Kalshi Commands Prediction Markets with Dominant 66.4% Share
One platform now holds nearly two-thirds of the entire prediction market landscape. That's not a speculative bet—it's the current reality.
The New Market Maker
Forget the old guard. A single entity has effectively cornered the forecasting game, capturing a staggering majority slice of the pie. This isn't about incremental growth; it's about market capture on a scale that reshapes the entire playing field. Competitors are left scrambling for the remaining scraps.
Centralization in Decentralized Ideals
The irony is thick enough to trade as a commodity itself. An industry built on the promise of distributed wisdom and crowd-sourced truth now funnels through a primary conduit. It turns out people would rather have a clean, centralized UI than a philosophically pure—but clunky—decentralized alternative. A lesson in what users actually want versus what pundits think they should want.
What's Next for the Also-Rans?
With over sixty-six percent of the market locked down, the strategy for everyone else isn't about winning—it's about survival. Niche focus, desperate mergers, or hoping for regulatory intervention become the only moves left on the board. The house, in this case, has already won. The game now is just figuring out who gets to keep the spare change.
So much for efficient markets—sometimes, they just efficiently pick a single winner and call it a day. A classic finance tale: diversify your portfolio, but consolidate your power.
Kalshi dominates the sports betting and prediction market Volume
Sports markets have become a significant factor in Kalshi’s growth. Kalshi users traded contracts on NFL, NBA, College Football Playoff, and NHL results last weekend. Kalshi broke volume records on both Saturday and Sunday, according to data from the prediction market.
Kalshi’s betting volume on Saturday reached $455 million, while on Sunday, it surpassed $466 million.
Sports made up 94% of betting volume on Sunday and over 90% on Saturday. NFL Games recorded the highest percentage of 28.2%. NBA Games followed with 11.8%. Multi-Sport Parlays took third place with a 10.8% win rate. NFL Same Game Parlays recorded a 6.7% win rate, while NFL Spreads hit 6.0%.
As of January 12, Dune analytics show that Kalshi dominates the prediction markets, with an Open Interest of $314.08 million, a 41.1% locked-in value across 10k active contracts. According to the analytics platform, Kalshi reached 2.10 million trades and a notional of $383 million.
Polymarket trailed closely behind with $289.33 million, a 37.8% increase, while Opinion came in third with $131.03 million, representing a 17.1% increase, indicating a sharp decline following the top two venues.
Smaller prediction market platforms trailed far behind, with Predict Fun at $22.28 million and Football. Fun at $5.85 million, while niche players such as Myriad Markets, SX Bet, and Limitless Exchange each held an Open Interest of under $1 million.
Kalshi launches Combos feature, boosting daily trading volume
As previously reported by Cryptopolitan, Kalshi began 2026 with approximately $291 million in daily notional volume on January 1, nearly double the $147 million recorded on December 1, 2025, indicating ongoing progress.
According to figures released on X, Kalshi processed a total notional volume of $23.8 billion in 2025, representing an increase of more than 1,100% year-over-year, following an incredible start.
The platform processed 97 million transactions in 2025, representing a 1,680% increase from 2024. On December 21, 2025, it reached its peak activity, with a daily notional volume of $381.7 million and 1.5 million transactions.
The report stated that December turned out to be Kalshi’s best month, with $6.38 billion in notional volume as platform activity was dominated by sports betting. The volume in the last week of December alone was over $1.7 billion.
In a separate report, Cryptopolitan reported that Kalshi introduced Combos, a feature that allows customers to combine multiple event outcomes into a single parlay-style contract.
According to Tarek Mansour, co-founder and CEO of Kalshi, who announced the entire launch on social media, Combos processed over $100 million in volume in its first week.
In a LinkedIn post, he clarified that “better pricing” is the reason Combos is gaining popularity so quickly.
According to Mansour, “In traditional financial markets, traders bundle multi-leg options instead of buying separately to get better prices. Combos offer the same price improvement. And like with all our other markets, there is no house: when you submit a Combo, traders compete in the open market to take the other side.”
The report disclosed that the launch coincided with the platform’s daily volume record of almost $340 million and its 50% app growth in November alone
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