Kalshi Asks Traders to Drop Their Boss's Name Before They Drop Their Bags

Kalshi will begin requiring some users to disclose their employers for higher-risk markets as part of a broader effort to curb insider trading and market manipulation on its federally regulated prediction-market platform. The new policy, announced Tuesday and effective immediately, applies to markets Kalshi considers likely to face heightened insider or manipulation risk, and traders in those markets may be screened before they are permitted to place trades. The measures follow recommendations from an independent Surveillance Audit Committee that reviewed Kalshi's enforcement systems, monitoring tools and trading controls. "For markets with heightened insider or manipulation risk, we now collect employment information before traders can participate," Kalshi said in a statement. The company said the process is designed to identify people who may have access to material nonpublic information tied to a specific event or outcome.

The announcement comes with a string of enforcement figures. Kalshi said it has already blocked more than 100 potential insider trades, opened over 150 investigations and referred more than 20 cases to law enforcement. The new framework includes pre-trade screening, a risk-scoring system for individual markets and enhanced whistleblower tools intended to flag suspicious activity before it settles. The company framed the changes as part of an ongoing program to harden the platform as prediction markets expand into elections, economic data releases and sensitive corporate and political developments.

The push against abuse is happening against a sharper regulatory and academic backdrop. A recent paper from Yale and London Business School analyzing Polymarket trades from 2023 to 2025 found that roughly 3% of traders accounted for most price moves on the platform. The study also cited two high-profile criminal cases, including the April arrest of a U.S. Army Green Beret accused of placing $400,000 in bets on Polymarket tied to the Venezuela raid that extracted then-President Nicolas Maduro, a mission in which he had participated. A month later, a Google engineer was also arrested on alleged insider trading charges connected to Polymarket trades. Critics have warned that thinly traded or politically sensitive markets remain particularly exposed to traders acting on privileged information.

Kalshi has not specified which employers or categories of traders will be subject to the new disclosure requirement, and the exchange said it will continue to update its surveillance framework as its market coverage expands. The platform operates as a federally regulated exchange and allows users to take positions on the potential outcomes of future events, ranging from elections to economic data points. The latest changes are intended to tighten the gap between regulated exchanges and offshore prediction platforms that have drawn the attention of prosecutors, academic researchers and federal regulators in recent months.