Menu
MCAP $2.73T ▼-6.14%
BTC $80,954 ▼-2.92%
ETH $2,363 ▼-5.58%
BNB $717.28 ▼-3.34%
XRP $1.310 ▼-4.32%
SOL $102.28 ▼-4.62%
DOGE $0.0799 ▼-5.48%
ADA $0.220 ▼-6.41%
TRX $0.3311 ▲+0.02%
LINK $12.08 ▼-6.11%
AVAX $9.57 ▼-6.10%
HYPE $79.92 ▼-2.53%
DOT $1.098 ▼-4.96%

Kalshi

Every Crypto Coin Show story tagged Kalshi, newest first, alongside the guides and interviews that give it context.

Guide: How do prediction markets work? Polymarket,Guide: Perpetual futures, funding rates and liquidations,Newsletter
From the interview archive
ProCap Financial and Kalshi have teamed up to launch a prediction market research service
Equities

ProCap Financial and Kalshi have teamed up to launch a prediction market research service

, , , , , , , ,

EquitiesApril 21, 2026·6 min read

ProCap Financial and Kalshi have launched the first commercial research service drawing real-time data from a regulated prediction market exchange, marking the first time Kalshi has licensed its trading data to a paid research product. The partnership signals growing institutional acceptance of prediction markets as a legitimate data source for investment analysis, separate from their use as betting venues.

  • ProCap Financial and Kalshi jointly launched a research service combining prediction market data with AI analysis tools for paying subscribers.
  • Kalshi has never previously licensed its market data to a financial research firm charging for access to subscribers.
  • The 2024 U.S. presidential election drove prediction market adoption from niche to mainstream, expanding trading volumes and user bases significantly.
  • First commercial research service pairing prediction market data with institutional investment analysis tools launched.
  • 2024 U.S. presidential election period triggered dramatic surge in prediction market trading volumes and user adoption.
  • Never previously, Kalshi’s first licensing of market data to a paid external research firm in platform history.

ProCap Financial, the cryptocurrency-focused investment firm led by entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano, announced Tuesday a partnership with Kalshi, a regulated prediction market exchange, to create what amounts to a new category of financial research.

The service, operating within ProCap’s existing research platform ProCap Insights, will generate analysis on stock trends, investment theses, and macroeconomic conditions by fusing ProCap’s artificial intelligence tools with live data from Kalshi’s order book and trading activity.

The arrangement represents a watershed moment for prediction market infrastructure: Kalshi has never before licensed its proprietary trading data to an external financial research firm operating on a subscription model.

The move reflects a fundamental shift in how institutional investors view prediction markets, no longer as speculative sideshows, but as legitimate price-discovery mechanisms that can inform traditional investment decisions.

Kalshi Licenses Trading Data to ProCap for First Time, Signaling Market Maturation

Prediction markets have historically occupied the margins of mainstream finance, treated with skepticism by institutional allocators and largely confined to academic interest or niche betting communities. The 2024 U.S. presidential election altered that perception dramatically.

The surge in trading volumes and user acquisition during the election cycle pushed prediction markets from obscurity into the broader financial consciousness, demonstrating both their utility as information aggregators and their capacity to handle large-scale trading activity.

Kalshi’s willingness to license data now, and its selection of ProCap as the first institutional research partner, suggests the platform’s operators believe the market has reached sufficient maturity to support downstream commercial services.

The data licensing arrangement carries strategic weight for both parties. For Kalshi, it creates a revenue stream from its proprietary data without requiring the platform itself to build and maintain a research operation. For ProCap, it provides exclusive access to real-time crowd-derived signals at a moment when institutional interest in prediction markets is rising.

The combination is deliberate: neither party has the incentive to commoditize prediction market data by flooding the market with free research. Instead, the model positions Kalshi as a data infrastructure player while ProCap acts as the value-added research intermediary, capturing subscription fees from investors willing to pay for interpretation and analysis of market signals.

This structure mirrors how equity market data licensing has historically worked. Just as Bloomberg and Reuters built institutional businesses by packaging and analyzing exchange data, ProCap Insights is attempting to do the same with prediction markets.

The precedent matters because it suggests prediction markets are transitioning from trading venues into recognized data sources, a semantic shift that carries regulatory and business model implications.

ProCap Insights Combines AI Analysis with Kalshi Market Signals to Generate Tradeable Insights

The operational mechanics of the research product reveal how prediction market data translates into actionable investment signals.

ProCap Insights will publish reports covering individual prediction market contracts, platform-wide trends, data-driven trading strategies, contracts that appear mispriced relative to their underlying fundamentals, and bespoke analysis built directly from Kalshi’s order flow.

