Kalshi said it will begin requiring some users to disclose their employers as part of a broader effort to crack down on insider trading and market manipulation on its prediction market platform.
The federally regulated exchange said Tuesday that the new policy will apply to markets it deems most at risk of insider activity or abuse. Those traders may be vetted before they are 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 compliance systems, monitoring tools and business controls.
“For markets at higher risk of manipulation or insider trading, 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 non-public information linked to an event or outcome.
The platform’s new measures come as prediction markets face increasing scrutiny. Recently, a Yale and London Business School paper analyzing Polymarket’s operations between 2023 and 2025 found that only 3% of traders accounted for the majority of the price movements. The study highlighted the case of a US Army Green Beret arrested in April for $400,000 bets at Polymarket in the Venezuela raid to oust then-President Nicolás Maduro, in which he participated. A month later, a Google engineer was also arrested for alleged insider trading at Polymarket.
Prediction markets allow users to bet on the potential outcome of future events, including elections, economic data, and corporate and political developments. As the industry grows, critics have raised 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 detection tools. The company also said it opened more than 150 investigations, referred more than 20 cases to authorities and issued five disciplinary actions. The company did not provide details about those cases and the figures could not be independently verified.
The exchange also announced a new risk scoring system that evaluates markets based on factors including insider trading risk, market significance, regulatory concerns and national security implications. Markets deemed to carry high risks of manipulation could face stricter controls or be banned from trading altogether.
Kalshi said it also added new whistleblowing tools that allow users to flag suspicious trading activities directly from individual exchanges.
Tim Meggs, CEO and co-founder of LO:TECH, a transparent market data infrastructure company, told CoinDesk that prediction markets have grown so rapidly that questions about their integrity need to be addressed as they are no longer theoretical. “Kalshi’s decision to require employment verification, risk-rated marketplaces and whistleblowing tools highlights how the sector is beginning to build the surveillance infrastructure to meet its ambitions,” Meggs said. “That maturation matters as much as the volume numbers.”
