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8/7/2026

Kalshification: Gambling On Anything And Everything

Kalshi and Polymarket are the big names in the new sector of "prediction markets", and other established names like Robinhood and Crypto.com are getting in on it too. They claim to be the most accurate way to predict future outcomes, but what are they really? They very specifically avoid the language of "bet" due to legal implications, but that gets closer to the heart of what is happening here. Are people really trading futures about who will be the presidential nominee in 2028, or would it be more truthful to say they're betting on who it'll be? Let's talk about what a future is, what these markets are, and how they work. P.S. Shout out to my friend Ty for some fact checking on economic topics, he's a numbers guy (i.e. has taken actual Economics courses).

Futures Present

Futures are a well established part of the stock market. Technically, a future is a "derivatives contract[s] to buy or sell specific quantities of a commodity or financial instrument at a specified price with delivery set at a specified time in the future"¹. In layman's terms, you're betting that you know which way the market is going and can get a deal by prepaying a contract to buy or sell something. Crucial to the future is the fact that you do eventually have to do a business, whether that business is buying gold, selling stocks, shares in a oil development, etc. At some point, there is an economic process happening where capital is exchanged for goods, services, and so on.

Events Past

Kalshi, Polymarket, and similar "prediction markets" all frame themselves as trading futures contracts on event outcomes, often called event contracts . Contracts themselves are supposed to be yes/no questions according to their FAQ pages² (e.g. "Will the U.S. invade Iran before 2027?"), but that doesn't seem to be what the platform primarily trades in. We'll return to the content of the markets in a moment; for now we focus on what these sites are.

Big picture, the "prediction markets" offer a range of contracts with multiple outcomes across a range of "odds" (something markets do not have) with fixed end dates and times. The platforms themselves act as the arbiters of truth, stating what will be their source of truth for the contract³. Please do remember that actual futures necessitate something actually changing hands, and there is no such thing happening here. Money just goes into a pot and is paid out to the winner, loser gets nothing. That's it; it's just gambling. We can quibble about it being of use as an event predictor, that doesn't make it a market, just gambling with some weird, abstract layer of utility.

Additionally, they are now both offering (Kalshi is open for all, Polymarket however is waitlist only at this time) "perpetual contracts " on crypto currencies, staking money if a cryptocurrency is going to go up in value or down. It's worth noting that this is just gambling on crypto values with a faint layer of abstraction; there's no end date as required by a future, it's an unlimited "contract" with a fixed price and odds for payout.

Short Digression: Aren't These Supposed To Be Binary?

As a random sample, I looked at Kalshi and Polymarket's front pages on the day of writing, August 7, 2026. 13 out of 16 events on Kalshi's homepage were not binary options, and 27 out of 37 events on Polymarket's. It's a small thing but the way these sites talk about themselves simply does not align with what they actually do. More options on more contracts means more ways for people to lose money. These services are dishonest about how they work and what they are.

What Is An Event?

The category of "event" is as wide as it seems as first blush. Both sites offer a range of categories for events that you can bet on, including elections, sports, culture, climate, economics, and more. There are shorter (more time-limited) contracts for sports matches (frequently under the "Live" tab on these sites). Polymarket also offers "Combos", which are just sportsbook parlays, which famously pay out very rarely.

Kalshi appears slightly more buttoned up and careful about what it lets be an event, as a vast majority of its traffic is from the USA. Polymarket on the other hand is more loose, offering a category for geopolitics (a.k.a. war), and has had said controversy about being a breath away from being an assassination market. From a brief bit of digging around it also seems to allow contracts on convictions (e.g. "Clavicular sentenced to prison?"), which Kalshi does not seem to allow (or if they do they do a good job of hiding it). Both websites prominently featured contracts on who would be the winner of the 2028 Presidential nomination for the Republican party (Kalshi also promoted one for the Democratic nominee), however Polymarket featured several of the contracts on acts of war as well (If the US will invade Iran, if the Israel/Iran ceasefire will hold, and if...