How can Kalshi not gamble?

Regardless of the mechanism, there is still a bet. Maybe you’re offering a better deal. As far as the customer is concerned, it is as if your casino offers better odds.

Better prices are a good thing for society. But there is a fundamental difference. When you go to traditional sports betting, the odds are stacked against you. Our clients are sharper. They look a bit alike Moneyball. They are more quantitative. They like to do analyzes about economics, and they like the idea that in Calcchi you have to be smarter than your neighbor – not smarter than some kind of system that is against you. People feel that even in the stock market, they are being rigged by the system. How will you beat the big hedge funds today in stock trading? The answer is that you probably won’t. It is impossible for an individual to do this. At Kalshi, there is a level playing field. If you’ve studied a lot about things like inflation, Covid, culture, Taylor Swift, or sports, you have an advantage.

Gamblers also believe that research gives them an advantage, whether it is playing horses or studying sports statistics. Obviously, if you are betting on events, you are more likely to win if you know more.

Gambling is harmful to the end consumer, while financial markets are more open and transparent. You can enter when you want and you can exit when you want. If you win too much money in traditional gambling venues, you will be shut down.

However, people on Calci are risking real money, and this can have serious financial consequences. Gambling sites should have long disclaimers and give phone numbers for Gamblers Anonymous and other software. You don’t have to do that. I can’t see why not.

The CFTC has a very comprehensive system of customer protection, which has been in place for decades. You see fewer problems in those markets, although they are inherently more risky than you see in sports betting. It’s easy to criticize Kalshi because we are growing too fast. But we started in 2018 and didn’t launch until four years later, because we wanted to be regulated in advance. What were we doing in those four years? We weren’t just waiting on the beach.

What were you doing?

It’s a bit like getting regulated as a bank. There’s a whole bunch of things you have to do in terms of market integrity, customer protection, where to store money, audits and seeing reports, and remittance to the federal government. You need to show how the entire process is structured to ensure it is safe, legitimate and organized.

It’s as if you hacked the system to get organized.

Hacked? Looks like we did something wrong! Are we now being punished because of our organization?

I don’t use the word in a derogatory sense. I wrote a book about good hackers!

As 22-year-old co-founders, we said we wanted to do things right. We want to bring this innovation to America. We believed in this market so much, we were willing to spend four years — or however long it took — to make it happen. We wanted to make it safe and do it responsibly, because we wanted to do it for the long term. Calshi’s coverage misses that, because all of our competitors don’t do any of that.