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I finally gave in to my curiosity and downloaded Kalshi last week to place a few bets on the World Cup. I was blown away how easy it was. I placed a bet with r
by cj 4mo ago
I finally gave in to my curiosity and downloaded Kalshi last week to place a few bets on the World Cup.
I was blown away how easy it was. I placed a bet with real money within 5 minutes of downloading the app.
They allow instant deposits with credit card, and ID verification was real time.
I can’t imagine that the extreme accessibility and the typical dark patterns deployed by every popular app won’t eventually end badly.
(I was also shocked that when looking at my credit card bill online, next to the Kalshi deposit line item it showed a promo “would you like to split this payment over 12 month?” and seemingly was only available for that one transaction. So I could have deposited $1000 via CC into Kalshi and paid it back $83/mo over 12 months.)
This industry is wild.
- parm26 4mo ago[flagged]
- dylan604 4mo agoBased on the ad they are running during World Cup of the guy in the dentist office, they just don't care how/where money is spent as they just print money.
- znyboy 4mo agoI think you missed the point entirely. All of these "prediction market" gambling platforms are actively predatory to their users, with very little (if any) regulatory oversight.
- holistio 4mo agoBack in the good old days you needed a few more steps before you got into debt after gambling.
- ElProlactin 4mo agoBack in the good old days non-payment of gambling debt was a threat to your knee-caps. Today, you might get cut off from Klarna and have to extend your next auto loan to 256 months.
- holistio 4mo ago[flagged]
- ares623 4mo ago[flagged]
- tyre 4mo agoThis was with their credit card. You're going to get demolished if you start bouncing gambling debt on a credit card. I'm guessing that at some point, probably not very long from now, credit cards are going to cut down on this. They don't want to be held responsible for a bunch of debt from gamblers, when they've already paid the sites. At some point, the fees won't be worth the combination of PR and actually losing money from bankruptcies / delinquencies.
- nradov 4mo agoMost of those gambling sites don't have merchant accounts and aren't able to accept credit card payments directly. Customers take out cash advances or buy cryptocurrency through various shady intermediaries, then transfer the assets.
- dfadsadsf 4mo ago> You're going to get demolished if you start bouncing gambling debt on a credit card. If you do not have assets or high income, you can just ignore debt and it will drop off you credit report after 7 years. They can try to sue you (unlikely for <$5k debts) and then try to garnish wages (max 25% of aftertax income) but many states outright prohibit garnishment for consumer debts (like Texas) or limit it (like CA - just show that you have high living expenses to avoid garnishment). Overall much better options that kneecaps.
- ElProlactin 4mo ago> You're going to get demolished if you start bouncing gambling debt on a credit card. If you look at the finances of a good swath of Americans, they're already demolished. Heck, the average new car loan is now 6 years with a $700+/month payment. Gambling has become such an embedded part of the current cultural zeitgeist because people feel they have nothing to lose.
- owlninja 4mo agoI read a book this year about sports gambling in the US [1], and it points out how nasty and predatory it is. I think "prediction markets" have even less regulation? I would talk to my sports fan buddies at work and they would say "oh, just how sportsbooks in Vegas operate already", but this is on-demand, in your face, constantly nudging you to bet with dark patterns and "comps". I used to want sports gambling legal in the US, but the way it has gone is incredibly disgusting and is starting to make watching sports almost annoying. The crawl on the bottom is no longer scores, but moneylines... [1] "Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling" (2026) by Danny Funt
- TZubiri 4mo agoPredictions markets are more regulated than sports betting, because the events being predicted are wider, so they will naturally touch on a whole lot more regulation. For example, can someone place a bet on an event that X person will be shot? That question now touches on a whole range of laws regarding murder, life insurance, incitation to violence, free speech? That you just don't touch at all in sports betting.
- mcmcmc 4mo agoSo where are those regulations?
- TZubiri 4mo agoI'm not a lawyer, and I originally made a claim about sportsbetting covering a a subset of prediction markets, so just being covered for more laws that are not necessarily related to bets. But I made some research, and here's the main body that specifically targets 'regulation' regulations for prediction markets https://www.cftc.gov/LawRegulation/index.htm https://www.cftc.gov/LawRegulation/index.htm I can see the argument that they are piggybacking off a body of regulations that wasn't designed for this. I'm not an attorney, so I don't know if that holds, but even if it does, it's undeniable that there are enough parallels between commodity futures and prediction markets and that's why it's being used to regulate so far. If you argue for more or more specific regulation, it's probably going to be a fork, not regulation from scratch. And as mentioned in other comments, there's existing laws around the subject of bets themselves that mean that there already exist loads of regulations around these subjects, in the end they are just contracts, which is one of the main branches of law and has a huge body of law and jurisprudence, so either it's inaccurate to say they are unregulated, or it regulation means something much more specific that I'm unaware of.