The platform’s AI engine sifts through large datasets, stress-tests findings through automated debate between competing AI systems, and produces written research reports, a workflow designed to move faster than traditional human-driven research while reducing bias through algorithmic cross-examination.

What distinguishes this offering from conventional investment research is the nature of the underlying data. Traditional equity research relies on financial statements, earnings calls, analyst consensus, and sell-side reports, all backward-looking or consensus-driven. Prediction market prices, by contrast, aggregate real-time expectations about future events.

A contract might specify whether Tesla’s vehicle deliveries will exceed a certain threshold, or whether the Federal Reserve will cut rates by December. The market price reflects what traders collectively expect to happen, weighted by the size of their positions.

Proponents argue these prices are more accurate than opinion polls or consensus forecasts because traders face financial consequences for being wrong.

The precision that prediction markets enable is particularly useful for granular bets. Rather than adjusting a portfolio to hedge against a potential recession, an investor can take a direct position on whether a recession occurs. Rather than buying Tesla stock and absorbing full exposure to an earnings miss, a trader can bet specifically on vehicle delivery numbers.

This allows for more targeted positioning and reduces unwanted risk exposure.

ProCap’s research service will surface these opportunities by analyzing Kalshi’s full order book to identify which prediction markets offer the sharpest edges, contracts where the market price appears to diverge from fundamental expectations, or where AI analysis of external data suggests the crowd may be mispricing risk.

Prediction Market Adoption Accelerates as 2024 Election Proves Mainstream Credibility

The 2024 U.S. presidential election served as the catalyzing event that moved prediction markets from financial periphery to institutional consideration. Leading up to and during the election, Kalshi and other prediction market platforms experienced steep increases in trading volumes and user registration.

This surge did more than generate revenue; it demonstrated that prediction markets could function at scale during high-stakes, high-volume periods without technical failure or liquidity collapse. The election also provided a natural test case: predictions made on these platforms could be directly validated against actual outcomes, allowing observers to assess predictive accuracy in real time.

The election’s importance to the ProCap-Kalshi partnership is more than historical context. It established the evidentiary foundation that prediction markets deserve institutional attention. If prediction market prices had been wildly inaccurate during the election, the partnership announcement would carry skepticism.

Instead, the platforms’ performance during that period created a narrative momentum that makes a data-licensing arrangement between a regulated exchange and an investment research firm feel like a natural evolution rather than a risky experiment.

Regulatory approval also played a role. Kalshi operates as a regulated derivatives exchange, meaning it faces formal oversight and operates under defined rules. This regulatory wrapper distinguishes it from unregistered prediction market platforms and provides institutional investors with the compliance infrastructure they expect.

When ProCap markets this research service to institutional clients, it can point to Kalshi’s regulatory status as assurance that the underlying data comes from a legitimate, supervised venue rather than an offshore or gray-market operation.

Institutional Investors Now Have Formal Channel to Access Prediction Market Intelligence

The launch of ProCap Insights’ Kalshi research product removes a structural barrier that previously prevented many institutional investors from accessing prediction market data. Most large asset managers and hedge funds lack the operational capacity to build proprietary connections to prediction market exchanges.

They require research to be packaged, standardized, and delivered through familiar workflows, reports, dashboards, and data feeds that integrate into existing investment processes. ProCap is providing that intermediation layer, transforming raw market data into institutional-grade research products.

Kalshi Research’s prediction market data paired with our AI agents is a powerful combination. Independent investors have never had access to a research engine like this. By combining real-time market signals with AI-driven analysis, we’ll deliver sharper insights to help investors make smarter decisions in the growing industry of prediction markets.

Anthony Pompliano, Chairman and CEO of ProCap Financial

The emphasis on accessibility matters strategically. Pompliano’s framing positions the service not as a niche product for prediction market enthusiasts, but as a tool for mainstream investors seeking better information about future events. This positioning is essential for growing the subscriber base beyond cryptocurrency insiders and prediction market traders. If the product gains traction with equity analysts, macro strategists, and

Get this in your inboxThe Crypto Coin Show newsletter covers the policy and market moves institutional crypto investors are pricing in.

Subscribe

84% of prediction market traders lose money
Equities

84% of prediction market traders lose money

, , , , , ,

DeFiApril 17, 2026·5 min read

An April 2026 analysis reveals that 84.1% of Polymarket traders operate at a loss, a sharp deterioration from 40% two years prior, driven by an influx of inexperienced retail users chasing speculative bets on political events. For institutional investors evaluating prediction markets as a mainstream asset class, the data exposes structural winner-take-all dynamics that concentrate profits among a tiny fraction of participants, raising questions about market efficiency and regulatory viability.

