Online gambling: the easy way
A student gambling on the USA verses Hockey game in class (William Winkelman / The Puma Prensa)
By William Winkelman, Website Editor
Over the last couple of years, a new style of gambling has appeared that has swept the nation. People are betting their money through online prediction markets, like Kalshi. With these websites, you can bet against other people's bets—similar to how horse racing works—except the things you can bet on have a much wider range. This could be anything from sports to how the weather will be to politics.
One of the biggest events on Kalshi just happened during the Superbowl LX. During which the net amount bet was $500,171,547. What's even crazier is that the average Superbowl rakes in $1.39 billion total, according to the American Gaming Association (AGA), but this year they projected about $1.76 billion. This means that most of the money on Kalshi is new gambling and not people just changing their website. On an average day, people bet $200-400 million, with $400-800 million on an event day and one billion or more on a peak day.
Kalshi isn't a new app, as the company started up in 2021, yet it has only gained popularity in recent years. The main reason for this is their massive number of sponsors and promotors, with many influencers advertising it online and promoting the betting. An issue arises as these ads reach children. Maria Carrillo High School student, junior Ricky Osegura confirms that he “get[s] ads a lot for Kalshi,” with other peers sharing similar experiences.
On top of this, Kalshi also aggressively lobbies the United States government to legalize their form of gambling in order to prevent shutdown in some states due to gambling laws. Though, their system seems to be flawed, as the laws they are trying to get around are there for a reason. The way they get around these laws is by being classified as “event contracting” rather than gambling, allowing them to stay working in all 50 states. “Event contracting” means that they are considered financial derivatives, like stocks rather than sports gambling. On top of this, more relaxed laws around gambling in the last few years have made it easier and easier to have this form of sports betting.
Preventing children from having access to gambling is a necessity to prevent addiction or other problems later in life. To test Kalshi’s system, I made an account, and during creation, all they did to verify my age was ask for my birthday. By lying about this, a child can easily get access and get vetted, just as I did, which proves how this system is highly flawed.
Another problem that can happen is people can insider trade and make bets based on what they know will happen, like within the government. Of course, things like betting on the weather because you live there and have a gut feeling is not insider trading as you have public info, but some examples go much further. About four hours before the Venezuelan dictator, Nicolás Maduro, was captured, four accounts were created. These accounts bet tens of thousands of dollars on his capture within the next few days, having extremely high payouts. Bets like this would not be made without information guaranteeing that they would payout. It violates Kalshi’s rules and is illegal under normal betting situations. Laws need to be invented for something like this as without laws, government insiders and other people could bet on events or even that they would say a phrase. Something like this can cause them to win a bet, netting them or companions money and the public a loss.
Overall, with the new rise in gambling, people need to remember to bet responsibly or they could risk losing a lot of money, similar to someone who bet $2 million dollars on the Patriots for the Superbowl this year. Gamble responsibly, or don’t at all.