A Polymarket crew member has accused rival prediction market platform Kalshi of vastly inflating its esports buying and selling volumes.
In a now-deleted publish on X, the consumer shampoo claimed Kalshi has inflated its esports quantity to as a lot as $1.7 billion, when the true determine must be round $63 million.
Shampoo’s bio merely says “esports @Polymarket”.
The consumer argued that Kalshi is “inflating their numbers by $1.7b with some generic “Esports” class. The right quantity is the sum of the entire youngsters under, round ~$63m, which remains to be lower than 10% of our Esports quantity.”
They added that Kalshi is double-counting Counter-Strike markets by referring to it each as “CS:GO” and “CS2”.
Each Kalshi and Polymarket have been increasing their esports markets, and though it might be troublesome to inform the precise buying and selling volumes on markets, it’s clear that many customers are taking advantage of wagering on occasions.
Polymarket Beforehand Accused Of Inflating Figures
The accusation comes after Polymarket additionally confronted claims that it’s overestimating its buying and selling quantity. The Polymarket crew member says these accusations had been lies unfold by Kalshi.
Matt Huang, CEO of investor agency Paradigm, mentioned a bug in Polymarket’s system means its quantity is being double-counted.
Huang shared a publish from analysis associate Storm Slivkoff claiming that “each main dashboard has been double-counting Polymarket quantity.”
The publish got here only a week after Paradigm led a funding spherical of $1 billion in Kalshi, valuing the corporate at $11 billion.
Primo Information, an X account devoted to information reporting at Polymarket, responded that the claims are inaccurate. The account mentioned that Polymarket doesn’t double-count information, however makes use of the identical reporting strategies as Kalshi.
In a publish on X, they defined, “The first dashboards that present each Polymarket & Kalshi present notional quantity from the taker — which is in line with each other and, once more, no double counting.”
Slivkoff emphasised the difficulty impacts third-party analytics relatively than Polymarket’s inside reporting, replying, “This publish isn’t about Polymarket’s web site, it’s in regards to the frequent dashboards that folks use for monitoring Polymarket quantity.”
Researchers Additionally Declare Quantity Is Inflated
Final yr, researchers at Columbia College revealed a paper titled “Community-Primarily based Detection of Wash Buying and selling”.
The authors additionally didn’t recommend that Polymarket itself was liable for artificially inflating numbers, however mentioned parts of the trade’s crypto-based construction made it attainable.
The researchers estimated that “transaction patterns indicative of wash buying and selling started to development upward in July 2024, peaking at almost 60 % of quantity in December 2024.” This fell to round 5% in April final yr, earlier than rising once more to twenty% by early October 2025.
In whole, Polymarket reviews buying and selling quantity of $22.2 billion, with $16.2 billion of that within the final yr. Kalshi, in the meantime, reviews over $41 billion in all-time quantity, with over $39 billion of that within the final twelve months.
Nick Preszler of Melee Markets argues that a greater system of monitoring quantity is required. In a publish on X, he gave an instance of the issue, stating, “(I)f a consumer buys $10 price of contracts at .1c every, they’re risking $10, however get credited for $10,000 of quantity as a result of they’ve bought 10,000 contracts.”
Whereas most which have claimed volumes are inflated say the businesses aren’t intentionally manipulating the figures, the Polymarket crew member claims Kalshi is mendacity on objective relating to its esports markets. Kalshi has not responded to the accusations.
