Community users question Kalshi for allegedly faking crypto trading volume, claiming ETH-PERP daily trading volume is 174 times the open interest.

BlockBeats news, September 21: Quantitative analyst Beni posted a message questioning whether the prediction market platform Kalshi artificially inflates crypto trading volume, and cited multiple data points as evidence. Beni said that Kalshi ETH-PERP currently has about $3.1 million in open interest, but its 24-hour trading volume reached $538.6 million, equivalent to all open positions turning over about 174 times per day, or once every 8 minutes and 18 seconds on average.

Beni also pointed out that Kalshi's holdings leaderboard shows that the largest single ETH-PERP position is only about $17,600, which is clearly inconsistent with the scale of the above trading volume. He also mentioned that Kalshi's previous filing with the CFTC showed that eligible self-clearing member (SCM) market makers can receive a 0.3 basis point rebate, while takers pay 0.3 basis points, for a combined trading cost of 0 basis points for both sides.

In addition, Beni said that Kalshi and Jump Trading had reached a cooperation arrangement exchanging liquidity for equity, and therefore questioned whether the related trading had an incentive to boost the platform's trading volume metrics. Beni also questioned Kalshi's method of calculating trading volume, saying that the platform uses the "number of traded contracts" as volume and displays it with a dollar sign in the interface, which may cause users to misunderstand the actual trading amount.

The above statements all come from Beni's personal post and currently constitute his doubts about Kalshi's trading data and business model. They are not equivalent to confirmed evidence that Kalshi has engaged in wash trading or volume inflation.