Venues / Kalshi

Is Kalshi legit?

The checklist

Custody: who holds your money

Kalshi holds customer funds. Perps margin is held by Kalshi Prime, a registered FCM, in a customer-segregated account separate from Kalshi's operating funds and from the predictions balance.

Who backs Kalshi

• Coatue (lead); Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm — $1,000,000,000 (2026-05) source

Incidents

• 2026-07-23: Nevada agreement to geofence prohibited contracts. After a May 18, 2026 Nevada state-court preliminary injunction barred Kalshi from offering sports, election and entertainment contracts in Nevada, Kalshi admitted investigators could still trade them from Nevada. It agreed to third-party geofencing by August 12, 2026, with a $120,000 daily penalty until then. source
• 2026-07-27: Federal judge halts Minnesota prediction-market ban. US District Judge Katherine Menendez blocked Minnesota from enforcing its ban while litigation proceeds, finding the CFTC, KalshiEX and Polymarket US likely to win at least in part because designated contract markets fall under exclusive CFTC jurisdiction. source
• 2026-07-31: New York Attorney General sues Kalshi. New York's AG sued Kalshi, alleging illegal unlicensed gambling, betting on New York college teams and sports betting by under-21s. The suit seeks state licensing and taxes, forfeiture and nationwide restitution, with a potential penalty estimated at $36B. It does not seek to shut Kalshi down. source

Real downsides

• Sports contracts are restricted or under injunction in Nevada, Massachusetts and Washington, and New York's AG is suing.
• Full KYC with a government photo ID is required for every user.
• Referral bonus amounts vary by offer and are not published as a fixed rate.
• Perps are open only to approved US users and cost 12 bps taker at the base tier on each side.

Can you use it where you live?

Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated DCM serving US users, but several states have contested its sports contracts. Nevada (state preliminary injunction May 2026, geofencing agreement July 2026), Massachusetts (Superior Court preliminary injunction on sports markets, January 2026) and Washington (King County preliminary injunction, July 2026) restrict some contracts. New York, Michigan and Wisconsin suits are pending, an Ohio federal ruling went against Kalshi, while federal courts sided with Kalshi in Arizona and Minnesota. Kalshi's help center says users in many countries can trade subject to its Member Agreement, which we could not read directly (the PDF blocks automated fetches). Third-party reporting of Member Agreement v1.6 lists the United Kingdom as restricted, plus Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland and Portugal in the EU; other EU states such as Germany, the Netherlands and Spain are not on that list. UK and EU statuses are therefore second-hand and may have changed. Perps are open only to approved US users. (source)

We report what the venue's own terms say. Don't use a VPN to get around restrictions; venues can freeze accounts that do.

How to use Kalshi without getting scammed

• Only open kalshi.com — fake lookalike sites and "support" DMs are the most common way people lose funds on any trading venue.
• Never share a seed phrase or private key. No real support agent will ask for one.
• A referral code only changes your fee and who gets a share of it. It never needs your keys.
• Treat every new memecoin as able to go to zero. A legit venue does not make the coins on it safe.

Comparing options? See the full Kalshi sheet or Polymarket.