Toàn văn đối thoại với nhà sáng lập Kalshi: Quy định, kiện tụng và 200 tỷ, tại sao chúng tôi chọn "con đường khó khăn nhất"

Video Author: John Collison

Compilation: Peggy, BlockBeats

Editor's Note: Over the past few years, prediction markets have evolved from a relatively niche financial experiment to a central topic in discussions about technology, finance, and public policy.

The reason for their widespread attention is not only the inherent appeal of "betting on the future," but also because, against a backdrop of social media amplifying noise, frequent polling inaccuracies, and declining trust in traditional information systems, a more fundamental question has emerged: Could market prices become a signaling mechanism closer to reality than opinions, emotions, and narratives?

This conversation revolves precisely around this question. Participants include Stripe co-founder John Collison, Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang, and Kalshi's two co-founders, Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara.

Kalshi's two co-founders, Tarek Mansour (right) and Luana Lopes Lara (left)

As one of the most representative compliant prediction market platforms in the US, Kalshi rapidly gained popularity during the 2024 US election. Before this breakout, it had already undergone years of back-and-forth negotiations with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and ultimately, through a key lawsuit, opened the door for the legalization of prediction markets on US soil.

The first part of the conversation focuses on Kalshi's origin story: why the two founders didn't choose the Silicon Valley common approach of "build first, ask later," but insisted on "compliance first, growth later"; why they were willing to endure the pressure of lengthy approvals, layoffs, and external skepticism to secure the "election market"; and how this lawsuit against the CFTC became the turning point for the company's real takeoff.

The second part delves deeper into the operational logic of prediction markets. Tarek and Luana explain the fundamental difference between Kalshi and traditional online gambling platforms: it is not a "house model" that profits from user losses, but an exchange with fees at its core, encouraging liquidity and information to enter the market. They also point out a rather counterintuitive reality: Kalshi's liquidity does not primarily come from traditional large market makers, but from a large number of dispersed individual traders, "super forecasters," and small teams. In a sense, prediction markets are not just a financial product, but a mechanism that directly transforms dispersed knowledge into price signals.

In the latter part of the conversation, the discussion extends further to the future boundaries of prediction markets: from elections and sports to AI, GPU computing power, macroeconomic variables, and policy paths—can more and more real-world uncertainties be broken down into tradable, feedback-generating, decision-supporting market questions? At the same time, a series of unavoidable controversies emerge—how to define insider trading, whether sports contracts amplify online gambling risks, and how platforms and regulators can establish a new balance between innovation, transparency, and user protection.

Precisely because of this, the significance of this conversation goes beyond Kalshi itself. What it truly attempts to answer is: Will prediction markets become the next generation of financial markets, or the next generation of information infrastructure?

The following is the original content (edited for readability):

TL;DR

· Kalshi chose an unconventional path of regulation first, growth later: Spending 3 years to obtain licenses, suing the CFTC to open the election market. The core judgment was that the legal existence of prediction markets is more important than growth.

· The essence of prediction markets is using monetary incentives for truthful information: Compared to polls and social media, markets filter information through profit and loss mechanisms and are seen as a signaling system closer to the truth.

· Ordinary people, not institutions, form the core market liquidity: Over 95% of matching comes from dispersed users and super forecasters, not traditional market makers.

· Kalshi emphasizes it is an exchange, not an online gambling platform: Revenue comes from fees, not user losses; it encourages skilled participants, unlike the gambling industry which restricts winners.

· Elections are the holy grail scenario, but future markets go far beyond: From sports and macroeconomics to AI, computing power, and other variables, the team aims to build a derivatives system where everything can be priced.

· Prediction markets are becoming a new type of information infrastructure: Users are not just trading; they are consuming probabilities; 80% of users primarily use it to understand the world rather than to place bets.

· Behind their rise is distrust in traditional information systems: Polarized social media and inaccurate polls are driving people towards price-based judgment mechanisms.

· Core long-term goal: Improve societal decision-making efficiency, not just be a trading platform. Through continuous pricing and feedback, enable faster formation of true consensus in politics, economics, and other fields.

Interview Summary

John Collison (Stripe Co-founder & Interview Host):

Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara are the co-founders of Kalshi. Kalshi is an emerging prediction market company that gained rapid popularity during the November 2024 US election. To establish the first compliant, domestic prediction market in the US, they spent four years engaging with regulators and seeking approval before officially launching. Today, Kalshi's monthly trading volume exceeds $10 billion.

So, how do you two typically divide responsibilities? But more than that, I'm curious about how you differ in your approach to problems?

