Interactive Brokers enters the prediction market! One-stop connection to Kalshi and CME, allowing brokerage clients to place orders

Major brokerage firm Interactive Brokers consolidates multiple services and launches a brand-new prediction market trading platform. Wall Street has officially moved into event contracts, but it will still have to face strict regulatory challenges such as insider trading in the future.

Interactive Brokers officially enters the prediction market, integrating Kalshi and CME services

Global major electronic brokerage firm Interactive Brokers (Interactive Brokers) announced the launch of a new prediction market trading platform, integrating event-based trading products such as Kalshi, Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), and ForecastEx into a single interface—allowing users to participate in prediction market trading directly through their existing brokerage accounts.

According to official details, the platform will in the future offer a range of event contracts covering interest rate decisions, inflation data, election results, energy markets, and major global events. Users will also be able to trade stocks, futures, options, cryptocurrencies, and prediction market products within the same system.

Kalshi’s valuation soars as Wall Street starts reevaluating prediction markets

Prediction market platform Kalshi has surged rapidly over the past year. Earlier this year, it completed a $1 billion funding round, reaching a valuation of $22 billion, making it one of the most closely watched emerging financial platforms on Wall Street recently.

Kalshi’s biggest standout is that it is regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), enabling it to legally offer event contract trading services to U.S. users. Compared with crypto-native prediction markets like Polymarket, Kalshi is more easily able to attract traditional financial institutions and large pools of capital.

With Interactive Brokers directly integrating Kalshi and CME, it also shows that Wall Street is beginning to treat event-based trading as a new category of financial products. Some traders have even started to view prediction markets as an important tool for monitoring market sentiment, policy direction, and overall economic changes.

Prediction markets are gradually becoming an entry point for financial information and trading decisions

In the past two years, geopolitical conflicts around the world have intensified, Federal Reserve policy changes have been frequent, and on top of that, market volatility has continued to worsen—driving investors’ demand for real-time risk pricing to grow rapidly.

Compared with traditional analysis reports, which often have a time lag, prediction market prices change in real time as news and market sentiment evolve. As a result, more and more funds and trading institutions are starting to treat them as a supporting decision-making tool. Investors can now directly place bets through event contracts on whether the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates, whether U.S. CPI will be higher than expected, and even on international conflicts and election outcomes.

Meanwhile, the crypto industry has long viewed prediction markets as one of the important blockchain application scenarios. Over the past year, Polymarket became a big hit due to contracts related to the U.S. presidential election, Middle East conflicts, and Federal Reserve policies—prompting more traditional financial institutions to reassess the business value of event markets.

Regulatory and insider-trading controversies continue to heat up

However, the rapid expansion of prediction markets has also brought regulatory issues back into the spotlight. Recently, the United States has seen cases in which military personnel reportedly used confidential information to profit from Polymarket trading, drawing major attention from Congress and regulatory authorities.

• Related news: A U.S. active-duty service member was arrested! Allegedly involved in insider trading related to Venezuela operations, profiting $400k on prediction markets

Some regulators worry that the line between prediction markets and gambling markets is gradually becoming blurred; supporters argue that event markets can improve information efficiency and risk-pricing capabilities—potentially reflecting the market’s true expectations even better than traditional polls and research reports.

With major brokerages such as Interactive Brokers officially entering the space, prediction markets will very likely develop from fringe products into one of Wall Street’s mainstream financial tools in the future.

This article was generated by Crypto Agent, which aggregates information from various parties, and has been reviewed and edited by “Crypto City.” It is still in the training stage and may contain logical biases or information errors. The content is for reference only and should not be considered investment advice.