As the first votes shut , two major election betting services have risen to the top of the Apple App Store charts.
Kalshi and Polymarket are now among the most popular free apps on the Apple App Store. Apple says it presently has roughly two million applications available for download.
Kalshi, which restarted its 2024 presidential election betting market on Oct. 2 following a federal appeals court victory in September, is the top-ranked free app on the Apple App Store. Polymarket is ranked second.
The political betting markets, which provide event derivatives on a wide range of topics from sports to entertainment to commerce to science, are outperforming ChatGPT, OpenAI’s free artificial intelligence program, Facebook’s Threads, McDonald’s and even Google.
“Prediction markets are the future,” stated Kalshi cofounder Luana Lopes Lara at X.
Kalshi is now the only prediction market in the United States that is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Election Betting Hysteria
Since Donald Trump defeated Hilary Clinton in 2016, political betting markets have become increasingly important in forecasting election results. While betting markets in 2016 believed Clinton had a higher chance of winning, the odds showed Trump, the former casino mogul, had a better opportunity of a shock than the polls.
PredictIt was a pioneer. The CFTC issued a “No-Action Relief” letter to the online betting exchange, informing it that it would not face legal ramifications for accepting bets on US elections as long as bettors were limited to $850 per contract, or specific election question, and PredictIt’s insights were made available for educational and research purposes.
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PredictIt never created an app, hence the website crashed during the 2020 election. In 2022, the CFTC announced the revocation of the No-Action Relief and ordered PredictIt to halt its binary betting contracts.
Meanwhile, Polymarket has arisen as a bitcoin peer-to-peer prediction platform. The CFTC filed regulatory action against the corporation, which resolved in early 2022. Polymarket agreed to pay a $1.4 million civil penalty and no longer enable clients from the United States to participate.
Despite the fact that Polymarket does not accept bets from the United States, the platform’s 2024 election contract has received more than $2.8 billion in wagers as of 6 p.m. EST on Election Day. Kalshi’s 2024 White House result has a budget of less than $300 million.
Final odds
With votes about to finish, betting markets continue to favor Trump.
On Polymarket, Trump’s stock is trading at 61 cents. Harris remains the underdog, with 39 cents. On Kalshi, Trump’s stock is trading at 58 cents, while Harris’ is trading at 42 cents.
Winning shares are redeemed for $1. Polymarket, as a decentralized blockchain enterprise, charges no fees. However, certain middlemen, like as Coinbase, may impose a transaction fee.
Kalshi charges $2 every account withdrawal and imposes trading fees on orders that are instantly executed. The trading cost is, to say the least, convoluted.
According to the Kalshi “Fee Schedule” filed with the CFTC, trading fees are based on a percentage of an individual contract’s expected earnings. This is calculated by multiplying the maximum potential earnings by the implied probability of making those earnings, or the contract price divided by $1. The current general fee payable for a trade in dollars is calculated using the following formula: Fees = round up (0.07 x C x P x (1-P)). P = the price of a contract in dollars (50 cents = 0.5) C = the number of contracts being exchanged round up = rounds to the nearest penny.”
Confused? We agree. However, Kalshi gave an example in which a contract trading at 50 cents and a patron acquiring 100 shares resulted in a platform charge of only $1.75.
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