A trading halt and subsequent instability created chaos on Pope betting markets at Kalshi. Also, a longshot won and the favorite did not, poking a hole in Kalshi's "source of truth" narrative.
Your critique of the Kalshi outage today was fair, but a bit harsh. I have been a customer of Betfair for many years and while rare, these outages do occur; even my stock broker has gone down at times. It is ironic that this happened with the pope prediction market because that would have existed even seven years ago well before all this sports Kalshi controversy. I would point out that unlike dealing with a bookmaker if one side loses on the outage, the other side wins. This pope prediction market was unlike sporting events which feature continually changing on field events that move the odds. You mentioned positions at 100/1; those winners were not hurt by the outage. The losers on the other side who lay that big number were probably market makers. They were never going to hedge out. True this would’ve been a more dynamic situation if it happened during say the Super Bowl, but as I noted, even when I try to buy stocks or options. it is a rare but not unknown risk. Point is stuff like this happens online. I have been betting sports for over 60 years and Kalshi represents a major change. For the first time ever from any USA location, it is just as easy to safely play (and collect on) five figure sports bets as it is to buy a stock; there is no penalty for winning; in addition for the first time ever, Kalshi pays money market rates on all balances, including open bets. Thus a future $ 10 K Super Bowl bet on the Steelers would pay interest until next February, even if the Steelers never made the playoffs. I find it fascinating that
there is almost a blackout about the advantages of betting with Kalshi. My guess is that it represents a threat to legal bookmakers like Circa which sponsors shows.
We just published an article today about the pitfalls of prediction markets based on public speculation instead of relevant public data. Conclave was too secretive for a real-time forecast comparable to the presidential election.
Yeah, that was odd. Polymarket also had a different reaction to the white smoke and the pope’s announcement. Parolin didn’t surge on that platform like he did on Kalshi
Your critique of the Kalshi outage today was fair, but a bit harsh. I have been a customer of Betfair for many years and while rare, these outages do occur; even my stock broker has gone down at times. It is ironic that this happened with the pope prediction market because that would have existed even seven years ago well before all this sports Kalshi controversy. I would point out that unlike dealing with a bookmaker if one side loses on the outage, the other side wins. This pope prediction market was unlike sporting events which feature continually changing on field events that move the odds. You mentioned positions at 100/1; those winners were not hurt by the outage. The losers on the other side who lay that big number were probably market makers. They were never going to hedge out. True this would’ve been a more dynamic situation if it happened during say the Super Bowl, but as I noted, even when I try to buy stocks or options. it is a rare but not unknown risk. Point is stuff like this happens online. I have been betting sports for over 60 years and Kalshi represents a major change. For the first time ever from any USA location, it is just as easy to safely play (and collect on) five figure sports bets as it is to buy a stock; there is no penalty for winning; in addition for the first time ever, Kalshi pays money market rates on all balances, including open bets. Thus a future $ 10 K Super Bowl bet on the Steelers would pay interest until next February, even if the Steelers never made the playoffs. I find it fascinating that
there is almost a blackout about the advantages of betting with Kalshi. My guess is that it represents a threat to legal bookmakers like Circa which sponsors shows.
We just published an article today about the pitfalls of prediction markets based on public speculation instead of relevant public data. Conclave was too secretive for a real-time forecast comparable to the presidential election.
People thought they had info because late money came in on Parolin. 🤷♂️
Yeah, that was odd. Polymarket also had a different reaction to the white smoke and the pope’s announcement. Parolin didn’t surge on that platform like he did on Kalshi