Kalshi now requires users to reveal employers as it fights insider trading and market manipulation

Kalshi said it will start requiring some users to disclose their employers as part of a broader push to crack down on insider trading and market manipulation on its prediction-market platform.

The federally regulated exchange said Tuesday the new policy will apply to markets it considers at higher risk for insider activity or abuse. Those traders may be screened before being allowed to place trades.

The company said the changes take effect immediately and follow recommendations from an independent Surveillance Audit Committee that reviewed Kalshi’s enforcement systems, monitoring tools, and trading controls.

“For markets with heightened insider or manipulation risk, we now collect employment information before traders can participate,” Kalshi said in a statement. The company said the process is designed to identify people who may have access to material nonpublic information tied to an event or outcome.

The platform’s new measures come as prediction markets face increasing scrutiny. Recently, a Yale and London Business School paper analyzing Polymarket trades from 2023 to 2025 found that only 3% of traders accounted for most price moves. The study highlighted the case of a U.S. Army Green Beret arrested in April for $400,000 bets on Polymarket on the raid in Venezuela to extract then-President Nicolas Maduro, in which he participated. A month later, a Google engineer was also arrested for alleged insider trading on Polymarket.

Prediction markets allow users to bet on the potential outcome of future events, including elections, economic data and corporate and political developments. As the industry grows, critics have raised concerns that traders with insider knowledge could exploit thinly traded or highly sensitive markets.

Kalshi said it blocked more than 100 potential insider trades in the first quarter using new screening tools. The company also said it opened more than 150 investigations, referred more than 20 cases to law enforcement, and issued five disciplinary actions. The company did not provide details about those cases, and the figures could not be independently verified.

The exchange also announced a new risk-scoring system that evaluates markets based on factors including insider-trading risk, market importance, regulatory concerns, and national-security implications. Markets viewed as carrying elevated manipulation risks could face tighter controls or be rejected from listing altogether.

Kalshi said it also added new whistleblower reporting tools that allow users to flag suspicious trading activity directly from individual markets.

Tim Meggs, CEO and co-founder of LO:TECH, a transparent market data infrastructure firm, told CoinDesk that prediction markets have grown so rapidly that questions about their integrity need to be addressed as they are no longer theoretical. “Kalshi's move to require employment verification, risk-scored markets, and whistleblower tools highlights how the sector is starting to build the surveillance infrastructure to match its ambitions,” Meggs said. “That maturation matters as much as the volume numbers.”