By investing $600 per month, a ice cream vendor covers 43% of the rent for his shop by betting on the weather via Kalshi, a U.S. predictive markets app.

Jason Jiang, 37, a former banker, runs the 28wishes shop in downtown Los Angeles with his brother James.
His assessment is simple: the moment the temperature drops below 21 °C, the shop loses about 20% of its sales.
Since April 2026, the two brothers have been wagering $20 a day on Kalshi, a platform where you bet on real-world events—in this case, cold spells in Southern California.
The logic? When weather drives a drop in sales, the bet comes to offset it.
Results: up to $1,500 in gains per month, with peaks of $800 in a single day.
Relative to the shop’s $3,500 rent, that amounts to nearly 43% of the monthly payment covered. These figures have not been audited; they were provided by the merchant himself.
A betting platform ends up being used as an insurance tool by a merchant, with no specific regulatory framework for this use.
Farmers have used CME weather futures (Weather Derivatives, launched in 1999) for decades to protect against frost or drought. Here, an ice cream shop does the same thing with a consumer app.