Kalshi’s Trojan Horse: How The Prediction Market Leader Is Inching Further Into DeFi
Snapshot:
- Kalshi is edging further into blockchain territory: hiring crypto talent, partnering with oracle networks, and flowing its event contract data on-chain.
- It isn’t about decentralized betting. Kalshi aims to become the probability layer of Web3, a regulated data backbone for DeFi protocols, trading bots, and blockchain projects that need credible, low-latency event feeds.
Prediction markets promised to make finance more foresight-driven, but their early incarnations were too niche to matter or too unregulated to scale. Kalshi, federally licensed and VC-backed, set out to change that by dragging the sector into the institutional mainstream. It worked, but in earning Wall Street’s trust, it alienated some of crypto’s decentralization purists.
Now Kalshi is pivoting again. The firm has quietly opened channels to the blockchain world, hiring a head of crypto, signing data partnerships with oracle networks, and enabling USDC settlement. It hasn’t gone fully on-chain, but the direction of travel is unmistakable.
A Regulated Core, a Permissionless Edge
For most of its life, Kalshi stayed firmly conventional: dollar-settled, centrally operated, and regulator-approved. That conservatism paid off. Brokers like Robinhood integrated its products, and institutional players began treating event contracts as serious instruments.
In crypto circles, that sort of orthodoxy can signal surrender. Polymarket, Kalshi’s crypto-native rival (built on Polygon), sprinted ahead, offering unfiltered event trading before being forced offshore by regulators. It became the chaotic default for crypto bettors, while Kalshi stayed respectable – but walled off.
Kalshi’s new strategy aims …
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