Polymarket CEO: Kalshi Is 'A Polymarket Copycat'
Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box and fired a shot at fellow prediction market Kalshi.
An interviewer asked Coplan about what the difference between Kalshi and Polymarket is. Coplan answered: “Polymarket is Polymarket. And they’re a Polymarket copycat.” That was the entirety of his answer. H/t to Evan Kirkham on LinkedIn for pointing this out.
The interview came on the heels of Polymarket’s acquisition of QCEX, giving it a path to come back to the US as a regulated entity via the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
While Polymarket hasn’t legally served the US market since 2022, it’s clear that Polymarket and Kalshi consider themselves rivals. That rivalry is going to become more intense with Polymarket’s intent to serve the US via the CFTC.
Polymarket launched in 2020. While Kalshi was founded in 2018, it didn’t take its first trades until 2021. It is currently difficult to find a whole lot of separation in the look of of the two platforms, at least in the market screens:
You can see the start of the interview below:
There’s a longer version of the interview available through a subscription to CNBC Pro, which is where the Kalshi quote appeared.
Some other things from Coplan in the interview (lightly edited for readability):
On the acquisition: “The simple way to put it is it's kind of the perfect asset. So it's an exchange and a cl,earinghouse. And you know, that lets us go and serve brokerages and FCMs as well as retail and institutions, which is really important. They all know and love Polymarket, when I get to meet these people, they say, ‘Oh my God, Polymarket is amazing, but I wish we could trade on Polymarket.’ And you know, ask and you shall receive, right?”
On how much it competes with Kalshi: “It's been this crazy journey where prediction markets, Polymarket has become this cultural phenomenon. And I would say that I'm very grateful. We're very lucky that people have looked at Polymarket’s success internationally and said, ‘Okay, how can we just copy and emulate this as much as possible in the US?’ And that was a very arduous journey, and now it's kind of been paved out. So what it makes it for us is, hey, we can go buy this asset. And there's precedent for how to do these things, and we're going to be able to get in very quickly.”
Asked about future competition in prediction markets: “You look at sportsbooks, for example, or you look at these consumer trading apps. They're not exchanges, they're not marketplaces. They're front ends for existing infrastructure. For sportsbooks, it's sort of this commodity business, and you have the odds and you take the other side. And it's basically subject to the innovator's dilemma right now where they take these huge margins, and now there's a better way to do it with things like Polymarket. The way that I think about it is there's a different type of user behavior that is the itch to scratch for with Polymarket, and that's this idea that you have an opinion on things and you're curious about what's going to happen in the future. And, you know, I think you're wrong and I'm right. So, you know, I want to put up or shut up, right?
“And when we think about product, that's what we want to build as opposed to some sort of hyper-financialized app. And I do think that there'll be maybe some cannibalization if these are powered B2B, or maybe there's some element of, there's probably going to be more competition as the revenues heat up and the market's larger. But we're really just focused on delivering on product.
“And the final thing I'd say is if you look at the numbers — I don't know if you guys have seen — Polymarket has gotten pretty damn big in terms of usage distribution, brand. And I think you look at some of these other companies that have maybe $1 billion marketing budget or near it, and you look at Polymarket, which is just this scrappy team that just is always trying to do things guerrilla and, you know, figuring out shrewd workarounds to go and get distribution. And what's really exciting about Polymarket is because it's not so hyper-financialized, people share the screenshots all the time. People go and it's word of mouth, like I tune in and I hear you guys talking about it. That's incredible for us.”