Guide

What Is Kalshi?

Kalshi is a United States exchange where people trade contracts on the outcome of real-world events, from interest-rate decisions to weather to award shows. It is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as a designated contract market (DCM) — the same federal category as established futures venues like the CME. Prices on Kalshi function as crowd-sourced probabilities, not guarantees or financial advice. This page explains what Kalshi is, how it works, and how it differs from Polymarket.

What Kalshi is and how it is regulated

Kalshi is an event-contracts exchange: a marketplace for binary contracts tied to whether a specific event will or will not happen. It operates as a designated contract market (DCM), a federally regulated exchange status overseen by the CFTC, the same agency that regulates US commodity-futures markets.

Kalshi's operating entity, KalshiEX LLC, received CFTC designation in November 2020, making it the first exchange approved to list event contracts directly to US retail traders. Its regulatory standing has been contested in court: in September 2024, a federal district court ruled in Kalshi's favor against the CFTC over certain election-related contracts, and the CFTC later dropped its appeal in 2025. Separate disputes with state regulators remain ongoing, so the legal picture continues to evolve.

A DCM is a self-regulatory exchange that must follow CFTC rules on market integrity, reporting, and consumer protection. That structure is the core of what distinguishes Kalshi from offshore or crypto-native venues.

How trading on Kalshi works

Each market poses a yes-or-no question with a defined resolution date and source. Traders buy "Yes" or "No" contracts. Each contract settles at $1 if its side is correct and $0 if it is wrong, so prices trade between $0.01 and $0.99.

The price is the key concept: a "Yes" contract priced at $0.70 reflects a market-implied probability of roughly 70% that the event happens. Prices move with supply and demand as traders buy and sell, so they update continuously. Reading a Kalshi price means reading it as a probability, not a prediction that is certain to come true.

Kalshi charges trading fees that vary by market and order type, plus possible processing fees on some deposit and withdrawal methods. Fee schedules change over time, so check Kalshi's current fee page rather than relying on a fixed figure. Importantly, traders can only lose the money they have committed to a position — there is no margin debt to the exchange on event contracts.

What you can trade on Kalshi

Kalshi lists contracts across a wide range of categories rather than a single subject. Common themes include economics and finance (for example, Federal Reserve rate decisions or ranges for the S&P 500), climate and weather (such as the high temperature in a given city on a date), politics and policy, and cultural events like awards outcomes.

The set of available markets changes constantly as old contracts resolve and new ones open. Some categories have drawn regulatory and legal scrutiny — sports-related event contracts, in particular, have been the subject of ongoing disputes over whether they resemble sports betting, with courts and state regulators reaching differing conclusions. Because the listed catalog and its legal boundaries shift, treat any specific market list as a snapshot and verify what is currently offered on the exchange itself.

Kalshi vs. Polymarket: the key differences

Kalshi and Polymarket are the two most prominent prediction-market platforms, but they are built differently.

Regulation: Kalshi has held a CFTC DCM license since 2020. Polymarket originated as an offshore, blockchain-based platform and in 2022 settled with the CFTC over offering unregistered event contracts to US persons, paying a fine and blocking US users at the time. Polymarket later acquired a CFTC-licensed exchange (QCX) in 2025 to build a regulated US pathway.

Currency and funding: Kalshi is denominated in US dollars and funds via methods such as bank transfer, wire, and debit card; it also supports stablecoin (USDC) deposits, which are credited as USD balances. Polymarket is crypto-native, settling trades in the USDC stablecoin and requiring a connected wallet.

US availability: Kalshi operates under its federal DCM license, but real-money access can vary by state amid ongoing legal disputes, and Polymarket's US real-money access is newer. Check each platform's current state-by-state status before assuming access.

For a neutral reader, the practical takeaway is that Kalshi is the longer-standing US-regulated, dollar-denominated option, while Polymarket is crypto-based with a more recently built US compliance layer.

Founding and history

Kalshi was founded in 2018 by Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, who met as students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their premise was that people lacked a clean, regulated way to take positions on, or hedge against, real-world uncertainties.

Rather than launch quickly offshore, the founders pursued formal CFTC approval. After a multi-year process, KalshiEX LLC received its DCM designation in November 2020 and launched publicly in 2021. The platform has since expanded its market categories and trading activity substantially, becoming one of the most prominent venues in tracked US prediction-market volume.

As always with prediction markets, the prices Kalshi displays are probabilistic signals shaped by trader behavior — useful for gauging expectations, but not financial advice and not a guarantee of any outcome.