Kalshi will be on ‘every major crypto app’ in next 12 months, says John Wang
U.S.-regulated prediction market platform Kalshi will be on "every large crypto application and exchange" within the next 12 months, Head of Crypto John Wang told The Block in an interview at Token2049 conference in Singapore.
"This next phase of Kalshi's growth, which is about building an ecosystem of new financial primitives and trading front-ends on top of Kalshi, will be a 10x unlock for us," Wang said. "And crypto is core to this mission."
After eight years as a crypto trader and influencer, Wang joined Kalshi as head of crypto in August to drive the platform's onchain expansion. This transformation focuses on onboarding more crypto-native power users onto the platform.
"The crypto community is the definition of power users, people who live and breathe new financial markets and frontier technology," Wang said. "We're welcoming a huge developer base who are excited about building tools for those power users."
For its onchain initiative, Kalshi is developing a diverse builder ecosystem focused on utility, including pushing its event data onto the blockchain in real-time for developers. Other efforts include building sophisticated data dashboards, AI agents, and new venues for informational arbitrage.
Last month, Kalshi partnered with Solana and Base to launch its ecosystem support network with dedicated grants for offchain and onchain innovators. Wang said Kalshi is working to partner with a few other networks down the pipeline with the goal of engaging with different blockchain communities.
Trojan Horse for crypto
Wang also said his team is looking to expand the crypto event contract markets "by a ton."
"I think prediction markets are similar to [crypto] options that are packaged in the most accessible form possible," said Wang, adding that options in crypto have not seen significant adoption, despite being a hot topic in markets. "So I think prediction markets are like the Trojan Horse for [people] to enter crypto."
However, the 23-year-old Kalshi newcomer said the onchain initiatives will be "purely additive," and the core of the platform will not be replaced for existing users.
"I think in 12 months I would have failed my job if we couldn't look the crypto community in the eyes and be like, 'we genuinely made positive impact here, we brought in new audiences into crypto,'" Wang told The Block.
Rise to dominance
Kalshi has recently become the market leader in terms of prediction markets, going from owning 3.3% of the market share last year to 66% by the end of September, overshadowing crypto-native competitor Polymarket. The gain in market share was driven by a surge of volume in the U.S. NFL-related event contracts.
Wang attributes Kalshi's recent success to its past three years of prioritizing regulatory compliance in the U.S. Kalshi filed its lawsuit against the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2023, challenging the agency's decision to prevent Kalshi from listing and trading political election-related event contracts on the platform. A U.S. district court ruled in Kalshi's favor, and the CFTC ended up dropping its appeal in May.
"[Kalshi] played the long game and we were able to legalize right before the election, we seized the opportunity and did the best we could," Wang said. "Prediction markets and event contracts are now being held at the same level as normal derivatives and stocks — this is genuinely like the new world's newest asset class."
Earlier this week, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour joined the SEC-CFTC roundtable discussion to participate in the regulatory endeavors to oversee new financial frontiers such as the prediction markets.
Wang said that the platform plans to keep evolving to differentiate itself from competitors such as Polymarket, especially on the UI side. "The information flows and context for every single market category is very different, so the user interface is going to reflect all that verticalization," he added.
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