Phantom launches Kalshi-powered prediction markets for US users

Kalshi operates as a CFTC-regulated exchange for event contracts, a status that has let it sidestep the patchwork of state gambling laws that shut down predecessors like PredictIt. Its sports and political contracts have drawn lawsuits from state regulators arguing the products amount to unlicensed betting. Phantom, a Solana-based wallet with more than 20 million users, built its business on token trading and NFTs before adding this federally regulated layer.

Eligible US Phantom users can now open Kalshi event contracts, including 15-minute Bitcoin price settlements funded through the CASH stablecoin, without leaving the wallet or opening a separate Kalshi account. The October 23 rollout is staged, so not every user gets immediate access, and Phantom gains a new reason for people to keep funds parked in-app. Kalshi gets a distribution channel reaching millions of crypto-native traders who might never have signed up directly.

Folding CFTC-licensed betting products into a self-custody wallet blurs a line crypto infrastructure has mostly avoided: Phantom becomes a storefront for a regulated financial product rather than just a key manager. That sits awkwardly next to the state-level legal fights over whether Kalshi's contracts are gambling at all. Whether federal oversight is enough to settle that question, or merely postpones a reckoning state regulators want to force, remains genuinely contested.

Kalshi's crypto contract volume reached $10.8 billion in the 30 days before October 27, 2026, up 19.6%, a pace that will shape how aggressively Phantom pushes the staged rollout to remaining users. Ongoing state lawsuits against Kalshi, and any CFTC response to them, will determine whether this wallet-embedded model expands nationally or gets constrained market by market before it scales further.