Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour posted a video on Wednesday showing six men dressed in business attire doing push-ups on the sidewalk. “This is how the Kalshi Q1 board meeting ended,” he added he wrote on X. In the video, board members are laughing and smiling after an impromptu cardio session, and the mood is jovial. The next day, it became clear that the team had enough reason to celebrate: Kalshi had just raised $1 billion at a valuation of $22 billion, which on paper represents the company’s value approximately twice which was just a few months ago.
Sen. Chris Murphy, a co-sponsor of the bill and one of the industry’s most outspoken critics, told WIRED that prediction markets are a “rigged and dangerous product” and “an entirely new source of staggering corruption.”
“Kalshi no longer prohibits insider trading and trading directly related to death and war,” says Kalshi spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana. “As a U.S.-based exchange, we support regulators and policymakers on both sides of the aisle in their efforts to keep these American markets safe and accountable.” Polymarket did not respond to requests for comment.
Existing law gives the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the agency that oversees prediction markets, the power to prohibit offerings related to assassinations, war, terrorism and other topics deemed contrary to the public interest. Some prediction markets already stay away from these categories. However, not all of their users understand where exactly the lines are, which has caused confusion when some assumed that the market on the fate of Iran’s supreme leader would end in a payout if he “leaves office” by death.
Meanwhile, Polymarket, which largely operates outside the United States, offers plenty of war markets, but the legislation is unlikely to impact that offering. The platform currently offers information on whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be “absent” on certain dates; someone recently placed $177,000 that he will be out of the game by March 31. Polymarket would likely settle the market in a yes and allow bettors to make a profit if Netanyahu dies, as it did with Khamenei’s death.
One of the reasons Senator Murphy is so passionate about prediction markets is that he sees them as vectors for insider trading. The government of Israel e.g. charged two of its citizens leaked classified information while placing Polymarket bets related to the war in Iran. A Connecticut lawmaker suspects that other transactions related to the conflict may have been conducted by members of Trump’s inner circle who have advanced knowledge of military operations. “It terrifies me to think that there are employees in the situation room who are pushing the United States into war, not because it’s good for our security, but because it will make them $100,000,” he says.