  • 84.1% of Polymarket traders are unprofitable as of April 2026, down from 40% profitability two years earlier.
  • Only 0.04% of wallet addresses captured more than 70% of all realized profits, totaling $3.7 billion in winnings.
  • Just 2% of 2.5 million wallets studied have ever earned more than $1,000 in total trading profit on the platform.
  • 84.1% Polymarket traders operating at a loss versus 40% unprofitable two years prior
  • $3.7B Realized profits captured by top 0.04% of addresses on Polymarket
  • 2% of wallets ever exceeding $1,000 cumulative profit from 2.5 million total studied

Prediction markets have emerged as one of cryptocurrency’s most ambitious use cases, presenting themselves as efficient discovery mechanisms for collective forecasting on geopolitical and economic events. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi processed $28 billion in trading volume by 2025, attracting retail participants seeking returns and institutional players interested in sentiment signals.

Yet beneath the volume metrics lies a profitability structure so skewed that it resembles a wealth transfer mechanism rather than a price discovery tool, according to newly published research that has triggered alarm among policymakers and sparked debate within the institutional crypto community about whether these markets can function as legitimate financial infrastructure.

Polymarket’s 84.1% Loss Rate Marks Dramatic Reversal from Two-Year Baseline

Research published in April 2026 by analyst Andrey Sergeenkov documented that 84.1% of traders on Polymarket, the largest U.S.-based prediction market by volume, have never turned a profit.

The figure represents a sharp deterioration from approximately 40% unprofitable traders two years prior, a swing driven primarily by the arrival of inexperienced retail users seeking to capitalize on high-profile betting opportunities, particularly around the November 2024 U.S. presidential election.

Sergeenkov’s analysis accounts for wallet splits and merges, a methodological refinement that earlier studies omitted. This technical adjustment matters substantially: when wallet-level transactions are not carefully parsed, a single trader’s losses can be hidden across multiple addresses, artificially inflating apparent profitability.

“When splits are left out, an address looks more profitable because one category of expenses is simply invisible,” Sergeenkov noted. His method produced a higher loss rate than a competing 2025 study by researchers Felix Reichenbach and Martin Walther, who estimated the losing share at around 70 percent, illustrating how sensitive headline figures are to analytical assumptions.

The influx of retail volume followed the high-profile nature of the 2024 election betting cycle, which drew mainstream media attention and celebrity participation to prediction markets as a novel way to monetize political conviction.

Top 0.04% Captured $3.7 Billion as Median Trader Bleeds Capital

A December 2025 on-chain analysis by blockchain researcher DeFi Oasis documented the concentration of winnings across the smallest subset of participants. The study found that fewer than 0.04% of Polymarket wallet addresses, representing a handful of professional traders or sophisticated market-making entities, captured more than 70% of all realized profits, totaling $3.7 billion.

The finding contradicted a widely cited claim by Arizona Representative Yassamin Ansari, who asserted that 99.96% of users lose everything while the top 0.04% walk away with billions. Analysts clarified that Ansari conflated two separate metrics: the 0.04% figure identifies who captured most profits, not the total percentage of all participants who failed to gain any edge whatsoever.

The wealth concentration on Polymarket appears structurally embedded rather than temporary. Of 2.5 million wallets studied, only 2% had ever accumulated more than $1,000 in total profits across their trading history.

Just 0.32% of addresses cleared $10,000, suggesting that meaningful returns require either exceptional skill, access to information asymmetries, or capital sufficient to absorb substantial losses while waiting for rare profitable positions to compound.

For retail participants, the vast majority of users, the platform functions as a mechanism for transferring capital to a thin layer of professional traders and market makers.

Less experienced users tend to trade less successfully.

Andrey Sergeenkov, Analyst

The data aligns with long-standing patterns in retail financial markets, where most participants underperform and a tiny fraction of skilled or well-capitalized traders extract the majority of gains. What distinguishes prediction markets is the velocity and transparency of losses.

Unlike equity or derivatives markets, where holding periods can stretch across quarters or years, prediction market bets resolve on fixed dates, compressing the feedback loop between decision and outcome. New users rarely learn fast enough to reverse course before substantial capital has been depleted.

Congressional Scrutiny Targets Prediction Markets as Unregulated Betting Platforms

The profitability data has fueled legislative pushback. Representative Ansari, alongside Senators Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Representatives Greg Casar and Rashida Tlaib of Texas and Michigan, is co-sponsoring the BETS OFF Act, which would ban wagering on events including war, terrorism, assassination, and government decisions.

