Kalshi’s Plan to Build the Largest Exchange on Earth
Kalshi is pursuing international expansion through regulators and local brokers while positioning crypto, perpetual futures, and other products as a path beyond its sports-heavy base. The discussion weighs prediction markets’ potential to improve price discovery against concerns about insider information, fairness, liquidity, and institutional precision. The company’s broader ambition is to build a liquid, multibillion-dollar exchange, with possible applications ranging from political indexes to weather-risk insurance.
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Kalshi is expanding beyond its U.S. base through Wealthsimple in Canada, XP in Brazil, and access in 140 countries using crypto as an international funding rail. The guest emphasized that adoption depends on locally relevant markets—such as cricket, the World Cup, Bitcoin, and ETH—rather than exporting a standardized product.
Crypto is Kalshi’s second-largest business line behind sports, with the company claiming 90% market share in crypto prediction markets and receiving routed orders from Coinbase, Robinhood Crypto, and Phantom. Its 6x crypto-perpetual leverage cap is above the 2x-to-4x range used by most traders, while only 20% to 30% trade above that limit.
Kalshi is positioning its regulated perpetual-futures product as a platform for broader crypto and non-crypto derivatives, using the Bitcoin perpetual as the risk framework for self-certifying additional contracts subject to CFTC-approved models. Spot markets and Bitcoin or noncash margining remain dependent on regulatory unlocks, while planned non-crypto perpetuals could support higher leverage because those assets are less volatile.
The guest described Kalshi as having roughly 180 employees—20 to 40 times fewer than comparable companies—yet pursuing aggressive product development and regulatory change, including through a CFTC lawsuit. That lean operating model supports the ambition to become a much larger exchange comparable in aspiration to futures-market infrastructure, even though CME is described as an order of magnitude larger than professional crypto exchanges.
The discussion framed insider-trading controls as a market-structure issue rather than only a fairness rule: toxic informed flow can cause market makers to withdraw quotes, reducing liquidity and the reliability of prices. At the same time, one speaker argued that allowing limited insider trading could improve information discovery and support applications such as futarchy, creating a tension with the liquidity and retail-fairness concerns.
GEO-POLITICS
“So we're kind of taking a similar long long-term approach to our international markets as well where we're working with like either the regulators or like the largest brokers in…”—
MARKETS
“but crypto is our second largest business line behind sports. we have 90% market share in the crypto predictions world…”—
“we also have our new regulated per offering which is the first regulated perpetual futures exchange in the US…”—
“So you guys can self-certify crypto asset per now. Yeah, exactly. obviously we have to run our own risk models that have been CFTP CFTC approved…”—
Is Kalshi a Crypto Company?
John argues that Kalshi is deeply embedded in crypto through its prediction markets, partners, and payment rails, despite not currently being an on-chain company.
Global Expansion and the Regulated Edge
Kalshi is pursuing regulated international growth by working with local regulators and major brokers, using partnerships to reach entire national trading audiences.
The Regulated Perps Bet
Kalshi believes regulated perpetual futures can compete through accessible products, competitive fees, expanding asset coverage, and compliant access for US retail and institutions.
Combining Perps and Predictions
The company plans to integrate perpetuals with prediction markets, social features, market-implied probabilities, and simpler interfaces while exploring spot markets and new collateral options.
The Insider Trading Problem
Kalshi supports strict controls against insider trading, arguing that market integrity and long-term liquidity require preventing toxic informed flow from driving away market makers and retail traders.
Who Owns Market Information?
The discussion distinguishes legitimate research from proprietary corporate information, with Kalshi supporting clearer regulation and additional market-level restrictions around sensitive political information.
From Sportsbooks to the CME
Kalshi wants to evolve beyond sports toward a diversified, regulated exchange resembling the CME, using crypto, commodities, political indexes, perpetuals, broker distribution, and real-world hedging applications.
Prediction Markets for Institutions
Institutional adoption is beginning through bespoke block trades and hedges, while Kalshi aims to bring OTC and structured-product activity into transparent markets and add margin to event contracts.
Kalshi Versus Polymarket
Kalshi and Polymarket’s once-intense competition has eased as Kalshi claims greater scale, stronger institutional traction, and distinct leadership in regulated perpetuals, commodities, and compute markets.
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