Luana (Kalshi Co-founder & COO):

Actually, our backgrounds are almost identical. We both studied math and computer science at MIT, had similar internship experiences—basically no difference. But I'm the very optimistic type, love taking risks, always think things will work out in the end; he is very cautious, even a bit pessimistic. So I think that creates a good balance. Looking back, beyond daily responsibilities, what truly complements each other is this aspect.

Tarek (Kalshi Co-founder & CEO):

Let me add a bit more background. I originally intended to be a trader; that was almost my predetermined career path. If you've met such people, you might understand—they always seem to have an expected value calculator in their heads.

Matt Huang (Paradigm Co-founder):

A very typical trader.

John Collison:

Right, but—

Tarek:

If you're really that kind of trader, you're constantly thinking about tail risks, the worst-case possibilities. She usually doesn't think that way. I think, in fact, this difference leads to good outcomes.

Compliance First, Growth Later: Why Kalshi Chose the Hardest Path

John Collison:

I was about to ask that. Your starting point is interesting; Kalshi couldn't truly operate for years after founding, until receiving CFTC approval. Most companies don't start that way. On the other hand, there's a very common, though often criticized, model in Silicon Valley—the "move fast and break things" approach of PayPal, Uber's early days—get things going first, then add structure and permissions later, seeking forgiveness rather than permission.

So, could you talk about how you started? How did the entire approval process unfold? And I also want to discuss whether this path is applicable to other companies.

Luana:

I think from the very beginning, we were very clear that if you're in financial services or healthcare, you can't take the "build first" route. In finance, once user funds are involved, the cost of problems is huge; FTX is a classic example. Healthcare goes without saying; there are too many disastrous precedents. We wanted to do this the right way. More importantly, looking at this market at the time, the core issue wasn't whether this thing would grow, but whether it could even be legally done in the US. So we decided to tackle this biggest problem head-on first, then move forward. For a long time, many people thought this was the wrong strategy.

I think, before we won that lawsuit about election contracts, the external narrative was always that those who went offshore were doing better, growing faster. But when we won that case, proving our legal interpretation was correct, proving this company could operate legally in the US as we envisioned, that's when things truly took off.

John Collison:

What's the timeline here? When did you start? And when did you win that election contract lawsuit?

Luana:

We founded the company in 2019, joined YC that year. Then it took three years to finally get regulatory approval and launch, around 2022. Later, we won the election contract lawsuit at the end of 2024, and after that, the company truly began to accelerate.

Tarek:

This has two layers. First, a very practical consideration. We felt that if we wanted to achieve real mainstream and institutional adoption, the unavoidable core issue was whether this could operate within a regulated, trusted, and secure framework. After all, this is a complex market involving user fund flows. We had to solve this hardest problem first; that was the path to success.

The second layer is more principled. What excited us initially was that when we wrote that one-pager on Google Docs, listing a series of questions—why are we building this company? Why does this excite us so much? Our answer was: we want to build the next New York Stock Exchange. We want to build a trusted, regulated financial market in the US. We weren't excited about building something similar offshore. The key is, what kind of company do you want to build? Why are you doing this? There are many paths to success, but that other path wasn't the one we truly wanted to walk. We wanted this to happen here, in the US.

John Collison:

You are the first prediction market to receive CFTC approval and reach a certain scale.

Tarek:

Yes, that's right.

John Collison:

And even today, each of your contracts still needs individual approval, right?

Luana:

Right. We submit every contract to the CFTC; they have 24 hours to halt it.

John Collison:

So, they essentially receive a real-time stream of your contract information?

Luana:

Yes, you could say that.

Tarek:

Yes. Getting to today's state of a contract processing network was a very long process. Imagine, when we first walked into the CFTC building, we had this whole concept in mind, and the regulators also had to operate at high speed. Because you're talking about a product without traditional financial underlying assets, potentially facing dozens or hundreds of contracts per week. Of course, we do more now, but initially, this regulatory model wasn't designed for this scenario.

So the process was really like iterating on a product, except you're not building for customers, but exploring with regulators: How should this thing be regulated? What are their concerns? And what can we do to address those concerns?

Luana:

In a sense, it's about finding product-market fit at the regulatory level.

Matt Huang:

So now you're more accustomed to this rhythm. Send out contracts first, unless they explicitly block them. Have they vetoed anything recently?