- embedding-shape 4mo agoThis was my experience trying out "traditional betting" for the first time with Betfair last Worldcup, and some other platform I tried out before as well. Not sure what Kalshi/others are doing that is so different?
- maxbond 4mo agoIf you're going to gamble, it's probably for the best that your counterparty doesn't also control the platform. I'm not saying that justifies being able to gamble frictionlessly, but it is marginally less exploitative. Eg, back in the day bucket shops (which sold binary options, like prediction markets do) would increase the spread in proportion to their assessment of your skill such that you would lose even if you were more skilled. In a proper market the platform makes the same amount of money whoever wins. So, not all that different, but marginally less exploitative. I've never looked at Polymarket but Kalshi and PredictIt slid steadily from things of at least plausible real economic value (a market where it was conceivable [if unlikely] someone would be hedging their insurance contract or something) into total nonsense with no non-gambling function like whether someone would tweet a certain word. I think prediction markets could serve a similar to a futures markets and have a functional purpose in the economy. It could be useful to generate real time estimates of the probability of some events that no one can control and have real economic consequences, like a hurricane. But evidently that's not where the money is.
- embedding-shape 4mo ago> it's probably for the best that your counterparty doesn't also control the platform But doesn't Polymarket et al own their own platforms, just like Betfair owns their platform? There is no P2P going on, even if some markets seem to advertise themselves as such so again, seems like the same just minus gambling regulations?
- maxbond 4mo agoAs far as I know it is "P2P", a continuous double sided auction like any proper exchange. If there's something fishy going on with the order book I do not personally know about it. (I don't think there is but I'm also not going to stick my neck out for them.) https://docs.polymarket.com/concepts/prices-orderbook https://docs.polymarket.com/concepts/prices-orderbook https://help.kalshi.com/en/articles/13823828-the-orderbook https://help.kalshi.com/en/articles/13823828-the-orderbook Tl;Dr there's an order book with prices set by supply and demand. So you're at the whims of the market rather than the whims of someone who is your broker, exchange, clearinghouse, and taking the other side of your trade. I don't know much about Polymarket but iirc Kalshi is only your broker and exchange, so dealing with them is materially less risky in my mind.
- manwithopinions 4mo agoThe U.S. is quite far behind the rest of the world on sports betting, which means you don’t even need to imagine, we know from other countries that it doesn’t end well. The most worrying aspect is, the current U.S. government has no interest in the regulations that have helped minimise the problems in other countries. The U.K’s highest earner for a few years running was the founder of a U.K. betting site, she had something like a 500 million salary and there is an entire town’s economy supported by her business. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bet365 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bet365
- m00dy 4mo agoI personally never met her but Bet365 is one of the most protected sites on the internet when it comes to antibot protections. When I started my company in 2025, I had two customers from UK, they were very much interested in odds for horse races from bet365, mostly realtime. Bet365 knew I was coming for them.
- cjrp 4mo ago> Her salary of £421 million in 2020 was 50% higher than it was in 2019, and higher than all FTSE 100 Index CEOs combined.
- zipy124 4mo agoWhilst it is technically a salary, since the business is wholly owned by her and her family it is effectively a dividend, so it isn't quite accurate to compare it to CEO's of non-wholly owned private or public companies. Other CEO's might have gotten paid more since they might own enough stocks in the company to receive dividends, or share awards etc...
- cjrp 4mo agoThat's a fair point, it would be more interesting to compare the salary to equivalent, family-owned private companies (although I'm sure most of them don't disclose that sort of thing).
- 4mo ago
- TheCowboy 4mo agoHow were you able to use a credit card when it's not a payment they accept?
- chasebank 4mo agoThey call it 'onramping'. Moonpay is a big one, coinbase has one, onramper is another. Basically Applepay / credit card -> ETH or SOL or USDC, etc, then lose away!
- cj 4mo agoI just checked my account. They accept Visa, Mastercard and Discover via Apple Pay for a 2% deposit fee. But I also see it says they don’t accept credit card in their help docs. I’m not sure what that’s about.
- tills13 4mo agoInstant deposit via credit card? Is that not considered a cash advance?
- LPisGood 4mo agoIt is, and I know someone who found that out the hard way during the Super Bowl.
- herpderperator 4mo agoA cash advance is taking physical cash out with your credit card at an ATM or bank teller. Making an online purchase (which depositing money into your Kalshi account is) is therefore not a cash advance.
- brador 4mo agoIt’s a cash advance since you’re not purchasing goods or services with the card.
- lxgr 4mo agoIt’s really a cash advance whenever the issuing bank decides it is. There is no official definition.
