Tarek Mansour@mansourtarek_
On Insider Trading.
Some say insider information can make prediction markets more accurate. But the same argument can be made for stock markets, where insider trading is banned.
Insider trading erodes trust. When people believe a market is unfair, they stop trading. Liquidity dries up, volume collapses, and the market dies. Also, allowing it could incentivize bad actors to leak information they shouldn’t.
So Kalshi bans insider trading.
How do we police it?
Just like stock markets. We spent years building a market surveillance system similar to those used by the NYSE and Nasdaq:
1. Detect: Our surveillance system (called Poirot, after the French detective) flags suspicious patterns in real-time by running trades through pattern recognition models. Insider trades stand out because they often are weird and are bigger in size: people don’t usually commit fraud for $25.
2. Investigate: We have a market regulation team that conducts investigations. They review KYC data, funding sources, prior trading history, and trade rationale. They contact traders when needed.
3. Enforce: If we find wrongdoing, penalties range from warnings and fines, to referrals to the CFTC (and sometimes DOJ) for civil/criminal prosecution.
Transparency helps.
All activity on Kalshi is public. We also report it to the CFTC daily. Because of that, our traders help by sending us whistleblower tips. To those traders, I know some of you are frustrated that we don't tell you what happens after you send a tip. I get the frustration. Legally, we need to keep our investigations private – but please know your help is super valuable.
In the past year, we ran over 200 investigations and froze relevant accounts. Of these, over a dozen have become active cases and several have been referred to law enforcement.
Today we go further:
1. Wharton Forensics Lab: We’re bringing Wharton Forensic Analytics Lab Director Daniel Taylor, one of the premier forensics experts in the country, to advise us. He will help us investigate intricate "cousin of the spouse of the dude at Tesla" insider cases.
2. Brian Nelson: We’re adding Brian, former Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, to counsel us on financial compliance and market integrity.
3. Surveillance Audit Committee: We’re forming an independent committee of market integrity experts like Lisa Pinheiro to provide quarterly reports to Brian and publish relevant statistics.
4. System upgrades: We're partnering with Solidus Labs. Their institutional-grade behavior monitoring and pattern recognition tools will be added to our systems.
5. Robert DeNault as Head of Enforcement: Bobby is a force of nature and a self-professed financial crime nerd. He was a white-collar criminal attorney and spent law school studying presidential investigations and the Panama Papers. He’s also a great guy - we love Bobby.
All industries have bad actors and no system is perfect, Kalshi's included. But we are committed to improving daily. Lots of work ahead!
