Bankless · Friday, September 25, 2026
Crypto derivatives exchange Kalshi is under scrutiny following allegations of wash trading, particularly on its Ethereum perpetual market. A Twitter user, Benny, presented evidence suggesting a massive volume-to-open interest dislocation, identical trade sizes, and an inflated contract count on prediction markets. While Kalshi has stated the CFTC is not investigating, the detailed accusations and subsequent Wall Street Journal report have cast a shadow over the platform's trading practices.
“It's easy to have 96% market volume dominance when three quarters of your volume is wash traded.”
“Point number one, there's a massive dislocation between ETH volume and open interest on the ETH market.”
“The Wall Street Journal reported on this and found nearly 1 million near-identical trades at $5,500 with more than $5 billion of volume traded in that size in that same month.”