- weird-eye-issue 4mo agoNot necessarily, I mean if you buy a in-game item or currency that wouldn't be a cash advance so with this they could just say you bought $20 worth of credits and since you're buying credits that could be considered a good.
- brador 4mo agoThat would be purchasing a license (service). Gambling is always classed as a cash advance. The gift cards trick has been tapped and closed, the credit companies figured it out decades ago.
- JoeMattie 4mo agoYou think that's wild, look into prop firms some time
- ph4rsikal 4mo agoThe on-ramp in crypto is incredibly well built out. But then, once you are in the fake money world, you will notice that the off-ramp doesn't exist.
- consensus1 4mo agoI have taken money out of Polymarket and it is quick and easy.
- xboxnolifes 4mo agoThe off-ramp of nearly all of my crypto endeavors has been very easy in my experience. Not always simple, because a lot of parts of moving money on various crypto chains is unintuitive and well in-need of improvement, but definitely easy once you know what to do. The most annoying part, somewhat surprisingly, is always with regards to United States KYC restrictions. I've had a fair bit of annoyance trying to move crypto off of services that were once accessible to US customers and no longer are.
- m00dy 4mo agoon-ramp and off-ramp were the problems of the past. Thanks to Trump, both worlds have merged together now.
- baobabKoodaa 4mo agoOff-ramp does exist. Stop lying.
- 650REDHAIR 4mo agoUntil you’re flagged for some vague reason and support/fraud can’t help you.
- citizenpaul 4mo agoI personally cant wait to start seeing sob stories of how people are having thier account permanently locked after making big wins. Thats what happens when you bgive money to unregulated casinos every tine and is the exact reason there are so many gambling laws and restrictions.
- rightbyte 4mo agoWell try to make a withdrawal and see how convinient that might be. Internet casinos are usually easy to get money into but hard to get money out of.
- kortilla 4mo agoIt works just fine. It’s not a casino in the regular sense because you’re betting against other people, not the house.
- nairboon 4mo agoIn a casino you can bet against other people too. Nonetheless, the house always wins and takes its cut.
- expedition32 4mo agoWith gambling you should always play for entertainment. If you play to win you've already lost.
- TeMPOraL 4mo agoMaking paper airplanes from dollar bills, and setting their backs on fire to give them jet engines, is likely cheaper and more entertaining, so if you're gambling anyway, you've already lost, period.
- yehoshuapw 4mo agoand perhaps somewhat safer
- jfengel 4mo agoCheaper, yes. More entertaining, not for a lot of people. Many play the same way you'd play a video game, with the actual stakes giving it a bigger rush. Enough that some become addicted. If it weren't fun it wouldn't be nearly as big a problem.
- infinite_spin 4mo agoThere's a lot of proposed legislation trying to expand mobile gambling too: https://www.gamblinginsider.com/news/114277/massachusetts-igaming-bills-polling-divide-march https://www.gamblinginsider.com/news/114277/massachusetts-ig... https://sportsbettingalliance.org/take-action/ohio_igaming/ https://sportsbettingalliance.org/take-action/ohio_igaming/ https://sportsbettingalliance.org/take-action/texas/ https://sportsbettingalliance.org/take-action/texas/ https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Legislation/Details/hb1343?ys=2026RS https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Legislation/Details/h...
- mastermage 4mo agoWHAT and I have to stress IN THE ACTUAL FUCK
- cucumber3732842 4mo agoYou see sins. Politicians see sin taxes, political will to spin up regulatory beurocracies, etc, etc.
- taurath 4mo agoWe used to debate things like the harms to society of gambling, now it’s a silent decree that it’s not only legal but the basis for our economy. The same group who used to preach family values turned out to be the biggest casino pimps and pornographers.
- soulofmischief 4mo agoMeanwhile, small poker groups and gambling dens patronized by consenting adults routinely get busted.
- cucumber3732842 4mo ago"As they ought to, how dare they not give the system a cut" -you know exactly the type I'm mocking
- bartread 4mo agoYeah, and also inevitable that a product designed to so efficiently separate people from their money would be overrun by grifters and scammers from the influencer/creator world. What does make this instance perhaps a bit surprising is that it's Polymarket themselves who are paying those grifters. They're an incredibly well known US based company targeting US based consumers in a way that is patently illegal. It seems almost unbelievably dumb that they would do this even by the often grotty standards of gambling companies. They must have realised this would be found out and that, when it was, an investigation and enforcement action would follow? I guess maybe some of the creators will find themselves in hot water as well? I really don't understand what the long term play is here, other than to be litigated out of business.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Pxtl 4mo agoLet's compare and contrast this to how credit card companies treat sexual content vendors. Remember when a raft of games got delisted on Steam because of pressure from cc companies?
