Kalshi Changed The Title Of A Market About X's CEO, And It Seems Like A Problem

Two screenshots of the same market at Kalshi: One that shows the title early Wednesday, and what the title was changed to later Wednesday night.

Kalshi had what seems like a pretty clear-cut market posted about whether the CEO of X (aka Twitter), Linda Yaccarino, would leave her role this year.

It turns out it’s not as clear-cut as it might seem for people trading at the prediction market. At some point on Wednesday night, Kalshi decided to change the name of the market and started getting at least a small amount of blowback.

What happened?

The backstory

The headline of the market originally said “Linda Yaccarino leaves X this year?”

Yaccarino tweeted that she was leaving on Wednesday morning, and that fact was widely reported in the media.

Kalshi tweeted that she left, with a picture of the graph for the market, showing it had gotten to a 99% chance that she would leave:

No problem, right? Wrong.

Read the fine print

The problem is that the rules for the market don’t really match the market’s title. The title says she has to “leave.” Has Yaccarino left? Of course she has, that’s obvious.

But what do the rules for the market say?

If it's been announced that X will have a new CEO by Dec 31, 2025, then the market resolves to Yes. Outcome verified from X and Bloomberg.

That’s definitely not the same as the title, and is more up in the air. X owner Elon Musk seems likely to replace her with someone or himself, but it’s within the realm of possibility that there’s no new CEO, or one is not named before the end of the year.

The more extensive rules (here) also make it clear someone has to succeed the current CEO in order for “Yes” to be determined as the correct outcome:

You can also see the initial certification of the XCEOCHANGE market with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission here. Interestingly, on the CFTC’s site it is listed as “Will person be the next CEO of X?”:

But when you read the actual document, the market is more muddled; at times it seems like the market is meant to be about Yaccarino leaving, at another point it reads like it’s about who will be the next CEO. Neither of those necessarily matches the rules:

Notably, there is now a market about who the next CEO of X will be, with a different ticker (KXNEWROLEX) than the above:

The rules make it pretty clear that Yaccarino leaving is not enough for the market to resolve to “Yes.” However, the conditions for the market resolving are definitely not captured by the headline. Kalshi always tells users to read the rules. Do the users always read the rules? Clearly not. Sometimes they read the headline and trade/bet based on that.

It’s also of course at least slightly problematic (and that’s a generous interpretation) that Kalshi tweeted in a way that made it seem like the market resolved, when it did not.

Changing the market’s name, and highlighting the fine print

The potential problems with the market were interesting enough on their own. Then it got more interesting: Kalshi changed the name of the market.

The market now reads: “Linda Yaccarino replaced as X CEO this year?”

I don’t know when this happened, exactly, but it changed at some point on Wednesday night.

The new title clearly captures the intent of the market, based on the rules. But that’s not what the original title of the market was, nor does that language appear in the certification document. Is that problematic? Arguably yes.

1. The market name was telling users one thing

2. The market name was telling users the wrong thing

3. Kalshi changed the market name to something else entirely, before the market was resolved.

What I can tell you is if a sportsbook did something like this, we’d have some state regulatory hearings in a heartbeat.

Meanwhile, with the clarification, there has been some buyback on “No.” The market had gotten to 99% “Yes” by early Wednesday evening. Then, people started reading the rules and/or saw the clarification from Kalshi. At one point, the odds on “Yes” got down to 65%; as of publication of this newsletter it was at 74%.

It’s not nearly the same level as the Polymarket suit debacle. But some people who use Kalshi are calling attention to it, both on the site/app itself and on Kalshi’s Discord. The market only has $160,000 in trading volume, almost all of it today, meaning the number of people paying attention to the payout conditions is relatively small.

Here are some public comments on the market, noting the name change:

On Kalshi’s Discord, a user posted this:

Blatant disconnections between title and rules is one of the biggest destroyers of user goodwill of prediction markets -- I would take this concern a bit more seriously.

A Kalshi employee responded to that post saying they are “working to improve this.”

If Yaccarino is actually replaced this year, maybe it can be chalked up as “no harm, no foul,” as everyone gets paid out in accordance with both the original title and the rules. At the same time, it’s still problematic that the market name didn’t match the rules and was changed on the fly. But it’s arguably a bigger mess if Yaccarino is not replaced this year, and people who thought they were holding winning contracts end up losers.