The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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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…”
Lopes Lara: CFTC blocked Kalshi election markets for two years
“Not, well, the biggest they said no to was the elections. That's why we had to end up suing them. They said no for two years.”
Lopes Lara: 80% of Kalshi users only consume information without trading
“Most of our users, like, 80% of our users are actually just looking, like, consuming information. They're just coming in and seeing who's gonna win the Texas primary yesterday, and seeing, like, okay, the, this, the polls are saying they're tied, but they're n…”
Lopes Lara: Kalshi is developing derivatives for luxury watches and collectibles
“One thing that we're very excited for, we're actually starting to go in the direction of, for example, things like watches and bags and all of those things are like more going to the collectible side. They're actually able to do derivatives on those things.”
Lopes Lara: Kalshi plans to add futures, swaps, and options
“Right now we only have the binary yes, no. We want to have things like futures, like swaps, options, all of that.”
Lopes Lara: Prediction markets will complement news media rather than destroy it
“A lot of people are like prediction markets will destroy the news. I think it's way more complimentary. It's like when you're talking about an election, you're going to give your opinion, the market's not going to give you an opinion. You still need the commen…”
Lopes Lara: Kalshi fined two insider traders 5x their total profits
“And we put out two cases of two weeks ago of two insiders that then because we're also regulated, we're able to charge them a lot of fines. We charge them over five times what they made and all those things they banned and all that.”
Lopes Lara: Upfront collateral requirements impair prediction market making
“The third one is really margining systems. Right now it's very bad. You have to put all the money up front. Right. Which makes a lot of, for example, will a hurricane happen this year? Very, very bad for you to be actually like market making or selling those c…”
Lopes Lara: Kalshi bars members of Congress from trading on legislation
“We actually take it even a step further. For example, if you are a government official, you cannot, like if you're in Congress, you cannot trade on bills passing, even though, I don't know if they have an agreement.”
Lopes Lara: Kalshi bars speakers and staff from trading mention markets
“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 t…”
Lopes Lara: Kalshi does not offer bonuses to incentivize losing bettors
“What they do is you start losing, and then they're gonna give you a thousand dollars for you to come back, or like a deposit boost, and all those things, so that they can hook you to keep you coming back, because they want to incentivize the losers. We don't d…”
Lopes Lara: Kalshi files all contracts under 24-hour CFTC review window
“We, every single contract we file with the CFTC, and they have 24 hours to stop it.”
Lopes Lara: Robinhood and Webull were Kalshi's first broker partners
“Ah, in the beginning of last year, we launched the first broker partner that we had was actually, ah, Robinhood and then Webull.”
Lopes Lara: Kalshi rebates fees instead of paying market makers directly
“So the market making incentives on this side is actually, we don't pay them for it, we just rebate fees, but they have very, Very hard conditions to meet. They need to have uptime of certain amounts, spreads, and top of box size, and all of those things becaus…”
Lopes Lara: Over 2,000 people act as market makers on Kalshi
“There's over 2000 people that market making.”
Lopes Lara: Kalshi user made over $150k trading Billboard music rankings
“To me, very important, and he's made over a 150,000 dollars, he's getting every single thing, he paid back student loans, he put himself for a master's degree, bought a car, and all those things, and he just like, Loves these markets, and he's never really tra…”
Lopes Lara: Kalshi launched institutional Block Trades feature
“We actually just launched a week ago this thing called Blocktrades.”