Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour makes the case for prediction markets as legal fights pile up

Kalshi co-founder and CEO Tarek Mansour has a simple pitch: if you want to know what will happen, ask people with money on the line. He made that case on Reuters’ Econ World podcast, in an episode that aired on October 21, 2026.

The timing is interesting. Mansour is promoting the wisdom of markets while his company fights a multi-state legal battle over whether some of its contracts are legal at all.

Host Carmel Crimmins opened by noting that prediction markets seem to be everywhere these days, with Kalshi in the middle of the action.

The pitch: markets over pundits

Mansour’s central argument is that prediction markets reward people who actually know things. Traders who are right make money. Traders who are wrong lose it.

Compare that with a cable news panel, where being wrong costs very little. A pundit can miss an election call and be back on air next week with the same confidence.

In the interview, Mansour set prediction markets against traditional polls and commentators. His view is that markets do a better job of pulling scattered information into a single number. Think of it as a crowd-sourced forecast where every participant has to put real money behind their opinion.

He also discussed how widely these markets can apply. Kalshi lists contracts tied to elections, sports, and cultural events, among other outcomes.

The numbers behind the hype

Kalshi is not a niche experiment anymore. The platform reported daily volume of approximately $2.7 billion on October 26, 2026.

Its trailing 30-day volume came in around $90 billion. That works out to roughly $3 billion a day on average, which puts that single October day slightly below the monthly pace.

Investors have noticed. Kalshi’s prior funding round came at a $22 billion valuation in May 2026. The company is now reportedly targeting a valuation of around $40 billion in new funding discussions.

Kalshi was founded in 2018. It operates as a CFTC-designated contract market, meaning it is regulated at the federal level by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the agency that oversees futures and similar derivatives.

Its main competitor on event contracts is Polymarket. The two platforms are fighting for the same pool of traders who want to put money on real-world outcomes.

The legal tug-of-war

Several states argue that some of Kalshi’s event contracts, particularly sports-related ones, look a lot like gambling. Gambling in the US is traditionally regulated state by state. Those states are challenging the CFTC’s authority over these contracts.

Kalshi’s position is that its contracts are federally regulated derivatives, so state gambling laws do not apply.

New Jersey has become a key battleground. The Third Circuit ruled in Kalshi’s favor, and New Jersey responded by filing a petition with the US Supreme Court in September 2026, challenging CFTC oversight of event contracts.

The CFTC has also proposed new enforcement measures aimed at asserting federal authority over event contracts, putting the federal regulator and state gaming authorities in direct opposition.