As Congress considers raising the Debt Ceiling yet again, Kalshi and PredictIt traders have different takes on whether (or rather when) Congress will take action this week.
While their respective binary contracts operate similarly, the platforms themselves differ a great deal:
- PredictIt is a prediction market. There are limits to both market size and amount invested per contract, and most importantly, there are “no controls” on insider trading.
- Kalshi is a federally regulated exchange for event contracts. These contracts are considered a type of asset class, and insider trading is prohibited.
As of Monday, December 13th at noon, PredictIt “Yes” contracts on the “Will a debt limit raise be enacted by Dec. 15?” market are trading at $0.81/share. Over at Kalshi, the “Will the debt ceiling be raised or suspended before December 15, 2021?” market is decidedly less optimistic, and “Yes” shares are trading at $0.35/share. PredictIt’s market volume (69,395) is roughly half the size of Kalshi’s 139,102 total contracts, possibly due to PredictIt’s market opening on December 8th while Kalshi opened earlier two weeks earlier on November 25th.
Both have very similar contract terms with one exception: PredictIt’s “by Dec. 15?” versus Kalshi’s “before December 15, 2021?” It is possible the difference in “Yes” contract prices could be traders sharing the opinion of the debt ceiling legislation passing on December 15th, which would be a “No” result for Kalshi and a “Yes” for PredictIt.