Is Kalshi artificially inflating its perpetuals trading volume?

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🚨 THE KALSHI PERP VOLUME INVESTIGATION

An X user named @beniduboss dropped what he's calling "undeniable proof" that Kalshi is artificially inflating its perpetuals trading volume, and within hours, an independent analyst confirmed the finding using Kalshi's own public API.

It’s since racked up 412K views.

Here's what his data shows.

On Kalshi's ETH perpetuals market, allegedly the exact same $5,500 trade size appears over and over, not occasionally, but at a scale Beni argues is impossible to explain as organic trading activity.

From Beni

A second analyst, @PhinTotten, pulled the data allegedly from Kalshi's public API endpoint, ran a script to scrub for identical volume over a seven-day period, and confirmed the pattern in roughly ten minutes.

The numbers from the images:

From Phin

Across seven days — September 14 through 20 — the dataset contains 529,318 unique ETH perp trades representing approximately $2.217 billion in notional volume. Roughly $1.230 billion — 55.47% of all volume — consists of trades clustered around $5,500.

And it's not just ETH.

@BrudaSol extended the analysis across multiple markets and found the same dominant clip pattern everywhere:

Beni alleges Kalshi has volume deals with market makers who are essentially incentivized to manufacture volume using repeated identical lot sizes.

"Literally incentivized to cheat," he wrote.

He also noted this is "the least harmful stuff" he has on Kalshi, with more to come.

And now there's another layer.

@FabianoSolana highlighted a deeper analysis of the trading pattern, writing:

According to the analysis Fabiano shared, market-making bots allegedly aren't just trading fixed amounts. They're executing those trades at highly regular intervals — roughly every 117 milliseconds — and the activity has allegedly been happening for months.

Then there's the open interest.

Despite the enormous reported trading volume, the analysis claims the activity creates almost no corresponding open interest.

That's important.

High trading volume doesn't necessarily have to produce high open interest. Positions can be opened and closed rapidly throughout the day. But when you combine enormous turnover, repeated identical trade sizes, highly regular execution intervals, and relatively little lasting market exposure, it raises an obvious question:

What exactly is generating all this volume?

Fabiano's conclusion? He says the activity is wash trading "purely for faking the volume."

We'll see.

I bet Kalshi has a perfectly reasonable explanation for this...

Maybe some back-end reporting API/KPI error...

But it is interesting timing.

A separate but related finding emerged this week. @QuantChad identified that Kalshi's in-house "self-clearing makers" are handpicked partners, many holding equity positions in Kalshi, who can receive maker rebates that offset taker fees.

The allegation is that this creates a structure in which certain high-frequency trading activity can be conducted at little or potentially no net fee cost.

Combined with the $5,500 clip pattern Beni documented — where 55% of ETH perp volume clusters around an identical trade size across seven consecutive days — the alleged 117-millisecond bot pattern, the lack of corresponding open interest, and the fact that parlay volume increased after Kalshi raised parlay fees, the picture is getting stranger.

None of that, by itself, proves Kalshi is manufacturing volume.

But we now have a reproducible trading fingerprint, a potential economic mechanism, and multiple independent analysts finding unusual patterns in the public data.

But again, I’m sure Kalshi has a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything.

In the meantime…

🐳 Whale Watch — Tonight's Game: Giants vs. Rams

Monday Night Football. Week 2. SoFi Stadium. 8:15 PM ET.

The Rams are -6.5 favorites. The total is 47.5. Here's where whale money is sitting.

The moneyline — Rams backed clearly:

10 of 15 active whales back the Rams. Zero have fully exited — everyone who touched this market still has money at risk.

67% whale agreement. 78% strength. 74% confidence.

The Giants side has zero sell volume — the 5 whales who bought Giants haven't blinked either. But the Rams side has nearly 3.5x the net capital.

Clean signal. Rams win is the whale read.

The spread — genuinely split:

7 of 14 active whales back the Rams covering -6.5. The other 7 are on the Giants. Zero have fully exited, everyone still has money at risk.

50% whale agreement. 58% strength. 55% confidence.

The interesting detail: both sides have exactly 12 buys. The Rams side has zero sell volume — nobody who bought the Rams cover has exited. The Giants side has one sell.

The capital edge goes to Rams at $43.7K vs. $31.6K — but this is the definition of a split market.

Reading moneyline vs. spread together:

67% of active whales back the Rams to win outright. But the spread is split exactly 50/50.

That's a coherent view — Los Angeles wins, but not by a touchdown.

Action Network agrees: they like Giants +6.5.

The whale consensus and the sharp handicappers are pointing the same direction on the spread.

Whale consensus right now predicts Rams win. Giants cover.
More tomorrow.

Until then.

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