Kalshi Nets $300M, Valuation at $5B – Global Chaos Ahead!

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Kalshi, the U.S.-based prediction market, just pulled a $300 million rabbit out of a hat, valuing the whole operation at $5 billion. Yes, folks, it’s a funding round that could make even a crystal ball spill its tea. 🪄💰

According to a latest article from The New York Times, the round was led by Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, with a chorus of supporters including Paradigm, CapitalG, Coinbase Ventures, and Spark Capital. Talk about a who’s-who of people who like to guess the future and then take the odds to dinner. 🧠🍷

Kalshi says the windfall will let them open the platform to customers in over 140 countries, expanding beyond the U.S. walls so that people around the world can trade on real-world events like politics, sports, and global news. It’s like Monopoly, but with more volatility and fewer get-out-of-jail-free cards. 🌍🚀

Plus, Kalshi is on pace to reach $50 billion in annualized trading volume and now claims more than 60% of the global prediction market. In September, they even passed their rival Polymarket in trading activity, nearly doubling Polymarket’s volume according to data from Dune. The crowd goes wild! 📈🏁

Sports Betting Pushes Kalshi Ahead

Sports betting isn’t just a hobby right now; it’s a growth engine. The U.S. market, worth about $13.7 billion, has blossomed since the Supreme Court let sports betting loose in 2018. Kalshi has capitalized by offering sports-related contracts, including the dreaded esoteric bets called parlays. This helped bring in new users and crank up the trading numbers. 🎯🏀

Dustin Gouker, a sports betting consultant, noted that many Robinhood users are now trading directly through Kalshi, showing that prediction markets have officially jumped the shark into mainstream. 🦈💸

Crypto and Global Expansion on the Horizon

Meanwhile, Kalshi is moving into cryptocurrency through a partnership with ZeroHash to let users deposit crypto on the platform. “The next 10x unlock for us will be building new financial primitives for trading on Kalshi,” said John Wang, Kalshi’s newly hired crypto lead, at Solana APEX. He also urged developers to pitch ideas from onchain data to tokenizing positions on Kalshi. Crypto, the global financial layer, apparently essential to the plan. 🪙🌐

The platform has faced regulatory heat over its sports-related contracts in certain U.S. states. However, the CFTC has cleared its election-related offerings. So far, the committee’s still a little grouchy, but the verdict underlines that prediction markets can pass the quiz show without forgetting the questions. 🏛️⚖️

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2025-10-10 20:30