Kalshi weekly open interest hits $810 million after BTCPERP launch

Kalshi’s CFTC-approved perpetual contracts were reported by CNBC to have surpassed $1 billion in trading volume within a week of launch, with Kalshi crypto head John Wang saying on X that the product had not yet been publicly released and that prediction markets took 3.5 years to reach similar volume. The claim quickly drew skepticism from Polymarket’s Mustafa Aljadery and other community members, who pointed to Kalshi open interest of about $4.5 million and argued the trading figure may reflect zero-fee or leveraged activity rather than sustained capital committed on the platform. The scrutiny follows Kalshi’s June 3 launch of 13 perpetual contracts tied to major digital assets including Bitcoin and Ethereum after receiving CFTC approval on May 29. Earlier, Kalshi had also reached a record $810 million in weekly open interest after debuting BTCPERP, underscoring both the scale of its broader market activity and the debate over how to interpret early volume in its new crypto products.