New Yorkers can now use a federally regulated financial exchange and prediction website to place their predictions on the outcomes of popular future events, such as elections, political moves, movie successes, and more.
Kalshi, which launched in 2019, allows people to trade on a broad range of topics. Clients can buy Yes or No positions to put their opinion on whether an event will happen or not.
“It works very similar to the stock market or other commodities markets,” explained Jack Such, manager of press relations at the company. “ When you go on Kalshi, what you’re trading is event contracts, which is a financial contract that pays out based on the outcome of an event.”
People are trading against other people—not the house, Such explained. Before users can place any trades on the website, they deposit money into their Kalshi accounts.
People can make their trades with that money. When they have a successful trade, the money they win is sent to their Kalshi accounts.
Topics with ‘societal value’
Trade topics cover the gamut on Kalshi.
“Big things that people like to trade on are elections,” Such said. “Particularly, the American election was very popular. But we do markets on other elections, too.”
Economic indicators are popular on Kalshi, too, such as predicting what the Federal Reserve will do, what the next CPI will be or even whether or not there will be a recession this year, Such explained.
“All of these markets tend to be really popular,” he said.
At press time, Kalshi’s topics included “Gas prices in the U.S. this month?” and “Will the South Korean President leave office?”
You can even search Kalshi for topics relevant to New York. A search on April 2 yielded questions such as “Who will be the Dem NYC mayor nominee this year?”, whether the Yankees or Mets will win their league championship, the high temperature for Wednesday, and NYC subway ridership levels.
“We tend to try to prioritize topics that have societal value to them,” Such said. “One of the interesting and important things about prediction markets is that they are incredibly accurate at creating these probabilities on the likelihood of future events. We tend to try to do markets on things that would be really important for certain segments of the population to know or for the general population to know.”
Kalshi is a registered contract maker with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. Such said, the company has an extensive history of cooperating with the agency. They also have a list of rules and regulations that they must follow in order to operate.
Any American over 18 can sign up and use Kalshi. To get started, they must create an account and undergo an identity verification process.
“It’s very important for us to know who is trading on our markets,” Such explained. “So we have to verify your identity. And once you are cleared, you can trade on any of our markets.”
The smallest trade a person can make is $10.
For more information, including how to use the site, visit kalshi.com.
