This is an update in a series of posts looking at Kalshi trading volume on its July 1st anniversary
You can also read previous posts for its one-year and two-year and three-year birthdays.
One caveat to everything below is that we’re missing market data from 10 days: 2024-10-13, 2024-11-15, 2024-12-10, 2024-12-13, 2025-01-01, 2025-01-04, 2025-01-06, 2025-02-13, 2025-04-01, 2025-05-09.
Top events
In 2023, we defined “top” events as over $500,000. In 2024, the threshold was upped to $1M because there were 60 events over $500,000. This year, $1M isn’t practical because there are 558 Kalshi events with volume over $1M (and 866 markets over $500K) out of 3,740 total events.
So here are the 13 event contracts with over $20 million in trading volume over the past year:
| Event Ticker | Volume | Event details |
| PRES-2024-KH | 272,667,844 | Harris wins presidential election |
| PRES-2024-DJT | 261,464,867 | Trump wins presidential election |
| KXNBA-25-IND | 57,978,220 | Indiana Pacers 2025 NBA champs |
| POPVOTE-24-D | 42,828,274 | Democrat wins POTUS popular vote |
| KXNBA-25-OKC | 35,536,872 | Oklahoma City 2025 NBA champs |
| POPVOTE-24-R | 32,111,546 | Republican wins POTUS popular vote |
| POPVOTEMOV-24-R-B-2.5 | 23,284,043 | Popular vote margin of victory 2-2.99% |
| KXMARMAD-25-FL | 23,268,398 | Florida wins March Madness |
| POPVOTEMOV-24-R-B-3.5 | 23,212,020 | Popular vote margin of victory 3-3.99% |
| SENATEAZ-24-R | 22,406,350 | GOP wins 2024 Arizona Senate race |
| KXMASTERS-25-RM | 22,031,002 | Rory McIlroy wins Masters |
| POPVOTEMOVSMALL-24-R-B1.4 | 20,429,081 | Popular vote margin of victory (0.25% ranges) |
| KXNBAGAME-25JUN16INDOKC-IND | 20,169,693 | NBA 2025 Championship Game 5 |
Eight were election-related (seven for the 2024 US presidential election and one for the Arizona Senate race) despite Kalshi winning their court case extremely late in the election cycle. After launching and then halting markets on September 12th, Kalshi was finally given the green light to offer election contracts by the DC Circuit Court on October 2nd, barely one month before Election Day.
Five of the remaining thirteen were sporting event championships, if we include the Masters Golf Tournament:
- Indiana Pacers 2025 NBA champs
- Florida wins March Madness
- Rory McIlroy wins Masters
- Oklahoma City 2025 NBA champs
- NBA 2025 Championship Game 5
Kalshi volume over time
| Period | Volume |
| Year One (21-22) | 38,749,075 |
| Year Two (22-23) | 119,700,082 |
| Year Three (23-24) | 270,730,577 |
| Year Four (24-25) | 4,552,902,722 |
| Total | 4,982,082,456 |
Elections & sport markets grew the pie
Without getting into a discussion about their legal status, both election and sport event contracts seem to have increased trading in other categories of markets:
| Category | 21-22 | 22-23 | 23-24 | 24-25 | Total |
| Sports | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1,864,635,946 | 1,864,635,946 |
| Politics | 4,868,164 | 6,253,340 | 5,261,622 | 1,702,297,978 | 1,718,681,104 |
| Financials | 11,264,537 | 83,037,437 | 209,721,172 | 131,899,008 | 435,922,154 |
| Crypto | 0 | 0 | 4,565,007 | 325,666,411 | 330,231,418 |
| Economics | 6,225,457 | 19,916,845 | 30,059,010 | 187,102,237 | 243,303,549 |
| Climate and Weather | 6,513,485 | 8,416,173 | 10,154,412 | 167,461,886 | 192,545,956 |
| Entertainment | 1,382,846 | 388,063 | 7,569,453 | 118,864,687 | 128,205,049 |
| Science and Technology | 688,727 | 334,671 | 1,227,284 | 15,863,121 | 18,113,803 |
| World | 1,547,242 | 113,222 | 160,561 | 13,026,870 | 14,847,895 |
| Companies | 0 | 10,815 | 1,602,503 | 11,006,949 | 12,620,267 |
| Elections | 0 | 0 | 0 | 12,340,287 | 12,340,287 |
| Health | 5,760,521 | 954,945 | 238,414 | 1,832,257 | 8,786,137 |
| Transportation | 498,091 | 274,571 | 171,139 | 299,447 | 1,243,248 |
| Social | 0 | 0 | 0 | 392,330 | 392,330 |
| Mentions | 0 | 0 | 0 | 206,389 | 206,389 |
| Education | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6,919 | 6,919 |
Economics, Climate and Weather, Entertainment, Science and Technology, World, Companies, and Health categories all saw massive increases in volume over the past year compared to the previous few years.
Data Sources
Kalshi Market Data and Trade Data are publicly available in their “Regulatory” section.
Kalshi API documentation: https://kalshi.com/api
Here is Kalshi contract data over time broken down by category.
Again, there were 10 days missing from the 2024-2025 data listed above. The Kalshi API did not provide all categories, and assumptions were made about categories based on other contracts, as well as any contract on Kalshi Klear having the same category as the corresponding market on LedgerX. (i.e., KXCPI = CPI)
For Kalshi market calibration, check out the calibration.city website. For accuracy, see brier.fyi.