At a glance

  • The three bets cost about $173 in total and stand to pay about $9,600, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of public Kalshi data. Kalshi traders had given Zacharia about a 1% chance of getting the job.
  • Kalshi has confirmed the probe but said nothing more. No one has been accused of wrongdoing, and Kalshi has not said who placed the bets.

Kalshi is looking into trades that correctly predicted President Donald Trump would name Zacharia his next press secretary, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing a Kalshi spokesperson. The spokesperson declined to comment further, The Block reported.

The Journal found at least three wagers placed before news outlets began reporting the pick at about 2 p.m. ET (20:00 UTC) on Friday. A $19 bet made at about 10:42 p.m. ET on Thursday is set to pay $1,896 once the market closes. Two more, of about $74 and $80, went in at about 1:41 p.m. ET on Friday and are expected to pay $3,689 and $4,023, according to the report.

Trump confirmed the appointment in a Truth Social post on Friday afternoon, naming Zacharia to succeed Karoline Leavitt, The Block said. “I am confident that Katie will deliver strong results for our Country,” he wrote. Zacharia is a senior communications adviser at Trump Media & Technology Group and a former spokesperson at the Department of Homeland Security, according to the post.

What is not known

Trades on Kalshi are anonymous to the public, although the company keeps records of its traders’ identities, The Block reported. The White House did not respond to the Journal’s request for comment, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the US derivatives regulator, had not replied before publication, the Journal said.

Small, well-timed bets do not show that anyone held inside information. We have not seen Kalshi’s trade data, and we read the Journal’s article through summaries by The Block, The Verge and Channel NewsAsia, because its page is behind a paywall. No timeline for the probe has been reported.

The August precedent

In August, the CFTC settled with Gabriel Perez, a former White House teleprompter operator who used advance access to Trump’s prepared remarks to trade Kalshi markets on what he would say, CBS News reported. Reuters put the total at about $172,000. Under Kalshi’s notice of the settlement, he agreed to a $65,000 civil penalty and $107,539.02 in disgorgement, and Kalshi suspended him for three years.

The CFTC is also writing the rulebook that governs these markets. It proposed on 9 Oct to treat event contracts as swaps, the CFTC’s swap-definition rule for event contracts. Our earlier coverage includes the NFL’s Supreme Court brief against Kalshi and Blockchain.com’s CFTC filings.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.