Lopes Lara: Kalshi bars speakers and staff from trading mention markets
Luana Lopes Lara · Creating prediction markets (and suing the CFTC) with Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara · Mar 17, 2026 · at 52:46
Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara explains how the prediction market platform prevents manipulation in 'mention markets' based on specific words spoken in addresses.
0:00 / 0:18exact quote · 18.6s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Obviously the person that is working on the speech or that is saying the speech cannot trade, and that's kind of how we enforce it. Like if you are Gavin Newsom and you are, there's a market where you're going to say you cannot trade it and your staff cannot trade it. That's part of the political kind of cuts that, that we do there that they cannot trade.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Luana Lopes Lara
Lopes Lara: 2024 election showed prediction markets outperform traditional polling
“The polls were completely wrong and the markets were so much better at bringing that sort of information, and I think that it's the shining example of why these markets are forced for good, and we need to have them in the US and regulated”
Lopes Lara: Over 95% of Kalshi maker orders come from peer-to-peer traders
“Over 95 are just like. Peer-to-peer, like, or funds that have like two people that just got stuck.”
Lopes Lara: Prediction markets will improve polling accuracy, not destroy it
“My take is that polls are just going to get a lot better, because what people are going to be is like, okay, I can make money if my polls are right, so I'm just going to commission this poll, and I'm going to do this, And now you can actually, like, compete a …”
Lopes Lara: Kalshi will never list war, terrorism, or assassination markets
“There are a lot of things that we wouldn't do, like wildfires we don't do, war, terrorism, assassination. Those things are bad, and like, there's a moral side of these markets, and we're not going to ever go there.”
Lopes Lara: Fintech and healthcare startups cannot operate by asking forgiveness
“I think that the approach we took from the start was that financial services or healthcare, I think you can't ask for forgiveness. I think there's a big difference between losing people's money, see what goes wrong, like an FTX example that can go very wrong w…”