Insider trading is not going away as a narrative for the prediction markets industry, for better or worse. What did we learn from the case involving a Google employee allegedly trading on Google search markets at Polymarket?
Daniel O’Boyle of InGame joins to talk about that and all the latest prediction markets news.
📊 The Ticker
For Saturday, May 30, at Kalshi:
Volume: $800.6 million
Sports + parlays: 89.1% of volume
Crypto markets: 9.1% of volume
Trend line for daily volume:
More on this paywalled post at The Closing Line:
Polymarket US volume on Saturday: $73.6 million
Prediction markets roundup
🚨 The important stuff
Kalshi launches perps (press release): Kalshi, the next-generation financial market, today announced the launch of perpetual futures contracts, making Kalshi the first company in American history to offer perpetuals. U.S. investors will soon be able to access crypto perpetual futures on Kalshi’s platform, fully regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Perpetual futures are Kalshi’s most significant product expansion since the introduction of event contracts and reinforce the company’s position as a full-service financial exchange.
Instead of tracking prices pegged to a specific date, which introduces additional complexity, perpetuals are a form of futures contract that simply tracks whether or not the price of an asset goes up or down. Offshore perpetuals have grown from $28 trillion in annual volume in 2023 to over $90 trillion in 2025, making them one of the fastest-growing asset classes ever — and one that has been entirely closed off to American institutions until now.
“This marks Kalshi’s evolution from prediction market leader to next-gen derivatives exchange,” said Tarek Mansour, CEO of Kalshi. “Onshore, safe, and regulated perps will improve capital allocation and risk management for countless American businesses.”
“We’ve been building Kalshi toward a vision that every important question about the world should have a market,” Mansour said. “Prediction markets were the first chapter. They proved the model: people want to trade their convictions.”
“Perpetual futures are the next chapter. They remove a constraint. If a prediction market is a photograph of what the world thinks right now, a perpetual is a film — continuously updated, never ending, always present.”
“Like we did with prediction markets, we’ve rebuilt perps from the ground up, regulated first and institutional-grade. An American exchange, under American law, offering the most expressive financial instrument ever designed, to anyone with a view worth trading.”
Pending regulatory reviews, Kalshi aims to launch crypto perpetuals on more than a dozen currencies. Perpetual futures on agricultural commodities will not be part of Kalshi’s product offerings.
CFTC Issues Policy Statement Concerning the Listing of Perpetual Contracts
🔍 That’s a pretty big deal. Kalshi endeavors to be more than a prediction market, and this is a major step along that path. Will Kalshi be the company to tap into demand for perpetuals in a regulated setting? Stay tuned!
The Google Engineer Accused of Risking It All With an Insider Polymarket Bet (WSJ): “Absent from the indictment, unsealed Wednesday, was any indication of why someone with a coveted role at one of the world’s most prestigious and successful companies, and a professional profile that has won him accolades and speaking invitations, would risk everything for a sum that is relatively modest by the standards of tech company compensation.”
I was on Nightline, which covered prediction markets:
⚖️ Legal and regulatory news
Illinois Democrats inch toward $56B state budget that eyes new taxes on prediction markets, crypto (Chicago Sun-Times): “With the clock ticking on the spring legislative session Sunday night, Democratic lawmakers were nearing agreement on a nearly $56 billion state budget that increases food assistance in the wake of federal funding cuts without burdening ‘everyday working families.’ The plan was expected to roll in new taxes on the burgeoning industries of prediction markets, cryptocurrency and fantasy sports, while also dinging digital advertising revenue.”
Industry news
Lower commissions for prediction markets (Robinhood, email to users): Starting June 1, trading prediction markets will be cheaper for some contracts. That means a higher potential payout for some trades.
Here’s how the new commissions work:
Contracts priced at $0.11 or less: less than $0.01 per contract
Contracts priced at $0.89 or more: less than $0.01 per contract
All other contract prices: No change ($0.01 per contract)
With Robinhood Gold ($5/mo.), you can save even more:
Contracts priced at $0.27 or less: less than $0.01 per contract
Contracts priced at $0.73 or more: less than $0.01 per contract
All other contract prices: No change ($0.01 per contract)
Note that we round up the commission to the nearest $0.01 on all trades with a maximum commission rate of $0.01 per contract.
Kalshi taps former FBI analyst Neff for surveillance unit (Reuters): “Kalshi has hired former FBI official Tyler Neff on its surveillance team, as part of a broader effort to ramp up safeguards on its exchange at a time when prediction markets are facing increased pressure from lawmakers to crack down on insider trading on their exchanges.”
Wintermute Is Providing Liquidity on Kalshi and Polymarket, Linking Two Giants (Decrypt): “The London-based firm, which says it processes over $3.5 trillion in annual trading volume, unveiled in a blog post that it has been actively ‘quoting two-sided markets across event contracts on leading venues.’”
“A person familiar with the matter told Decrypt that the venues include Polymarket and Kalshi, signaling that capital flows dynamically between both platforms in a way that’s designed to make it easier for traders to buy and sell positions without causing large price swings.”
📖 Everything else you should know/read
The Survivor kerfuffle apparently didn’t convince Kalshi to stop doing reality TV shows:
Polymarket expands into private share bets (sort of) (Axios): “What they’re (not) saying: Polymarket declined to say if it’s having discussions with either the SEC or CFTC about allowing the private market “equity” contracts in the U.S. Also not commenting was Nasdaq Private Market, which is serving as Polymarket’s “resolution data provider” for this offering. Instead, it referred all questions to Polymarket.”
Prediction Market Parlays Have Lower Margins Than Sportsbooks, But Do Traders Lose Money Faster? (InGame): “Parlays on prediction markets may have lower margins on average than sportsbooks, but users who make these bets lose money more quickly than sportsbook parlay bettors, according to an analysts’ note. However, Kalshi argues the research from Citizens Bank is ‘misleading and inaccurate.’ Analysts at investment bank Citizens published a note Thursday that looked at data from Juice Reel to examine customer economics on Kalshi.”
Matt Kalish On Business Of Betting Podcast: ‘Everyone’s Telling Me To STFU’ (InGame): “He helped build DraftKings into a giant. Now he can’t stop tweeting about Kalshi. This week, Matt Kalish tells the Business of Betting podcast why.”
Vault: The players of prediction market policy (Punchbowl, paywall): “You can’t throw a stone in the U.S. Capitol without hitting a lawmaker with a bill to regulate prediction markets. We don’t think this will be a serious legislative push for a while, at least on the federal level. But there’s no question the sector’s political risk in Washington is rising, and the next session of Congress could pose real policy dangers to the nascent industry. As the legislative push gains momentum, here are a few of the players we’re watching.”
Don’t bet on Trump reining in the prediction markets (Financial Times, paywall)
