Kalshi’s new ether perpetual contract logged $539 million in trading volume over 24 hours. The money sitting in open positions at the same time was $3.1 million.
That 174-to-1 gap is what set off the loudest fight the regulated U.S. prediction market has faced since it launched crypto perpetual futures, and it’s the number behind an accusation that Kalshi’s volume isn’t real.
The trades that look too tidy
The allegation came from Beni, a quantitative analyst and co-founder of Stealth Neolab who posts under that name on X. He flagged the ETH-PERP volume-to-open-interest gap and then went a step further, pointing to a string of repetitive $5,500 trade sizes.
By his count, those identical trades alone made up as much as 58% of Kalshi’s entire ether perpetual volume on four separate days. He called that “undeniable proof” of volume manipulation.
The ratio matters because of what each figure measures. Open interest is the total dollar value of contracts still outstanding at a given moment. Volume is the total dollar value of contracts that changed hands over a set window. When volume dwarfs open interest by more than a hundred times, the textbook reading is wash trading, where buying and selling pumps the activity tally while the money at stake barely moves.
A fee schedule that can net out to zero
Beni’s second exhibit was a rebate schedule Kalshi filed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Under it, certain Self-Clearing Members can collect a 0.3-basis-point maker rebate that offsets a 0.3-basis-point taker fee, which works out to a net fee of zero.
His argument follows from there. If trading against yourself costs nothing, the incentive to inflate volume goes up.
Rebates themselves aren’t exotic. Exchanges hand partial fee refunds or cash payments to high-volume market makers to get them to post more liquidity. The question Beni raised is what happens when the rebate cancels the fee entirely.
Kalshi’s product lead pushes back, twice
IcoBeast.eth, who oversees product development at Kalshi, first waved the concerns away on X, saying the platform’s fee structure alone should deter manipulators. Once the thread went viral, he came back with a longer breakdown.
His opening point was a mix-up in Beni’s original post. The Artemis chart cited in the complaint, he said, measured prediction-market share rather than perpetual contract volume.
Why the volume numbers run high by design
He then walked through the reporting convention, which Kalshi shares with Polymarket. Volume reflects the maximum potential payout rather than the cash a trader puts up.
Each event contract pays exactly $1 to the winner, so the industry counts volume as the total number of $1 outcomes on the line. Buy 100,000 contracts at 30 cents and you’ve spent $30,000 in cash, but the system records $100,000 in volume, because that’s what the contracts are worth at maturity.
The headline figure comes out larger than the cash involved. By IcoBeast.eth’s account, the demand behind it is real rather than manufactured.
Who gets to be a Self-Clearing Member
On the perpetuals themselves, IcoBeast.eth rejected the idea that Kalshi handpicks a closed club of Self-Clearing Members. CFTC rules make “fair access” a legal requirement, so any firm that clears the capital and operational hurdles is entitled to join.
“Separately on perps you claimed that ‘Here SCM means market makers that are selected by Kalshi lmfao.’ This isn’t true. Anyone can become a Self-Clearing Member of a CFTC regulated exchange as long as they meet the regulatory requirements. ‘Fair access’ is a reg requirement for us,” IcoBeast.eth said.
He added that Kalshi doesn’t offer rebates on its crypto event prediction contracts at all.
Rebates everywhere, filed in public here
IcoBeast.eth didn’t pretend rebate programs are unusual. CME Group, Hyperliquid and Binance all run them, he acknowledged. The difference he claimed for Kalshi is disclosure.
As a regulated Designated Contract Market, Kalshi has to file every incentive scheme publicly with the CFTC instead of negotiating them privately. That’s the same filing Beni used to build his case.
“I’m the first to admit that it’s early days for perps for us given we’re building a new product in untrodden territory (US perps). But the core difference between Kalshi and offshore perp exchanges is that while other exchanges run deals in the dark, we need to file our incentive programs publicly and so what you see is truly what you get,” he said.
What the rebuttal leaves open
Kalshi hadn’t responded to a request for comment at the time of writing, so the company’s only public position is IcoBeast.eth’s thread. Ether was trading at $2,661.85 as the dispute played out.
His explanation covers the payout convention and the access rules. As posted, it doesn’t take on the $5,500 trades directly, and that was the pattern Beni singled out as his strongest piece of evidence. Until someone at Kalshi explains those trades, that’s where the argument sits.
