Comment Text:
My name is not important. What is important is that I am 23 years old, I graduated college last May, and I have lost nearly $31,000 — almost everything I saved working through college — on Kalshi. I am submitting this comment because I want the Commission to understand what this platform actually does to real people, and because I believe Kalshi should be shut down.
What Happened to Me
I found Kalshi through a sponsored post on Instagram. The framing was irresistible to someone like me — analytically minded, following the news obsessively, convinced that my knowledge of politics and economics gave me an edge. This was not gambling, the ads made clear. This was thinking. This was using your brain.
Within three months I had deposited $31,000 across dozens of transfers. The platform made depositing effortless and withdrawing psychologically difficult — every loss triggered a near-miss feeling that the next contract would recover everything. There were no alerts when my losses mounted. No cooling-off prompts. No warnings. Nothing between me and the next deposit except my own judgment, which the platform was expertly designed to overwhelm.
I now have $1,200 in my bank account. I have not told my parents. I have not been sleeping. I have been treated for anxiety and depression that my therapist directly attributes to this experience. I am 23 years old and I am starting my adult life in a financial hole that will take years to climb out of — because a CFTC-licensed platform marketed a gambling product to me and called it something else.
This Is Gambling. The Commission Knows It.
There is nothing about what I did on Kalshi that is economically distinguishable from sports betting. I put money on binary outcomes I could not control or influence. I won sometimes and lost more. The platform was designed — the interface, the notifications, the deposit flow — to keep me engaged and depositing.
The difference between Kalshi and a sports betting app is not the product. It is that Kalshi obtained a CFTC registration that exempts it from every consumer protection requirement that licensed gambling operators must meet. In my state, a sports betting operator must fund problem gambling programs, enforce deposit limits, and maintain self-exclusion registries. Kalshi has none of these obligations. It simply has my $31,000.
The CEA authorizes the Commission to prohibit event contracts involving gaming that are contrary to the public interest. Kalshi's contracts are gaming. My experience is evidence of the public harm. The Commission should use its authority.
What the Commission Should Do
The Commission has studied this industry for nearly two decades while it has grown and the harms have accumulated. I am one person. I am not the only one.
The Commission should revoke Kalshi's DCM designation. It should prohibit retail binary event contracts with no identifiable hedging function. It should immediately require any prediction market serving retail participants to implement the same responsible gambling protections — deposit limits, loss alerts, self-exclusion, age verification — that every other gambling operator in this country is required to provide.
Kalshi will submit polished comments from lawyers and economists arguing it serves the public interest. I am asking the Commission to weigh those arguments against what I have described here — and against however many people like me did not submit a comment because they are too ashamed, too overwhelmed, or do not know this process exists.
Shut it down.
