Prediction marketplace Kalshi has started taking Bitcoin (BTC) deposits in a bid to onboard more crypto-native users.
The company that lets users bet on events ranging from election outcomes to Rotten Tomatoes film ratings has seen a strong uptake among crypto traders, Kalshi told Cointelegraph on April 9. For instance, event contracts for betting on Bitcoin’s hour-by-hour price changes have seen $143 million in trading volume to date, a spokesperson said.
Kalshi is a derivatives exchange regulated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). As of April 9, it listed some 50 crypto-related event contracts, including markets for betting on coins’ 2025 highs and lows, as well as on headlines such as US President Donald Trump’s proposed National Bitcoin Reserve.
Kalshi has doubled down on crypto event contract markets. Source: Kalshi
The platform started accepting crypto payments in October when it enabled stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) deposits.
Kalshi relies on ZeroHash — a crypto payments infrastructure provider — for off-ramping BTC and USDC and converting the deposits to US dollars. The exchange accepts BTC deposits only from the Bitcoin network.
Most Kalshi traders no longer expect core tokens to earn positive returns this year. Source: Kalshi
Related: Kalshi traders place the odds of US recession in 2025 at over 61%
More accurate than polls
Launched in 2021, Kalshi rose to prominence ahead of the US’s November elections.
It became a top venue for trading on 2024 political events after winning a lawsuit against the CFTC, which tried to block Kalshi from listing contracts tied to elections.
The regulator argued that political prediction markets threaten the integrity of elections, but industry analysts say they often capture public sentiment more accurately than polls.
For instance, prediction markets, including Kalshi, accurately predicted Trump’s presidential election win even as polls indicated a tossup.
“Event contract markets are a valuable public good for which there is no evidence of significant manipulation or widespread use for any nefarious purposes that the Commission alleges,” Harry Crane, a statistics professor at Rutgers University, said in an August comment letter filed with the CFTC.
As of April 9, Kalshi traders peg the odds of the US entering a recession at 68%, according to its website.
In March, Kalshi partnered with Robinhood to bring prediction markets to the popular online brokerage platform. Robinhood’s stock rose some 8% on the news.
Kalshi competes with Polymarket, a Web3-based prediction platform. Polymarket processed more than $3 billion in trading volumes tied to the US presidential election despite being off-limits for US traders.
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