The bill frames prediction markets not as financial discovery tools but as unregulated casinos that concentrate risk among uninformed retail participants while enriching insiders. “Casinos where the rich and powerful are the house and everyone else is the chips,” Ansari posted on X, characterizing Polymarket’s structure in language designed to resonate with retail investor frustration.

The regulatory framing matters substantially for institutional adoption. Prediction markets have marketed themselves to sophisticated investors as efficient mechanisms for extracting collective wisdom on uncertain events, justifying their existence through epistemological claims rather than speculative opportunity.

If policymakers treat them as gambling platforms, which the 84.1% loss rate arguably supports, then regulatory oversight shifts from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s light-touch framework toward state-by-state gaming restrictions that could fragment the market or ban it outright in major jurisdictions.

Such an outcome would eliminate the network effects that currently make platforms like Polymarket valuable to institutional traders and market researchers seeking liquid sentiment signals.

The BETS OFF Act does not yet have a clear path to passage, but its sponsorship across both chambers and both parties signals bipartisan receptivity to prediction market regulation ahead of 2026 midterm elections.

Retail Influx After 2024 Election Accelerated User Growth and Loss Concentration

The 2024 U.S. presidential election functioned as a watershed moment for prediction market adoption. Media coverage, celebrity endorsements, and viral social media discussion drew millions of retail participants who lacked experience in probabilistic reasoning or position management.

The result was a surge in trading volume that superficially validated platforms’ growth narratives but masked a simultaneous collapse in median trader profitability. The proportion of users losing money nearly doubled in just two years, indicating that new cohorts were entering the market at worse-than-historical retention and profitability rates.

This pattern reflects a common dynamic in speculative retail markets: periods of highest volume growth correlate with periods of lowest median returns, because new retail capital typically flows in at the peak of attention cycles.

Experienced traders and market makers exploit information asymmetries and behavioral patterns among inexperienced participants, extracting disproportionate returns during high-volume episodes.

Once the attention cycle fades, as it has partially since the November 2024 election resolved, the excess retail participants either exit with losses or continue to bleed capital into positions held by professionals.

For institutional investors, the implication is that prediction markets may be most useful

Get this in your inboxThe Crypto Coin Show newsletter covers the policy and market moves institutional crypto investors are pricing in.

Subscribe

High Roller Technologies partners with Crypto.com to launch prediction markets in the U.S.
Equities

High Roller Technologies partners with Crypto.com to launch prediction markets in the U.S.

, , , , , ,

BlockchainApril 14, 2026·5 min read

High Roller Technologies, a publicly traded Las Vegas casino operator, is launching U.S. prediction markets through a partnership with Crypto.com’s derivatives arm, positioning itself to capture a slice of an industry analysts project could reach $1 trillion in annual U.S. trading volume. The deal marks a critical test of whether traditional gambling operators can establish regulatory footholds in crypto derivatives while competitors like Kalshi and Polymarket attract billions in venture capital.

  • High Roller Technologies (NYSE: ROLR) partnered with Crypto.com’s CDNA to offer event-based prediction contracts across finance, sports, and entertainment to U.S. customers.
  • Kalshi reached a $22 billion valuation after raising roughly $1 billion, more than doubling its December valuation following a May 2025 court victory against the CFTC.
  • Polymarket received a $1.6 billion commitment from Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, toward a total $2 billion investment obligation.
  • $1 trillion Projected annual U.S. prediction market trading volume if market fully matures
  • $22 billion Kalshi’s current valuation after nine months of fundraising acceleration
  • $25 million Capital High Roller raised in January 2025 to fund expansion and product development

High Roller Technologies, the publicly traded operator of the High Roller and Fruta casino brands, has signed an agreement with Crypto.com’s derivatives subsidiary CDNA to launch regulated prediction markets targeting U.S. customers.

The partnership will allow users to trade event-based contracts on outcomes spanning finance, sports, and entertainment through High Roller’s existing digital platform. CDNA, already registered with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission as both a designated contract market and derivatives clearing organization, will supply the contracts and infrastructure.

High Roller plans to register as a CFTC Introducing Broker and direct customer orders to Crypto.com’s CFTC-registered Futures Commission Merchant. The structure positions both parties within established regulatory frameworks rather than operating in legal gray zones that have shadowed parts of the crypto derivatives market.

High Roller Deploys $25 Million Capital Raise to Fund Market Entry

High Roller raised approximately $25 million through a direct share offering in January, selling roughly 1.9 million shares at $13.21 each. The placement, managed by ThinkEquity, closed on January 21 and provided the company with direct capital to fund marketing, expansion, product development, and operations.

