Jump Trading began market development in Kalshi, becoming one of the first major self-funded trading firms to join the event betting business, which is attracting interest from both Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
The Chicago-based company provides liquidity for event contracts that allow users to bet on everything from elections to sports outcomes, Bloomberg reported on condition of anonymity, citing people familiar with the matter.
The move comes amid explosive growth in prediction markets, with platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket handling a combined $7.4 billion in trades in October alone. Sports contracts emerged as a major category, accounting for $1.1 billion of Carsi’s transaction volume in the last week of October.
Jump’s entry follows signals from other major financial companies that they are considering joining the events market. Cliff Asnes, co-founder of AQR Capital Management, recently said that while Susquehanna International Group has been providing liquidity to Calci for some time, his company is considering expanding into sports betting.
This activity represents a shift in prediction markets, which until recently operated with trading volumes too small to attract established trading operations. Kalsi raised $1 billion at a valuation of $11 billion, up from $5 billion just a month ago. The funding round, backed by Sequoia Capital, CapitalG and Andreessen Horowitz, brings Calci within Polymarket’s estimated valuation range of $12 billion to $15 billion.
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Jump previously operated a sports betting team in London that traded on platforms such as Betfair in the late 2010s, but ended that effort around 2023. Jump Capital, the investment arm founded by Jump Trading’s founders, also backed Sporttrade, an early regulated prediction market.
Cryptocurrency exchange builds platform powered by Kalshi
Coinbase is reportedly developing a prediction market platform that leverages Karshi’s regulatory infrastructure, according to screenshots revealed by technology researcher Jane Manchun Wong. The image shows a fully designed interface with the Coinbase logo, indicating that the platform will be operated through Coinbase Financial Markets, the exchange’s derivatives division.
The platform allows users to deposit USDC stablecoins and trade in various event categories such as economics, sports, politics, and technology. Coinbase executive Max Brunzberg said in August that the company was building a “everything exchange” and was exploring tokenized stocks and prediction markets.
Public access to the unreleased Coinbase platform was removed shortly after Wong published the screenshot.
Retail brokers experience rapid adoption
Robinhood reported that users traded 2.3 billion event contracts from July to September, with trading volume reaching 2.5 billion in October. The company said the prediction markets and Bitstamp acquisition combined will generate approximately $100 million in annual revenue.
Robinhood’s third-quarter total revenue rose 129% year-over-year to $1.27 billion, beating analyst expectations. Chief Financial Officer Jason Wernick said the company had record monthly trading volume in October across stocks, options, prediction markets and futures.
Sneakers participate in event contract
Kalsi announced a partnership with StockX that will add a new category of event deals tied to resale prices for sneakers, collectibles, and other high-demand consumer products. Users can now bet on whether a particular sneaker release will exceed a certain resale price threshold, or which brand will dominate sales on StockX during a major shopping event.
Initial deals include items ranging from holiday sneaker releases and Supreme apparel to Pokemon card collections and Popmart Luv figures. StockX provides aggregated and anonymized market data to inform contract creation.
Tarek Mansour, Founder and CEO of Karshi
“Drops of sneakers, apparel and collectibles on StockX have become defining cultural moments with clear and measurable outcomes, the very real-world events that Kalsi was created for,” said Tarek Mansour, co-founder and CEO of Kalsi.
Regulatory questions remain
State gaming regulators and Native American tribes are challenging the legality of prediction markets in ongoing court cases. These platforms have grown by classifying bets as regulated financial contracts rather than gambling, allowing them to circumvent state gaming laws.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees the exchange, has not moved to suspend trading. While Calci operates under CFTC regulation, Polymarket faces intense scrutiny over its decentralized structure and is blocked in Romania over concerns of unauthorized gambling.
For prediction markets to continue to grow in size, they will need deeper liquidity from participants willing to accept both sides of a trade, a role that companies like Jump Trading and Susquehanna have long played in traditional markets.
