Kalshi courts hedge funds as Nasdaq and Cboe enter event contracts market
Kalshi is actively courting hedge funds and institutional investors to drive its next growth phase, several industry reports indicate. The CFTC-regulated platform currently offers the only tradable perpetual futures in the prediction markets space, a product regulators have approved. The push comes as competing platforms proliferate: Nasdaq and Cboe have launched binary bets on financial market events, directly challenging Kalshi and Polymarket, while crypto-native platforms generated $9.4 billion in tested volume during a six-week evaluation period. Industry coverage notes prediction market prices are increasingly viewed as complementary to options-implied probabilities and rates curves for institutional trading strategies. Polymarket, operating outside CFTC registration, continues to parallel Kalshi's institutional expansion.
Nasdaq and Cboe's entry validates event contracts as a product category but threatens Kalshi's first-mover advantage in perpetual futures. Any pricing or liquidity edge Kalshi builds with hedge funds before September will determine whether it holds institutional flow against incumbent exchanges with deeper balance sheets.
Becomes the fifth distinct regulatory or enforcement front bearing on Kalshi and Polymarket in under a week, after the Ninth Circuit preemption denial, Minnesota ban push, Spagnuolo insider-trading charge, and Trump's Truth Social intervention — pulling hedge fund recruitment into a compliance environment where federal-state alignment is fragmenting rather than solidifying.