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- š³ Daily Edition: Kalshi Just Got Put on Blast
š³ Daily Edition: Kalshi Just Got Put on Blast
Wash trading, bad accounting and The Wall Street Journal.
Beluga & Aidan Carney Skytt
September 23, 2026
For those who havenāt been on CT over the last few days, a Swiss crypto founder named Beni got into a public feud with IcoBeast, and Kalshi got caught in the middle. As a result, some of Kalshiās dirty laundry was left out for everyone to see, a public apology was issued and the Wall Street Journal wrote an article on the situation. Hereās the full storyā¦
It started when IcoBeast, a Kalshi team member and well-known crypto influencer, tweeted a chart showing that Kalshi had 96.7% market share of crypto prediction markets. Beni responded, accusing Kalshi of faking its volume. That kicked off a war between the two of them.
The Tweet that started it all via @beniduboss
Beni proceeded to write a thread with receipts alleging that Kalshi was not only wash trading its prediction markets, but also misrepresenting the amount of money being traded by counting the number of contracts traded as dollars of volume.
Then things got even worse for Kalshi. Beni turned his attention to its perpetual futures markets and found some extremely suspicious trading patterns that he argued were inflating its reported perp volume.
You can read the whole thread here. These are the highlights:
Kalshiās ETH perpetual showed about $539 million in 24-hour volume against $3.1 million of open interest, meaning the full book turned over roughly 174 times in a day.
Kalshiās public leaderboard listed a largest ETH perp position of about $17,600, far smaller than the reported daily volume would suggest.
Kalshi filed paperwork with the CFTC that gives eligible makers a 0.3 basis point rebate while takers pay 0.3 basis points. That nets to zero fees between the two sides and makes wash trading cheap.
Bloomberg reported that Jump Trading would take equity in Kalshi in exchange for providing liquidity, giving both sides a reason to keep reported activity high.
After the thread, IcoBeast apologized but the damage was already doneā¦
via @icobeast on X
Beniās final move was working with The Wall Street Journal on a story about Kalshi. You can read it here.
Bears in shambles
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The Beluga intern has been hard at work gathering all the most important crypto news stories so you have them in one place!
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