On October 28th, Kalshi announced that it is now accepting deposits in USD Coin (USDC), a well-known stablecoin, in a bid to attract users before the upcoming United States elections. The prediction marketplace will soon be accepting cryptocurrency deposits, which will be managed by ZeroHash, a crypto payments platform, as reported by Fortune magazine.
There is stiff competition in the arena of political betting platforms, with Polymarket, a Web3 platform, currently leading the way and others such as Kalshi, trying to catch up.
Kalshi won a significant court battle in September and on October 7th, they listed event contracts for betting on US election outcomes. This marked the first time an election prediction market was allowed to operate in the US, opening the door for other platforms, including Polymarket.
On October 28th, Robinhood, a cryptocurrency and stock trading platform, announced that it has introduced contracts for certain users to bet on the outcome of the presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trump.
As of October 23rd, Polymarket has $2.6 billion riding on the outcome of the November presidential election, and Kalshi’s flagship market, “Who will win the Presidential election?,” has accumulated nearly $87 million in total betting volume since its listing on October 7th.
Despite US regulators expressing concern that election prediction markets such as Kalshi may threaten the integrity of elections, industry analysts argue that these markets often capture public sentiment more accurately than polls.
Both Polymarket and Kalshi favor former President Trump to win the presidency, with the platforms pegging Trump’s odds at 62% and 66%, respectively, as of October 28th. The November election will see Trump competing against Harris, with Trump expressing his desire to make America “the crypto capital of the world,” while Harris has been relatively quiet on the industry.
Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s head of digital assets research, told CNBC on October 28th, that Bitcoin’s performance is creating a “very bullish setup” for the digital asset as investors prepare for the election.