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Posted on 10/27/2026 11:41:54 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Prediction markets like Kalshi are fundamentally different from sportsbooks and offer public benefits.
Betting and trading look alike. What sets them apart is who’s on the other side.
What’s the difference between a sportsbook customer gambling on the Milwaukee Brewers and a Kalshi trader buying a contract on the same result? Both get money if the Brewers win and lose it if they lose. It walks like a bet and quacks like a bet.
But we at Kalshi operate a market, not a casino. A century ago, all derivatives trading was derided as “gambling.” What matters is the structure, not the label.
The most sensible way to regulate these activities is based on their market structure. A sportsbook sets odds and bets against its customers. If a customer loses, the house wins. An exchange operates like a stock market, matching buyers and sellers and charging a fee on each trade. The structure is the same whether the contract involves grain prices, oil futures, the weather, an election or the World Series. Millions of people compete in an open market and put their money where their mouth is until they arrive at a collective price.
Sure, in both casinos and markets, someone is staking money on a contingency. Yet the structural difference is crucial. If they were the same, Wall Street traders would happily take odds on future financial events from sportsbooks. But sophisticated financial professionals know better than to touch betting platforms whose business models depend on beating their customers.
Traders depend on transparent market dynamics to evaluate prices. They can get that information—price discovery—on an exchange. Sportsbook odds will never be as accurate, fair or transparent as the price on a prediction market. They are designed to ensure customers lose more than they win in the aggregate.
And have...
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
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In Sports Books, the bettor can pick either side. The house gets the vig, but a well run sports book should have even bets on both sides.
Poker is certainly gambling, but the House typically hosts the players, who are betting against each other, with the House getting a commission. How is Kalshi different than that?
Kalshi was very wrong about the Brazil election.
More likely Kalshi was right and the Communist dictator did what Communist dictators do.
bttt
It’s gambling, period.
The problem is also the manipulation that will happen.
test
“When Is a Sports Bet Not a Sports Bet?”. When I don’t bet on sports, which I don’t.
A fool and his money are soon parted...
Good thing there's no manipulation of the stock market.
Good thing there’s no manipulation of the stock market.
Well that, too. But our economy depends on it, unlike sports betting.
Good questions.
Here is my problem with stock trading. It’s mostly just speculative.
This isn’t 1000 years ago when someone needed to invest money in merchants and their trader ships in order to bring product back to port. That involved real risk, but even then it was still gambling, because of the risk. The one difference is that back then, you were investing in tangible goods.
Today, you do have companies that go public in order to raise investment money, so in that regard, it’s the same as it always was. But what is different is that the person trading stocks has absolutely nothing to do with the physical movement of tangible commodities.
So, Kalshi is attempting to use the ruse that we now know as commodities/stock markets as an excuse to justify their own ruse.
Here is where Kalshi is even worse. Their “market” is just trading (buying and selling) but there is no “investing” excuse.
Presidential Working Groups on Financial Markets.
Complete counterfeit stock market.
The public will normally take the favorite and the over in football games, 60 to 70% of the time. The house will move the lines early in the week, or if some injury is revealed, or some big game where the bets are way out of balance. But the house plays under the laws of big numbers, and the 10-15% advantage is huge even when the balance is 65/35. Rinse and repeat
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