Somewhere between a hedge fund and a sportsbook, a new industry has emerged that lets participants risk real money on event outcomes; like who will win the next election, whether a hurricane will make landfall, or which team wins tonight's game. It's called a prediction market. Its biggest players, Kalshi and Polymarket, who have attracted multibillion-dollar valuations and reported tremendous fundraising targets, are quickly drawing attention within the financial sector and may soon be headed for Wall Street.
Their executives insist this isn't gambling. They call it "information discovery." They call it "event contracts." They call it "trading."
From Inspire's values-based perspective, however, the data raises a different question about whether the economic and behavioral substance resembles gambling regardless of the regulatory label.
Kalshi launched in 2018 as a small, CFTC-regulated exchange allowing Americans to trade "event contracts" on things like weather and economic data. Polymarket launched around the same time on blockchain infrastructure, initially operating offshore and blocked from serving U.S. customers after the CFTC fined it $1.4 million in 2022 for running an unregistered derivatives platform.
Both platforms found their breakout moment in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Polymarket alone reported over $3.5 billion in trading volume during the election cycle, turning both companies from niche curiosities into venture capital darlings. In July 2025, Polymarket paid $112 million to acquire QCEX, a CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange, specifically to relaunch as "Polymarket US" and legally re-enter the American market it had been locked out of for four years. The CFTC granted its approval that November.
What began as a workaround for election junkies and economists has evolved into a mass-market event-contract product that increasingly competes for the same consumers and events as traditional sports betting.
These are not the numbers of a niche financial curiosity. They are the numbers of an industry scaling faster than online sports betting did after the Supreme Court's 2018 repeal of the federal sports betting ban, an event that itself produced $16.96 billion in revenue in 2025.
Kalshi and Polymarket describe their products as tools for hedging risk and discovering the market's true probability of an event. In practice, the overwhelming majority of activity on both platforms is retail speculation on sports outcomes, exactly the same behavior that defines a sportsbook.
Addiction specialists are not buying the rebrand. Experts at Henry Ford Health's Maplegrove Center have warned that prediction market apps trigger the same brain reward circuits as any other form of gambling and pose a particular risk to the still-developing minds of teenagers. One recovering gambler described the danger bluntly: "I can go down to a casino or open up an app and go onto a prediction market, and I can gamble $10,000 in one second."
The user interface reinforces the comparison. Both platforms mirror the design language of sports betting apps: colorful odds boards, live in-game price movement, push notifications, and one-tap wagering. Lawmakers in Minnesota and elsewhere have cited exactly this resemblance, along with concerns about underage users and the possibility of insider trading on event contracts, in moving to regulate or ban the platforms under existing gambling law. At least 18 states have taken such action as of mid-2026, with mixed results in federal court, as Kalshi leans on its federal CFTC designation to preempt state gambling regulators, with lawmakers from 44 states contacting the CFTC to challenging their authority to regulate these event contracts.
The parallel to traditional gambling is not just behavioral, it's statistical. Inspire's research into the broader gambling industry has found that sports betting operators and online gambling industries spent over $3.9 billion on advertising in 2025, much of it targeting young adults during live sporting events, and that the National Council on Problem Gambling recorded a 45% increase in helpline calls in states following the launch of legal sports betting. Roughly 6 million Americans meet DSM-5 clinical criteria for gambling disorder, and problem gamblers, who make up only 2–3% of all gamblers, generate an estimated 30–40% of the entire industry's revenue. Whether the wager is placed on a slot machine, at a blackjack table, or a Kalshi "event contract" tied to tonight's game, the underlying mechanism, and the underlying harm, is the same.
Here is where prediction markets stop being a curiosity for values-based investors and start becoming a live portfolio concern.
Kalshi's co-founders, Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, have become billionaires on paper as their combined 20–25% ownership stake rode the company's valuation from $11 billion to $22 billion in three months, with a $40 billion round reportedly in motion by summer 2026. As of June 2026, Kalshi had held informal talks with investment banks about a public listing, though CEO Mansour has stated an IPO would not happen before 2027. At its reported valuation, a future Kalshi IPO could potentially rank among the larger fintech debuts in recent years.
Polymarket's path to public markets may be even more direct. Its relationship with Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which already operates the NYSE, has fueled speculation that Polymarket could pursue a direct listing on the exchange its own strategic investor controls, with some analysts pointing to as early as the third quarter of 2027. Notably, ICE, an S&P 500 component held inside countless index funds and retirement accounts, has now committed more than $2 billion toward Polymarket's growth. Because ICE is widely held through public-market investment vehicles, investors in ICE may have indirect economic exposure to its investment in Polymarket.37
There is precedent for exactly this trajectory. DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment (parent of FanDuel) both began as scrappy fantasy sports and betting startups before becoming publicly traded companies with market capitalizations in the tens of billions. Once a gambling-adjacent company reaches the public markets, it becomes accessible, often invisibly, through broad index funds, target-date retirement funds, and actively managed portfolios that simply track "growth" or "fintech" categories. If Kalshi or Polymarket follow that same path, the question for the faith-based investor won't be hypothetical. It could eventually appear, directly or indirectly, in retirement and diversified investment portfolios.
