Kalshi Expands 15-Minute Markets Beyond Crypto With Gold and Silver — Barrons.com

By Nick DevorKalshi is launching new markets on Monday that allow traders to predict whether the price of gold and silver will go up or down in a 15-minute window, after trading volumes in similar contracts tied to the value of cryptocurrencies saw exponential growth this year.The prediction market's ambition is to have 15-minute markets tied to equities. Short-timeframe contracts on gold and silver prices are a step toward that goal."Until now, the shortest expiry a retail trader could reasonably access in metals was measured in days or months," Kalshi said in a press release. "15-minute contracts compress that window to the timeframe traders are actually reacting to, such as a CPI print, a Fed headline, or a move in the dollar."Fifteen-minute contracts tied to cryptocurrencies, from Bitcoin to Dogecoin, ask whether the price of an asset will be up or down by the end of a 15-minute window. Trading of the contracts on Kalshi has skyrocketed since their launch in December.According to the firm, its 15-minute crypto markets saw $53.8 million in trading volume in January. In April, they generated $743 million. Last month, they generated $4.8 billion.Kalshi is hoping to see the same interest in 15-minute markets tied to gold and silver. The platform debuted contracts tied to the metals and other physical commodities like wheat and lithium in April, but trading in those markets has been negligible: just $46 million in July. Meanwhile, contracts tied to sporting events and "combos" — individual contracts linked together like parlay bets — accounted for $32 billion, or 83%, of total July trading volume, according to Dune."We have all these different prediction market timeframes that you can trade on. You have 15-minute, hourly, daily, even yearly. Then we have this whole other segment of perpetuals now, where you can say 'I want to trade it for as long as I prefer,'" says Catherine Sullivan, Kalshi's head of product. "The ultimate lever here is: What amount of time do you feel is the best fit for your trading habit?"This was already possible with traditional futures contracts that retail and institutional traders are familiar with, but Kalshi believes its event contracts are easier for retail traders to get their head around."All you need is a Kalshi account and then a view on whether it's going to go up or down within a specific timeframe," Sullivan says, "versus futures and options where you often have to set up new accounts, go through trainings, understand all this terminology. So these are very efficient markets overall, and we're very excited to bring them to more assets."Assets with 15-minute markets could eventually include equities, such as Apple stock. That's the ambition, Sullivan says — pending regulatory approval. She declined to comment on the approval process with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates the platform, but says that "given the ultimate vision is to allow users to trade anything they want in any timeframe they want, this would fall into the natural strategy. It's just a question of will we be allowed to list it or not."Write to Nick Devor at [email protected] content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.