Crypto.com Predictions vs Kalshi

Crypto.com Predictions offers CFTC-regulated event contract trading built upon Crypto.com Derivatives North America (CDNA)—the Designated Contract Market (DCM) and Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO) acquired via Nadex in 2022. Integrated directly into the main Crypto.com mobile app and dedicated event trading interfaces like the OG platform, the product allows eligible US retail investors to trade binary Yes/No contracts on political outcomes, macroeconomic indicators, sports, and financial trends.

By embedding event contracts within its mainstream cryptocurrency app, Crypto.com bridges retail crypto liquidity with regulated derivatives trading. Users can fund positions seamlessly using cash balances or by converting supported digital assets directly into USD for market entry. The exchange operates fully collateralized binary contracts priced between $0.00 and $1.00, providing transparent probability pricing and capped downside risk for retail traders.

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Tarek Mansour grew up in Algeria and came to MIT on a scholarship. Luana Lopes Lara grew up in Brazil, the daughter of a schoolteacher, and danced at an elite ballet academy affiliated with the Bolshoi before choosing mathematics. They met in an MIT classroom, ended up in many of the same courses, co-authored papers, and interned at the same firms — Mansour at Goldman Sachs and Citadel, Lara at Bridgewater and Citadel. What they observed across those firms was the same thing: an enormous amount of financial decision-making was being driven by opinions about future events, but there was no clean, direct way to trade on those events. You could trade the equity of a company that would be affected by an election result, but you could not trade the election result itself. In 2018, they founded Kalshi to close that gap. The approach was different from every prediction market before them: instead of operating offshore, accepting cryptocurrency, or relying on a fragile regulatory no-action letter, Kalshi would become a fully licensed US exchange. They joined Y Combinator in 2019 and spent the next two years in direct negotiation with the CFTC — a process that had never been completed by a prediction market operator.

The CFTC approval came in November 2020, making Kalshi a Designated Contract Market — the highest regulatory designation available and the same category as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Mansour and Lara were among the youngest founders to win CFTC approval in over a decade. The platform launched its first contract in July 2021. Sequoia Capital led a $30 million Series A. Henry Kissinger and Robert Shiller joined as advisors. The 2024 presidential election was the inflection point: over $800 million was wagered on political markets. When the CFTC under the Biden administration moved to block Kalshi's election markets — arguing they were contrary to the public interest — Lara made the call to sue the federal government. "The only option," she later said, "was to sue." Kalshi won in federal court in September 2024. The ruling opened election markets. Sports markets followed. $238 billion in annual trading volume followed that.

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