Kalshi said it would begin requiring some users to disclose their employers as part of a broader campaign to crack down on insider trading and market manipulation on its market prediction platform.
The federally regulated exchange said Tuesday the new policy would apply to markets it considers to have a higher risk of insider activity or abuse. These traders may be screened before being allowed to trade.
The company said the changes are effective immediately and follow the recommendations of an independent oversight audit committee that reviewed Kalshi’s application systems, monitoring tools and business controls.
“For markets with increased insider or manipulation risk, we now collect employment information before traders can participate,” Kalshi said in a statement. The company said the process is designed to identify individuals who may have access to material nonpublic information related to an event or outcome.
The platform’s new metrics come as prediction markets come under increasing scrutiny. Recently, a paper from Yale and London Business School analyzing Polymarket trading from 2023 to 2025 found that just 3% of traders accounted for most of the price movements. The study highlights the case of a U.S. Army Green Beret arrested in April for betting $400,000 on Polymarket during the raid in Venezuela to extract then-President Nicolas Maduro in which he participated. A month later, a Google engineer was also arrested for alleged insider trading on Polymarket.
Prediction markets allow users to bet on the potential outcome of future events, including elections, economic data, and political and economic developments. As the industry grows, critics have expressed concerns that traders with insider knowledge could exploit thinly traded or highly sensitive markets.
Kalshi said it blocked more than 100 potential insider transactions in the first quarter using new screening tools. The company also said it opened more than 150 investigations, referred more than 20 cases to law enforcement and took five disciplinary actions. The company did not provide details of these cases and the figures could not be independently verified.
The exchange also announced a new risk rating system that evaluates markets based on factors such as insider trading risk, market importance, regulatory concerns and national security implications. Markets considered to carry high manipulation risks could be subject to stricter controls or excluded from listing altogether.
Kalshi said it has also added new whistleblower reporting tools that allow users to report suspicious trading activities directly from individual marketplaces.
Tim Meggs, CEO and co-founder of LO:TECH, a transparent market data infrastructure company, told CoinDesk that prediction markets have grown so quickly that questions about their integrity need to be addressed because they are no longer theoretical. “Kalshi’s decision to require employment verification, risk-rated markets and whistleblowing tools shows how the industry is beginning to build the surveillance infrastructure to match its ambitions,” Meggs said. “This maturation matters as much as the volumes.”