This funding round, combined with the company’s January announcement that it had resolved a prior stockholders’ equity deficiency on the NYSE American, removes a significant technical obstacle to growth and signals institutional confidence in the prediction market strategy.

The casino operator’s entry into prediction markets represents a material diversification beyond its core online gaming business. High Roller CEO Seth Young said the company has spent months preparing for the launch, suggesting the Crypto.com partnership emerged from extended internal planning rather than a rushed opportunistic deal.

The company’s traditional gambling operations and existing customer base provide distribution advantages that pure-play crypto platforms do not possess, potentially allowing High Roller to reach retail users already comfortable with digital wagering but unfamiliar with cryptocurrency exchanges.

Crypto.com Co-Founder Marszalek Highlights Scalable Platform as Competitive Edge

Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek framed the partnership as a method to expand regulated access to prediction contracts across a differentiated and scalable offering. The casino operator’s existing infrastructure and customer acquisition channels were the primary draw for the derivatives subsidiary, rather than any novel technological capability on High Roller’s part.

Together, we believe we can expand access to regulated event contracts in the United States through a differentiated and highly scalable offering.

Kris Marszalek, co-founder and CEO of Crypto.com

The partnership agreement designates Crypto.com and its affiliates as the exclusive suppliers of prediction contracts across High Roller’s entire U.S. distribution network. This arrangement locks in Crypto.com’s derivatives arm as the underlying market operator while High Roller assumes the role of customer-facing broker and platform operator.

The deal creates new revenue channels for High Roller through spreads, commissions, and fees on customer trades, potentially offsetting competitive pressures in the mature online casino market.

Kalshi’s Court Victory and $22 Billion Valuation Reset Competitive Landscape

The prediction market space has attracted extraordinary capital velocity in recent months, driven partly by legal clarity emerging from regulatory disputes. Kalshi, a prediction market platform, reached a $22 billion valuation after closing a funding round of roughly $1 billion led by Coatue Management in early 2025.

This valuation represents a roughly 11-fold increase from the company’s $2 billion valuation less than a year prior, compressed into a nine-month period. The acceleration followed Kalshi’s May 2025 court victory against the CFTC, which granted the platform permission to offer election prediction contracts, a category the regulator had previously blocked.

That single court decision unlocked a major growth narrative for Kalshi investors, validating the business model and triggering a wave of venture backing from tier-one firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Ark Invest, and Paradigm.

Polymarket, a rival prediction market platform, closed a $1.6 billion investment commitment from Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. ICE had initially valued Polymarket at $9 billion in October 2025 when it announced the investment commitment, which eventually reached $2 billion in total obligation.

The additional $600 million tranche brought ICE’s total deployment closer to completion, while ICE also committed to purchasing up to $40 million in Polymarket securities from existing shareholders. This institutional validation from a major U.S. exchange operator and derivatives marketplace signals that prediction markets are attracting structural capital beyond venture-stage investors.

Traditional Gambling Operators Enter Prediction Markets Amid Regulatory Clarity

High Roller’s entry into prediction markets through a CFTC-compliant structure reflects a broader trend of established gambling operators seeking exposure to crypto derivatives without assuming regulatory risk.

Analysts have projected that if prediction markets mature, U.S. annual trading volume could exceed $1 trillion, with global figures potentially higher. This forecast assumes significant adoption across retail and institutional users and resolution of remaining regulatory ambiguities around contract types and operator licensing.

High Roller’s partnership with Crypto.com positions the company to capture transaction volume and customer data as the market scales, while Crypto.com gains access to a distribution channel with hundreds of thousands of active gamblers.

The High Roller deal also represents a lower-risk entry strategy for traditional gambling companies compared to building prediction market infrastructure in-house. By partnering with an established crypto derivatives platform already registered with the CFTC, High Roller avoids the regulatory legwork and market development costs that pure-play entrants must absorb.

The arrangement mirrors similar partnerships between traditional finance firms and crypto platforms, where scale and regulatory compliance are outsourced to specialized operators.

High Roller plans to register as a CFTC Introducing Broker in the coming months and connect with Crypto.com’s registered Futures Commission Merchant, marking the expected operational launch window for the prediction market offering. The timing of that registration and the scope of event contracts made available in the initial launch will determine whether High Roller can compete with Kalshi and Polymarket, which have secured significantly larger funding pools and brand recognition among active prediction market traders.

Get this in your inboxThe Crypto Coin Show newsletter covers the policy and market moves institutional crypto investors are pricing in.

Subscribe