This is precisely why, in addition to Inspire’s existing gambling screen, Inspire is evaluating how prediction-market businesses should be addressed within its gambling-screening methodology as the industry develops.
Inspire Insight’s Gambling screen (defined as any company that generates revenue from gambling facilities, products, or services, with a narrow carve-out for third-party retailers whose lottery ticket sales are merely incidental to their broader business) is intentionally monitoring the pulse of these burgeoning forms of neo-gambling which, though packaged slightly different, still retain the same biblically problematic issues as “traditional” gambling services. This is a prime example of why it is important to look at the substance of the revenue, and not just the marketing language used to describe it.
Kalshi and Polymarket are both still privately held as of this writing, so neither appears today as a directly screenable holding in a public portfolio. But that does not erase the intentional mandate of biblically responsible investors to operate as the “sons of Isaachar” and have an understanding of the times to determine what best to do (1 Chronicles 12:32).
For the faith-centered investor, the emergence of Kalshi and Polymarket is a reminder that innovation can change a product's packaging without changing its nature. A wager on an election outcome is still a wager. A "prediction market" that pays out based on chance and information asymmetry is still, for the vast majority of its users, a bet. As these companies edge toward Wall Street, Christian investors are called to look past the branding, discern the substance, and steward their capital toward enterprises that build rather than extract, that serve rather than exploit, and that honor rather than test the God who entrusted that capital to them in the first place.
"Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ." Colossians 3:23-24
Regulatory Status Note: Prediction markets and event contracts are subject to an evolving federal and state regulatory framework. Certain platforms operate through CFTC-regulated markets, while some states have challenged sports-related event contracts under state gaming laws. References in this article to “gambling” or “betting,” except where describing a legal position or regulatory action, reflect Inspire's values-based characterization and should not be understood as a legal conclusion regarding the regulatory status of any particular contract or platform.
Bringing ten years of experience as a professor at a Christian college, Chris is deeply rooted in faith-based values. He excels as a faith-based writer, adept at crafting financial curriculum with spiritual depth. In his role, Chris is responsible for sourcing and evaluating reliable sources to accurately screen companies and assign them an Inspire Impact Score. Furthermore, he meticulously curates screening categories to maintain clarity and alignment with Inspire's faith-based mission.
All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal.
Somewhere between a hedge fund and a sportsbook, a new industry has emerged that lets participants risk real money on event outcomes; like who will win the next election, whether a hurricane will make landfall, or which team wins tonight's game. It's called a prediction market. Its biggest players, Kalshi and Polymarket, who have attracted multibillion-dollar valuations and reported tremendous fundraising targets, are quickly drawing attention within the financial sector and may soon be headed for Wall Street.
Their executives insist this isn't gambling. They call it "information discovery." They call it "event contracts." They call it "trading."
From Inspire's values-based perspective, however, the data raises a different question about whether the economic and behavioral substance resembles gambling regardless of the regulatory label.
Kalshi launched in 2018 as a small, CFTC-regulated exchange allowing Americans to trade "event contracts" on things like weather and economic data. Polymarket launched around the same time on blockchain infrastructure, initially operating offshore and blocked from serving U.S. customers after the CFTC fined it $1.4 million in 2022 for running an unregistered derivatives platform.
Both platforms found their breakout moment in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Polymarket alone reported over $3.5 billion in trading volume during the election cycle, turning both companies from niche curiosities into venture capital darlings. In July 2025, Polymarket paid $112 million to acquire QCEX, a CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange, specifically to relaunch as "Polymarket US" and legally re-enter the American market it had been locked out of for four years. The CFTC granted its approval that November.
What began as a workaround for election junkies and economists has evolved into a mass-market event-contract product that increasingly competes for the same consumers and events as traditional sports betting.
These are not the numbers of a niche financial curiosity. They are the numbers of an industry scaling faster than online sports betting did after the Supreme Court's 2018 repeal of the federal sports betting ban, an event that itself produced $16.96 billion in revenue in 2025.
Kalshi and Polymarket describe their products as tools for hedging risk and discovering the market's true probability of an event. In practice, the overwhelming majority of activity on both platforms is retail speculation on sports outcomes, exactly the same behavior that defines a sportsbook.
Addiction specialists are not buying the rebrand. Experts at Henry Ford Health's Maplegrove Center have warned that prediction market apps trigger the same brain reward circuits as any other form of gambling and pose a particular risk to the still-developing minds of teenagers. One recovering gambler described the danger bluntly: "I can go down to a casino or open up an app and go onto a prediction market, and I can gamble $10,000 in one second."
