Kalshi hires crypto influencer John Wang with prediction market competition poised to intensify

With a crypto friendly regulatory environment in the United States, and competition among platforms offering access to prediction markets, Kalshi said on Monday it has hired John Wang as its head of crypto.

"I’ll be bringing new crypto markets to life, growing Kalshi’s builder ecosystem, and leading the push onchain," Wang posted to X. "The next phase of crypto is about reaching new audiences, and joining Kalshi is my way of pushing that frontier."

Wang is a well known voice across crypto. Kalshi hiring him appears to be motivated, at least in part, by a desire to grow its user base among crypto enthusiasts. "As a crypto-native, Kalshi wasn’t the obvious choice for me at first. I wondered if crypto would be core to Kalshi," Wang also posted on Monday.

Kalshi enables people to wager on the outcomes of specific events. In recent months, Kalshi has augmented its ability to service users who wanted to use crypto to make wagers on the platform. The company added support for Solana in May. That came after Kalshi began letting users fund their accounts with USDC and Bitcoin. 

Although both Robinhood and Coinbase are also looking to establish a footprint in the prediction markets sector, for now, it appears Polymarket is the market leader among blockchain-based applications. In July, Polymarket had over 286,000 active traders, its highest total since April. Since the end of last year's presidential election, when prediction market volumes were at their highest, activity has died down.

Prediction markets' growth potential

Despite the drop off in trading, however, there are plenty of signals suggesting that investors see tremendous growth potential for prediction platforms, which stand to compete with traditional gambling platforms. Through a partnership, Robinhood plans to allow users to wager on the outcome of pro and college football games. 

In June, venture firm Paradigm led a $185 million Series C funding round for Kalshi, with money reportedly being raised at a $2 billion valuation. The company may have also managed to steer clear of  some potentially troublesome regulatory issues. In May, Kalshi said that the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had moved to dismiss an appeal against the crypto prediction platform.

"Election markets are here to stay," Kalshi said at the time. And it appears elections, and how prediction markets have altered the way some interact with the democratic process, seems to played a part in piquing Wang's interest in Kalshi.

"I remember standing in Times Square during election season, looking up at these massive Kalshi billboards, Trump vs. Kamala: a live ticking scoreboard of the odds," Wang said Monday. "This is how society will process truth. Not through punditry or biased takes, but through markets that transform belief into something tangible."