alt Hacker NewsI don’t see the clear difference between something like Kalshi and, say, Robinhood. I do see a clear difference between Kalshi and casinos or sports gambling sites like Fan Duel; in the latter, your counterparty is the institution itself. This creates a lot of perverse incentives on the part of sports gambling sites to maintain their edge, such as banning bettors that are too good at playing the odds. Kalshi, on the other hand, is never your counterparty in any transaction.
Now, Robinhood is a brokerage, regulated by FINRA, and has been fined for misbehavior in the past. So I am more than willing to believe that there is daylight here that I’m not seeing. But anything that lets you speculate attracts a certain clientele, and I think the most important distinction is whether or not the platform itself is an interested party.
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If the differentiating factor is just who you’re betting against, how are Kalshi et al any different from online poker? It’s still gambling, the house just takes a rake
Besides the brokerage being regulated, stock markets are regulated.
Robinhood is regulated under the SEC and other regulatory bodies and keeps "paper trails" of the trades.
It's really the worst of both combined. There is ample gambling like options and behavior on Kalshi
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policy makers, assistants, journalists, and the like are insider trading - and the president of the united states is intentionally market manipulating for profit
If Kalshi is not a gambling operation then it is an unregulated futures market, which is still illegal. There are perverse incentives in futures markets too, which is why they are regulated.
Also speculators serve an important purpose: hedging strategies require speculators on the other side. It is not just a "certain clientele," there are people who run profitable businesses on speculation (it amounts to collecting insurance premiums from people who want hedges).