We may be four years removed from the meme stock mania of the pandemic, but the line between investing and gambling has never been more blurred. This time around, the culprit isn’t stocks like GameStop or even crypto sh*tcoins like the beloved Fartcoin, but prediction markets.
Those carefully tracking the presidential odds of the 2024 election might have thought that Polymarket and Kalshi would recede into the shadows after November, ready to emerge again in four years like a cash-crazed groundhog. And to some degree, they would have been right—app downloads have plummeted for both platforms. But as the offshore Polymarket plots its re-entry into the U.S. under (ahem) more favorable regulatory conditions, Kalshi is trying to rewrite regulations altogether.
