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Launch HN: Kalshi (YC W19) – A regulated exchange for trading on events

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Re: Launch HN: Kalshi (YC W19) – A regulated exchange for trading on events

#71

Post by mritchie712 »

llamaimperative wrote: post #16
JonathanBeuys wrote: post #4

Wouldn't such an exchange be a good use case for a smart contract? It would make it very transparent, if the exchange is honest. As a history of all bids, payouts and judgments would be recorded on a blockchain. It probably also would do away with the KYC, so everybody could participate. And nobody would have to give away their private data. Thinking about it ... if the smart contract would let users post new bets as…

Such a thing exists (Polymarket) and the whole setup has probably precluded many, many, many people from using it including myself. I got halfway through setup before giving up. By contrast, I signed up for Kalshi and bought 3 contracts in the last 30 minutes. Additionally, smart contracts don't actually solve the primary source of (unaccepted) risk: the oracle.

Did you already have Polygon and a wallet (e.g. metamask)? If you didn't have that, I could see it being a pain too much of a pain to deal with.

It only took me a minute to use Polymarket, but I already had the prerequisites above.

Re: Launch HN: Kalshi (YC W19) – A regulated exchange for trading on events

#73

Post by einpoklum »

tmansour wrote: post #53
brap wrote: post #23

So it's like placing bets? This is branded as if it's some new type of stock exchange when in practice it's just another betting platform, no? Other than fancy UI, how is this any different in practice than oddschecker.com or betway.com (I'm not familiar with those sites, just a quick search)? >inb4 all stock exchanges are betting platforms

There's a fundamental difference between gambling and financial trading. In gaming, you are trading on risks that are artificial, eg. betting on a dice roll or on a roulette spin. Those risks do not need to exist, and they risk solely for the purpose of betting. In the derivatives markets, the risks you're trading on are not artificial, they're already existant. The purpose of markets is to transfer those risks from…

> The purpose of markets is to transfer those risks from people that bear them and need to offload them (hedgers) to people that have appetite for them (speculators).

Considering how Capitalist governments behave in financial crashes, you mean:

"offload them to people who have appetite for slanted bets, or in case of significant losses, to the public who has no appetite for it."

Re: Launch HN: Kalshi (YC W19) – A regulated exchange for trading on events

#74

Post by ruuda »

barnbuilder wrote: post #31

> Before Kalshi, markets that allowed you to trade on economically relevant events were illegal or unregulated. Totally untrue. PredictIt was legal and regulated and well-loved for many years, operating with the permission of the CFTC under a no-action letter. Then Kalshi hired former CFTC commissioner Brian Quintenz and soon, PredictIt was suddenly deemed by the CFTC to have committed still-unenumerated violations o…

Scott Alexander did a post on it too: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-81522

Re: Launch HN: Kalshi (YC W19) – A regulated exchange for trading on events

#76

Post by algo_trader »

tmansour wrote: post #53
brap wrote: post #23

So it's like placing bets? This is branded as if it's some new type of stock exchange when in practice it's just another betting platform, no? Other than fancy UI, how is this any different in practice than oddschecker.com or betway.com (I'm not familiar with those sites, just a quick search)? >inb4 all stock exchanges are betting platforms

There's a fundamental difference between gambling and financial trading. In gaming, you are trading on risks that are artificial, eg. betting on a dice roll or on a roulette spin. Those risks do not need to exist, and they risk solely for the purpose of betting. In the derivatives markets, the risks you're trading on are not artificial, they're already existant. The purpose of markets is to transfer those risks from…

Did the CFTC ever try to regulate the adtech industry?

Was there ever any formal waiver or guide lines?

Re: Launch HN: Kalshi (YC W19) – A regulated exchange for trading on events

#77

Post by Lionga »

tmansour wrote: post #47
dang wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no knowledge about this particular case but that is absolutely not how YC operates or thinks about its business. I've never heard a single comment from anyone at YC along such lines. I'm not moderating this subthread the way we normally would*, but IMO you guys should be more scrupulous about posting snarky smears. * because https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... (edit: for anyone wond…

+1 on this. This is not how any of us operate. Regulation in this space is really tough and thorough - we've been battling through it for years now (also explains why this post is coming so long after the end of our batch!).

The facts presented above make your company look very shady, and this answer is not clearing up anything.

Like this most people will have to assume you really just paid off / bribed Brian Quintenz.

Re: Launch HN: Kalshi (YC W19) – A regulated exchange for trading on events

#78

Post by conformist »

Kkoala wrote: post #3

Is this U.S. only? Edit: Found the answer, yes "Only US residents are currently accepted."

In the UK, betting websites such as e.g. https://smarkets.com/ have often got reasonably liquid & transparent markets for political outcomes and similar.

Re: Launch HN: Kalshi (YC W19) – A regulated exchange for trading on events

#79

Post by tmansour »

clpm4j wrote: post #70

Who are (or who do you expect) to be your primary core of users/customers? I imagine professional trading firms would be your most profitable customers, but it seems targeted or at least designed for the meme stonk day trader? Just trying to understand who actually has this problem that Kalshi is trying to solve.

Our users and their use cases vary drastically....they can be asset managers with acute financial risks, freight carriers protecting against dry van rates dropping, traders looking for alpha, SMBs in Florida worried about a hurricane disrupting their operations, everyday people looking to hedge against inflation, and so on.

Re: Launch HN: Kalshi (YC W19) – A regulated exchange for trading on events

#80

Post by tmansour »

faangiq wrote: post #51

This is one of the most common startup ideas. It doesn’t work. Been tried dozens of times. But seems to have an unlimited supply of greater fools who will invest.

You're right! Lots of people have tried this before. The main source of failure historically has been regulation.

We took the approach of addressing the elephant in the room first. We spent 3 years to crack the regulation case and we got federal approval to make sure we have the potential to get this market to its full potential.

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