(Bloomberg) — Donald Trump Jr. has taken on a role advising prediction market Kalshi, casting the betting site and others like it as a superior source of assessing the state of politics and elections.
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Trump Jr., 47, announced the move in an X post on Monday, noting that his family and friends used Kalshi to know when his father, President-elect Donald Trump, clinched the 2024 US presidential election. Tarek Mansour, Kalshi’s chief executive officer, confirmed the appointment and said Trump Jr. will advise on strategy, including on how to expand.
Prediction markets are playing an increasingly visible role in American political discourse, notably on social media, where their real-time swings are often linked to news events in an effort to influence momentum. For months leading up to the 2024 election, prediction markets including Kalshi showed Trump as a favorite over Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, even as polls cast the race as a toss-up.
“He’s been speaking directly to the American people,” Mansour said of Trump Jr. in an interview. “Prediction markets and Twitter are very, very intertwined.”
Regulated political prediction markets like Kalshi are relatively new to the US. Kalshi has led the charge in letting retail traders bet on the outcome of nearly any possibility, filing hundreds of new contracts for trading in the past year. Recent markets on Kalshi include “who will Biden pardon?” and “how many executive orders will Trump issue on Day 1?”
Regulatory Tussle
Kalshi will link up with a member of the president-elect’s immediate family as the industry tussles with regulators over whether these markets should be available to US bettors at all.
Proponents argue they deliver a more objective view of future events. Detractors say they skew toward male users — with regulators concerned that their pricing can affect real-world outcomes. Other event contracts exchanges have recently launched, testing the limits of regulatory bans on trading related to war, terrorism, gaming, assassination and actions prohibited under state or federal law.
Still, Trump’s decisive victory over Harris was widely seen as a vindication.
Trump Jr. will add to notable conservative names and businesses in Kalshi’s orbit. Billionaire Republican donor Charles Schwab is an investor in Kalshi. His granddaughter Samantha Schwab, who worked in business development at Kalshi for more than a year, was recently nominated to be deputy chief of staff at the Treasury Department under Trump. Mansour posted a photo of himself with Trump shortly after his election victory in November.
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