kalshi doing more volume than the entire us sportsbook industry and the states cant do a thing about it

theres a wrinkle in the swaps argument that hasnt come up and i think its the most interesting thing happening right now. soldier charged over the maduro trades - van dyke - his lawyers filed a letter earlier this month previewing a motion to dismiss. their argument is that the cftc has no authority over him because the contracts he traded were geopolitical bets, not swaps under the CEA.which is the opposite of kalshi's position. and if a court agrees with him, state regulators get a federal ruling saying event contracts arent swaps, handed to them by an insider trading defendant.
kalshi's whole preemption case could get damaged by a guy trying to stay out of prison.
 
Helena sweetie kalshi is us accounts, you'd need to satisfy their onboarding. polymarket has the us entity and the global one with its own restrictions depending where you are. and its getting messier internationally too, turkiye reportedly blocked polymarket and there's a czech block over unlicensed gambling. not straightforward from the uk as i understand it but im not the person to ask, im just a guy who got limited to twelve dollars and found a door
 
tracking sports contract liquidity on kalshi for a few months for that same reason @morgan_c said. if there''s no limiting then size becomes the only question
main lines on nfl and nba are genuinely deep now, you can get meaningful money on without moving the price much. further you go from the main markets the thinner it gets, fast. player level stuff isnt there yet. so its not a straight replacement for a sportsbook if your edge is in the niche markets
 
tracking sports contract liquidity on kalshi for a few months for that same reason @morgan_c said. if there''s no limiting then size becomes the only question
main lines on nfl and nba are genuinely deep now, you can get meaningful money on without moving the price much. further you go from the main markets the thinner it gets, fast. player level stuff isnt there yet. so its not a straight replacement for a sportsbook if your edge is in the niche markets
thats the honest limitation and it mirrors betfair pretty much. exchanges are excellent for main lines and poor for the long tail. the players with genuine edge in obscure props are the same ones sportsbooks limited fastest, and the exchange doesn't solve their problem because the liquidity isn't there.

so the migration is real but selective. it works for people betting size on markets everyone else is also betting on.
 
want to say something and i know how it sounds. part of why im on there is that nobody stops me. no limit, no email asking if im ok, no deposit trigger, no seven day review. i can size whatever i want at three in the morning and theres nothing between me and the button.
everyone in this thread is treating no limits as the feature. for some of us its not obviously a feature.
 
want to say something and i know how it sounds. part of why im on there is that nobody stops me. no limit, no email asking if im ok, no deposit trigger, no seven day review. i can size whatever i want at three in the morning and theres nothing between me and the button.
everyone in this thread is treating no limits as the feature. for some of us its not obviously a feature.
thats a fair thing to say mate
 
late to this but the thing i keep coming back to is these platforms have basically no responsible gambling infrastructure at all. no deposit limits, no self exclusion, nothing. because they're financial products and financial products don't have that. if you're self excluded from every sportsbook in your state you can open a kalshi account this afternoon and trade the same games. that's not a loophole anyone designed on purpose, its what happens when you move an activity into a regulatory category that never contemplated it.
 
That's the strongest argument the states have and it's noticeably underused in their filings, probably for the reason @firstleague gave.

The gap @laura_BETTS describes is real. State exclusion lists are administered by state gaming regulators and have no reach into a CFTC-regulated venue. No federal equivalent exists, there's no mechanism to build one under current law, and no obvious agency with the mandate.
If this settles in Kalshi's favour that gap becomes permanent rather than transitional. It will affect a small number of people very severely while being completely invisible in any volume figure.
 
ok that ones actually bleak, hadn't thought about the exclusion thing
 
worth adding both platforms have been building their own enforcement rather than waiting for anyone to require it. kalshi put in guardrails in march stopping politicians trading their own races and athletes trading their own leagues, after they'd already suspended and fined candidates in minnesota, texas and virginia.

self policing ahead of regulation is what an industry does when it thinks the regulation is coming and wants to shape it. worth watching whether it survives contact with a quiet quarter.
 
fair points all round and i dont have a good answer to laura's one.
what i keep coming back to is nobody chose this. the sportsbooks limited every profitable customer they had for a decade and pushed them toward the one venue that couldn't do it. now that venue is bigger than they are, sits outside the state system entirely, and has none of the protections that system was supposed to provide.
the industry built the pipe that drained it and now everyone's acting shocked about where the water went
 
still is anyone actually tracking whether the ninth circuit has ruled? checking every few days and got nothing since april. if that lands against kalshi before football starts the whole picture changes and id want to be out of my positions before it does
 
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