Kalshi 'fake volume' FUD spreads to prediction markets: 61% comes from multi-event combo bets, real transactions and book value differ by 14x.

BlockBeats news, September 21: Recently, Kalshi's crypto perpetual contract trading data has come under concentrated scrutiny from the community. The controversy began with crypto perpetual contracts: some traders pointed out that ETH perpetual open interest is only about several million dollars, yet daily trading volume is as high as several hundred million dollars, with abnormally high turnover data. Kalshi's crypto business head IcoBeast subsequently responded, separating perpetuals from crypto prediction markets in his explanation, stating that prediction markets do not have similar market-making rebates, and that statistical methodologies can also be compared with peers. However, community discussion did not stop at perpetuals, and the "fraud allegations" fire spread to the main prediction market business.

Well-known prediction market trader @retardmode posted that approximately 61% of Kalshi's publicly disclosed trading volume comes from "multi-event combination bets." That is, "parlays" — packaging the outcomes of multiple events into a single ticket, where all must be guessed correctly to win. The platform does not calculate based on the actual money users put in, but rather based on the $1 face value of each contract.

For example, if a user spends $1 to buy a combination ticket that "pays $14.1 if all hit," the platform records it as $14.1 in trading volume. Nearly half of these combination tickets involve bets on 11 or more events, with extremely low winning probability. Calculated on this basis, Kalshi's actual trading volume yesterday was approximately $136 million, but the publicly disclosed figure was $1.91 billion.

Polymarket top trader @CarOnPolymarket further estimated that the actual trading volume of Kalshi's combination bets may be only about 7.1% of its publicly disclosed combination bet amount; if extrapolated monthly, there could be an exaggerated gap of "approximately $4 billion in reality, but approximately $57 billion on the books."