.

Kalshi announced a strategic partnership with ADI Predictstreet on June 26, 2026, to expand its prediction market presence during and beyond the 2026 World Cup. Under the deal, Kalshi branding will appear in stadiums, on broadcasts, and in digital advertising alongside ADI Predictstreet, while Kalshi assists in growing available markets throughout the tournament. ADI Predictstreet, which launched just three days before the World Cup kicked off on June 11, operates in partnership with sports streaming platform DAZN and Fanatics Markets for U.S. market access, using its ADI Chain technology to deliver live markets and event tracking.

The partnership follows a strong opening week for Kalshi at the tournament: the platform processed $5.1 billion in trades during the first week of World Cup competition, including a single-day record of $1.7 billion on one Wednesday. The deal broadens Kalshi's physical and digital footprint at the world's most-watched sporting event, pairing it with an official tournament prediction market partner that already has broadcast and streaming distribution locked in.