The user interface reinforces the comparison. Both platforms mirror the design language of sports betting apps: colorful odds boards, live in-game price movement, push notifications, and one-tap wagering. Lawmakers in Minnesota and elsewhere have cited exactly this resemblance, along with concerns about underage users and the possibility of insider trading on event contracts, in moving to regulate or ban the platforms under existing gambling law. At least 18 states have taken such action as of mid-2026, with mixed results in federal court, as Kalshi leans on its federal CFTC designation to preempt state gambling regulators, with lawmakers from 44 states contacting the CFTC to challenging their authority to regulate these event contracts.
The parallel to traditional gambling is not just behavioral, it's statistical. Inspire's research into the broader gambling industry has found that sports betting operators and online gambling industries spent over $3.9 billion on advertising in 2025, much of it targeting young adults during live sporting events, and that the National Council on Problem Gambling recorded a 45% increase in helpline calls in states following the launch of legal sports betting. Roughly 6 million Americans meet DSM-5 clinical criteria for gambling disorder, and problem gamblers, who make up only 2–3% of all gamblers, generate an estimated 30–40% of the entire industry's revenue. Whether the wager is placed on a slot machine, at a blackjack table, or a Kalshi "event contract" tied to tonight's game, the underlying mechanism, and the underlying harm, is the same.
Here is where prediction markets stop being a curiosity for values-based investors and start becoming a live portfolio concern.
Kalshi's co-founders, Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, have become billionaires on paper as their combined 20–25% ownership stake rode the company's valuation from $11 billion to $22 billion in three months, with a $40 billion round reportedly in motion by summer 2026. As of June 2026, Kalshi had held informal talks with investment banks about a public listing, though CEO Mansour has stated an IPO would not happen before 2027. At its reported valuation, a future Kalshi IPO could potentially rank among the larger fintech debuts in recent years.
Polymarket's path to public markets may be even more direct. Its relationship with Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which already operates the NYSE, has fueled speculation that Polymarket could pursue a direct listing on the exchange its own strategic investor controls, with some analysts pointing to as early as the third quarter of 2027. Notably, ICE, an S&P 500 component held inside countless index funds and retirement accounts, has now committed more than $2 billion toward Polymarket's growth. Because ICE is widely held through public-market investment vehicles, investors in ICE may have indirect economic exposure to its investment in Polymarket.37
There is precedent for exactly this trajectory. DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment (parent of FanDuel) both began as scrappy fantasy sports and betting startups before becoming publicly traded companies with market capitalizations in the tens of billions. Once a gambling-adjacent company reaches the public markets, it becomes accessible, often invisibly, through broad index funds, target-date retirement funds, and actively managed portfolios that simply track "growth" or "fintech" categories. If Kalshi or Polymarket follow that same path, the question for the faith-based investor won't be hypothetical. It could eventually appear, directly or indirectly, in retirement and diversified investment portfolios.
This is precisely why, in addition to Inspire’s existing gambling screen, Inspire is evaluating how prediction-market businesses should be addressed within its gambling-screening methodology as the industry develops.
Inspire Insight’s Gambling screen (defined as any company that generates revenue from gambling facilities, products, or services, with a narrow carve-out for third-party retailers whose lottery ticket sales are merely incidental to their broader business) is intentionally monitoring the pulse of these burgeoning forms of neo-gambling which, though packaged slightly different, still retain the same biblically problematic issues as “traditional” gambling services. This is a prime example of why it is important to look at the substance of the revenue, and not just the marketing language used to describe it.
Kalshi and Polymarket are both still privately held as of this writing, so neither appears today as a directly screenable holding in a public portfolio. But that does not erase the intentional mandate of biblically responsible investors to operate as the “sons of Isaachar” and have an understanding of the times to determine what best to do (1 Chronicles 12:32).
For the faith-centered investor, the emergence of Kalshi and Polymarket is a reminder that innovation can change a product's packaging without changing its nature. A wager on an election outcome is still a wager. A "prediction market" that pays out based on chance and information asymmetry is still, for the vast majority of its users, a bet. As these companies edge toward Wall Street, Christian investors are called to look past the branding, discern the substance, and steward their capital toward enterprises that build rather than extract, that serve rather than exploit, and that honor rather than test the God who entrusted that capital to them in the first place.
"Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ." Colossians 3:23-24
Regulatory Status Note: Prediction markets and event contracts are subject to an evolving federal and state regulatory framework. Certain platforms operate through CFTC-regulated markets, while some states have challenged sports-related event contracts under state gaming laws. References in this article to “gambling” or “betting,” except where describing a legal position or regulatory action, reflect Inspire's values-based characterization and should not be understood as a legal conclusion regarding the regulatory status of any particular contract or platform.
