Trump’s administration has moved three high-profile Kalshi insiders into high-level government positions. Samantha Schwab, Yaakov Roth, and Brian Quintenz have worked with or at Kalshi before joining the new administration as Trump begins his second term.
Schwab became Kalshi’s Director of Business Development after her media positions in the Office of the Vice President during Trump’s first term. Now, she is the Deputy Chief of Staff for Scott Bessent, Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury.
Congrats @SamanthaVSchwab !!!! You will absolutely crush it.
— Tarek Mansour (@mansourtarek_) January 3, 2025
Sam has been a superstar at Kalshi. This admin is handpicking the best of the best. https://t.co/w7t9JUdqv7
Brian Quintenz was a CFTC commissioner from 2017 to 2021. He was nominated by Obama, then Trump withdrew the nomination before renominating him. After that, he joined Kalshi’s board and led Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto policy team at a16z. Trump has tapped Quintenz to lead the CFTC, giving prediction markets a powerful ally in their regulator. In 2021, Quintenz argued that all events were commodities, which should allow sports and election trading.
Yaakov Roth is a lawyer who has argued before the Supreme Court, including one case in which he convinced the Court to reduce the federal government’s power to limit fossil fuel emissions. Roth successfully argued Kalshi’s case to offer election contracts on the 2024 elections. He is now the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s civil division.
Without Yaakov's legal guidance and leadership, prediction markets in America wouldn't be where they are today.
— Tarek Mansour (@mansourtarek_) February 23, 2025
He was instrumental in helping Kalshi successfully sue the federal government to legalize election markets in America for the first time in over 100 years.
This… pic.twitter.com/zYK9xSA6J5
These powerful connections are in addition to the president’s son, who joined Kalshi as a strategic advisor in January, and Elon Musk, who has posted favorably about Kalshi on X and is reportedly looking at Kalshi to monitor the effectiveness of DOGE policies.
Kalshi taps into financial innovation and skepticism of institutions
Kalshi appeals to different conservative factions that have come together to put Trump in the White House a second time.
Prediction markets use ordinary traders to set prices and forecast events. People who have lost trust in institutions like polls and news organizations can turn to prediction markets for news highlights. Additionally, technology evangelists who believe there’s a technological solution to every human problem see great potential in platforms like Kalshi.
Finally, the big business wing of the Republican Party can’t miss the revenue potential of a popular speculation platform that can turn any news item into a game or a hedging tool. Kalshi’s 2024 presidential election market reached over $400 million in trading volume, and its Super Bowl market reached about $27 million. Both markets launched weeks before their events, raising questions about how high trading volume could be in 2026 for the next Super Bowl and the midterms.
With brokerages like Interactive Brokers, Robinhood, and WeBull offering prediction markets too, the prediction market industry is expected to reach millions of new customers. Four years of favorable regulation on top of that growth could transform news coverage by the next presidential election in 2028.