- walrus01 4mo ago> They allow instant deposits with credit card This is my biggest takeaway, and I really wonder what payment processor(s) they're using, because the chargeback and fraud rate in filling 'real money' into an online gambling account using visa or mastercard must be through the roof. Exactly same reason why porn sites use their own specialist payment processors (alluded to in popular fiction in Industry season 4 recently, for instance). The back end of how they're able to get money "instantly" into peoples accounts must be fascinating, in a how the sausages are made kind of way.
- flexagoon 4mo ago> Exactly same reason why porn sites use their own specialist payment processors They're called high-risk payment processors and they usually handle all sorts of "legal but sketchy" sectors like porn, gambling, crypto, legalized drugs/vapes, MLMs, etc. It's not even some shadowy darknet industry, if you just search for "high risk payment processor" there is plenty of them which look very professional and even provide official Shopify integrations and stuff. Interesting that if you go to one of their websites they also handle some pretty normal industries like "furniture" or "travel" just because of the high chargeback rate in them.
- fc417fc802 4mo agoI wonder what the chargeback and fraud rate actually is in practice given they do ID verification. Pretty difficult to claim you didn't make the purchase depending on what they collect.
- willsmith72 4mo agoSurely credit card has a terrible fee attached no? Just based on other services
- Lio 4mo ago> It Ain’t What You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It’s What You Know for Sure That Just Ain’t So. My worry is that social media surveillance could be combined with Polymarket to tailor bets to individuals. This could be very subtle. You don't really need your punters to always be wrong either. Meaning that sometimes they'd win at the expense of other punters with the illusion they can make money. You just need them to be wrong, say, 15% of the time and to keep coming back compulsively and consistently over time. The longer the better. If you're ever around fruit/slot machines you'll notice that they do payout and when they do they make a lot of noise. That hides the fact they slowly cream off a percentage of the money that goes in. In the UK the legal limit is around 30%, keeping it low for new gamblers and ramping up when they're hooked. With detailed information about punter's lives and no regulation you can weaponise that.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- actionfromafar 4mo agoFuture of AI Fintech
- gertrunde 4mo agoWith "AWP" (Amusement with Prize, as opposed to SWP: Skill with Prize, i.e. quiz machines), they're often set to payout 80-85% of money taken in. (SWP's are usually around 30%). And at that level they're still pocketing hundreds of pounds per week per machine. The most lucrative ones I've seen (admittedly ~20 years ago now) were being emptied by the operator twice a week and taking out £600-800 every time, per machine, with 3-4 machines per location. An eye opening industry - I'm sure there are businesses out there that pretend to be one thing (pub, club, etc), but their primary profit source is gambling.
- mschuster91 4mo ago> An eye opening industry - I'm sure there are businesses out there that pretend to be one thing (pub, club, etc), but their primary profit source is gambling. Having worked in such a "business" - the problem is rents. When everyone else around you has a slot machine or two, landlords raise the rents (because they see what their neighbor landlord can get away with). And now, you as a legitimate pub owner have to choose, do you raise the beer prices yet again, or do you put up a slot machine yourself? And sooner or later, depending on the greediness of the landlord, you have to choose between putting up a slot machine or closing down outright. Gambling is an incredibly corrosive force. Not just to the gamblers themselves (wtf, I heard there are triple-zero roulette tables in Vegas these days?), but also to everyone and everything surrounding it. I agree, some level of allowing gambling makes sense, gambling can even be observed in the animal kingdom, but it absolutely needs to be regulated.
- everdrive 4mo ago>it showed a promo “would you like to split this payment over 12 month?” and seemingly was only available for that one transaction. So I could have deposited $1000 via CC into Kalshi and paid it back $83/mo over 12 months. "Would you like to make decisions that are bad for you?" The future is indeed wild, and personal weakness is for sale. This isn't meant as an attack on you, but a lot of people will not be able to manage this sort of reduced friction. People with MBAs will call this "providing value."
- kleene_op 4mo ago> So I could have deposited $1000 via CC into Kalshi and paid it back $83/mo over 12 months Are you sure those are the correct figures? That's a 4$ win in your favor if you don't use any of the deposited money and cash it back one year later.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- avn2109 4mo agoKey point though is that Kalshi and similar prediction market betting apps are parimutuel, unlike traditional sportsbooks/Draftkings etc where punters bet against the house. This greatly changes (improves) the incentives for the house, e.g. they don't ban sharks and search only for dumb money punters, they try much less to prevent you from leaving with your winnings etc. The parimutuel house just takes a flat rake percentage off the top of the sum of all bids, so they just want to maximize the amount of money wagered overall instead of doing shady shenanigans. I'm not a prediction market user/booster nor a sports gambler, but this is a key difference and a strict improvement from traditional sportsbook apps. If our society is going to have widespread legal gambling, we strongly want it to be parimutuel.