Kalshi's $539M Volume Story Comes With a Lot of "Open" Interest in Being Believed 🤥

Regulated U.S. prediction market Kalshi is facing allegations of inflated crypto trading volume after a quantitative analyst flagged a 174-fold gap between reported activity and outstanding positions on its newly launched ether perpetual contract. The ETH-PERP contract logged $539 million in 24-hour trading volume against $3.1 million in open interest, according to Beni, co-founder of Stealth Neolab, in a post on X. Open interest represents the total dollar value of active outstanding contracts, while trading volume measures the total dollar value of contracts that changed hands over a specific time window.

To support the claim, Beni pointed to repetitive $5,500 trade sizes that he said accounted for up to 58% of Kalshi's entire ether perpetual volume across four separate days, calling the pattern "undeniable proof" of volume manipulation. He also cited a rebate schedule filed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that can leave certain Self-Clearing Members paying a net zero fee via a 0.3-basis-point structure, alleging that structure incentivizes wash trading, in which simultaneous fake buys and sells inflate aggregate activity without adding genuine positioning.

Kalshi's crypto lead, IcoBeast.eth, pushed back on X, arguing that the accusations stem from a misunderstanding of the platform's mechanics. Kalshi's team later clarified that the platform's headline volume follows an industry-wide convention that tracks maximum potential payouts rather than actual cash spent, and emphasized that baseline fees strictly deter volume manipulation. The company pointed to its public CFTC filings as evidence of its transparency on the matter. CoinDesk reached out to Kalshi for further comment but did not receive an immediate response beyond the public statements.