Academy

An event contract is a yes-or-no derivative that pays a fixed amount — usually $1 — if a stated event happens. It is what Kalshi, Polymarket US and ForecastTrader actually sell, and in the US it is regulated by the CFTC, not by state gaming boards.

Why an event contract is not a derivative on an asset, and what that changes about the price.

A sportsbook sets the price and takes the other side of your bet; a prediction market matches you with another trader and charges a fee. How pricing, regulation, age limits, taxes and bonuses differ — with one game priced both ways.

Why a wide spread makes the midpoint meaningless, and why depth matters more than the headline price.

How an on-chain market learns what happened, and what a dispute does to the price.

The resolution criteria are the contract. Everything else is commentary.

Where the extra cents come from, how to divide them out, and why raw prices cannot be compared across venues.

Three payoff shapes, three different things a price is telling you.

Turning cents into probability, and what the spread tells you before you trade.

A market where you trade contracts that pay out if an event happens — so the price becomes a probability.

Most of the time Polymarket is not down: it is blocking your location, you are on the wrong Polymarket for where you are, or a VPN or browser setting is breaking it. How to tell which, and what Polymarket itself tells you to do.

No. Kalshi is a private company with no ticker and no public share price; its SEC filings are notices of private share sales. Here is who owns it, what it has raised, and why some funds’ “Kalshi” holdings are not a stock price.

Yes, in effect. Kalshi calls them combos: one position on two or more events that pays out only if every leg does. They look like a sportsbook parlay, but the price comes from market makers quoting on request, and there are differences in how a leg can settle.

Kalshi sends a four-digit code by text when you sign up and every 30 days when you log in. When it does not arrive, the cause is usually the wait, a blocked short code or the number itself — here is what Kalshi’s help centre tells you to try, in order.

Eighteen. Kalshi checks it against a government photo ID when you sign up, sometimes with a live selfie as well, and it bars minors from trading. Here is what the check involves and what Kalshi does about under-18s using a parent’s identity.

Open Transfers, choose “Withdraw from Kalshi”, pick a method and confirm. Debit cards are usually fastest, bank transfers take a few business days, and only settled cash can leave — not money in open positions or still under a deposit hold.

Kalshi charges a trading fee that peaks at 1.75¢ a contract on a 50¢ contract and shrinks toward the extremes, a smaller maker fee on some markets, and nothing to settle, withdraw or hold an account. The formula, Kalshi’s own table, and the exceptions.

No. Polymarket is a private company: it has no ticker and its shares trade on no exchange. Here is who owns it, what its filings show, and what the “shares” and the token on Polymarket actually are.

Polymarket earns from taker fees on most of its markets, keeps what is left after paying part of them back to market makers and active traders, and charges separately on Polymarket US and on perpetuals. It does not bet against its users — and it does not publish its revenue.

The questions that determine treatment, why none of them has a settled answer, and what to keep records of. Not tax advice.

Why a gap between a mana price and a dollar price is not an opportunity, and what a play-money price is still good for.

What happens when a contract ends, and why selling early is a different transaction.

The arithmetic of a position: contracts bought, money committed, and the win rate the price implies.

Spread plus fee plus the cost of moving money — and why a small edge does not survive all three.

Two ways a price gets made, and what each one hides about the cost of trading.

Polymarket ranks its traders by profit or volume over a day, a week, a month or all time. The figures are public, the same data is available free through its API, and the ranking has limits worth knowing before you copy anyone on it.

Polymarket’s market data is free to read with no API key; trading through its API needs credentials derived from your wallet and is blocked from restricted countries, including the US. US traders use a separate Polymarket US API. What each part does and how to start.

Arbitrage means buying both sides of the same event for less than the $1 it pays out. It exists between prediction markets — but fees, mismatched rules and locked-up capital erase most of the gaps you will see.

Seven ways to lose money while being right, most of them arithmetic rather than judgement.

News, time, the cost of money, uninformative flow and resolution risk — in roughly that order of how often they are misread.

Not on a US-regulated exchange: federal rules bar contracts on war, terrorism and assassination, so Kalshi and PredictIt list diplomacy and foreign elections instead. The international Polymarket, which the CFTC does not regulate, lists hundreds of war markets — and the rules may be about to change.

Two exchanges carry the Polymarket name. Polymarket US is a CFTC-designated exchange open to US residents; polymarket.com, the international one, blocks them. Here is what each is, and where states have pushed back.

Trading an event contract on confidential information you were trusted with is illegal in the US, and since 2026 the CFTC has charged it — a soldier, a Google engineer and a White House teleprompter operator among them.

CFTC stands for Commodity Futures Trading Commission — the independent US agency that regulates futures, options, swaps and the event contracts traded on prediction-market exchanges such as Kalshi and Polymarket US.

Yes, under federal law, on exchanges the CFTC has designated — Kalshi, Polymarket US, Novig, ProphetX and others. But states are fighting sports contracts in court, and orders in Nevada, Washington and Michigan already block some. Offshore sites such as polymarket.com exclude US residents altogether.

How Kalshi is legal — a CFTC-designated exchange under federal law — where state court orders limit it, and how to check your own eligibility.

What a designated contract market is, what registration does and does not settle, and how to check a claim. Not legal advice.