Luana:

Not recently. The biggest veto was actually the election contracts, which is why we had to sue them eventually. They blocked us on that for two years. But now, we've worked with them for so long, both sides clearly understand the boundaries, and they trust us, knowing that as a self-regulatory entity, we understand what can and cannot be done. For example, we don't do markets on war, assassination, etc. As long as it's within the established boundaries, the whole process is much faster.

John Collison:

So let me confirm, the core of that election lawsuit was: they were generally willing to approve various contracts, but just not contracts on who would win an election, and this type of contract is precisely one of the most popular, especially during US presidential elections. So you sued the CFTC.

Tarek:

Yes. Actually, it was their own rules—

John Collison:

And usually, suing your own regulator isn't considered best practice.

Tarek:

Indeed. Here's how it went: We started pushing for election markets around late 2021, began communicating with policymakers, talking to Congress, regulators. Everyone would say verbally, this sounds good. But later, they never moved forward, and we started sensing something was off. By the end of 2022, they effectively delayed approval until after the election, a kind of pocket veto. That period was very tough for the company; we had to lay off many people. Even harder, the team, investors, even most investors, began losing faith in this path.

John Collison:

Not disbelief in the idea itself, but disbelief in this strategy.

Tarek:

Right, disbelief in the strategy, even starting to doubt the idea itself. People felt things were getting unhealthy, maybe you should do something else? Clearly this path seems unworkable. But we just couldn't force ourselves to do something else, really couldn't. So we said, okay, let's try one more time.

You can imagine, team morale was at rock bottom, everyone waiting for a new strategy. Many left, many were laid off because we had to downsize. Then at the next stand-up, we told everyone, the strategy for 2023 is—we try again.

John Collison:

Meaning, we'll keep doing the same thing, but this time it will succeed.

Tarek:

Yes, exactly that, this time it will work. Even though almost all evidence pointed the other way. I must say, a large part of this was really driven by her. Of course, I also really wanted this to succeed, but my rational brain kept saying, you should listen to these people, this path won't work. But she was more determined. So we tried again. By the end of 2023, they blocked it again. At that point, I almost felt—

John Collison:

Okay, this prediction market thing just can't be done.

Tarek:

Yes, that's exactly how I felt. Then she said, now among all possible options, the only thing left is to sue the government. My first reaction: This is insane. We took it to the board; I remember Alfred, Michael, and Seibel on my side were there.

John Collison:

That is, Alfred Lin and Michael Seibel.

Tarek:

Yes. I remember those board discussions; they basically started with, we must be clear, this is a bad idea. There were many reasons: your opponent is the regulator; you're only twenty-something people; the government has countless ways to move against you if they really want—shut you down, revoke your license, all possible. And this isn't just theoretical risk. Even if you win, you might be dragged to death in the process.

I also remember, before formally discussing with the board, we had an internal meeting. It was the night before contacting lawyers, preparing to initiate the lawsuit, and I suddenly backed off. I said, maybe we should just do a clearinghouse, or focus more on financial products, don't bet everything on this, don't go all in. Then on that call, I don't remember the exact words, but the gist was, what are you talking about?

Luana:

That does sound like something I would say.

Tarek:

I realized then, okay, I can't win this argument. But another part of me knew we just had to do it. Later, we talked to the board, and their response was basically, this is clearly anti-pattern, a bad idea. But many great companies are built on some kind of anti-pattern; there's always something abnormal that happens, maybe this is your abnormality.

John Collison:

That's a good way to put it. Every company ultimately emerges in some new, unusual way, so maybe this is yours. So, what was the legal basis for winning the election lawsuit? Any particularly interesting policy angles?

Luana:

The core is actually simple: the government cannot arbitrarily ban a type of contract unless it determines that contract is contrary to the public interest, and such a ban must fall within specific categories, like war, terrorism, assassination, etc. The CFTC's position at the time was trying to force elections into these categories. They would say elections might be illegal under certain state laws, even citing some state's bucket shop laws, trying to find any reason to block it.

But we were very clear on the law: elections have economic impact, and as long as there's economic impact, they should be tradable on a futures exchange or derivatives exchange. That lawsuit ultimately told the CFTC, you can't just do whatever you want.

John Collison:

So, the so-called prohibited categories must truly belong to those explicitly prohibited ones, and elections clearly do not.

Luana:

Exactly, that's right.

Tarek:

This is very important. We always say the law constrains businesses, but the law also constrains the government.

John Collison:

Right. Matt, you wanted to mention that point about suing the government for two or three years?

Matt Huang:

Yes. I think in the crypto and prediction markets space, suing the government seems particularly notable, but later I found it's