The head of prediction market platform Kalshi thinks his company is creating an entirely new professional category, putting full-time event bettors in the same league as Instagram influencers and Airbnb hosts.Tarek Mansour, Kalshi's CEO, drew parallels between his platform and consumer tech giants that birthed novel occupations over the past two decades. Instagram created content creators, Airbnb turned spare bedrooms into income generators, and Uber transformed idle cars into money-makers, he argued in a LinkedIn post responding to a New York Times (NYT) profile of professional prediction market traders."Kalshi: prediction market traders," Mansour wrote, listing his platform alongside the tech companies that "succeeded by unlocking an underutilized asset and building the rails to make it productive."Turning Hunches Into IncomeMansour's thesis centers on information as an untapped resource. Before prediction markets scaled up, someone with deep knowledge of FDA approval timelines or baseball statistics could do little more than "win a debate with your uncle on Thanksgiving," he wrote.Now that expertise can generate income. The New York Times piece profiled traders like Domer, a pseudonymous bettor quoted by NYT who made $2.6 million on Polymarket since January 2022, and Joel Holsinger, 26, who quit his corporate accounting job to trade full time and crossed $144,000 in profits.These sharps, as top traders call themselves, study everything from congressional floor vote attendance to climate models. Some knocked on a thousand doors during California's 2021 recall election to gauge sentiment. Others built custom dashboards to predict Rotten Tomatoes scores.The work pays. Jonathan Zubkoff, a Long Island trader, said he made over $1 million in 2025. Another trader called Iabvek pulled in $2.5 million since November 2024, despite losing $350,000 on a single bet about Romania's presidential election.But this elite group represents a tiny fraction of participants. Analysis of 1.7 million Polymarket addresses showed 70% of traders lose money, mirroring the dismal win rates seen in retail CFD trading where casual participants subsidize sophisticated players.Volume Surge Attracts MoneyKalshi recently crossed $100 billion in annualized trading volume, according to Mansour. Polymarket recorded 491,000 active monthly traders last month, per data from The Block. The sector hit a record $702 million in daily volume earlier this month, with platforms posting all-time highs despite facing regulatory headwinds.The trader influx includes naive money from sports bettors and casual gamblers, creating opportunities for sophisticated players. "Right now, my mentality is just, 'I need to go,'" Holsinger told the Times, fueled by Zyn pouches and Celsius energy drinks.But the comparison to gig economy jobs cuts both ways. While Airbnb hosts and Uber drivers created legitimate income streams, they also faced criticism for low earnings and lack of protections. Prediction markets carry similar risks, with most users losing money.Concerns About Problem GamblingHowever, an academic study published last month found correlations between easy sports gambling access and declining credit scores, rising bankruptcies, and missed loan payments.Insider trading concerns also plague the industry. Domer estimated there was an "85-90 percent" chance a Polymarket user who made over $1 million in 24 hours betting on Venezuela's political situation had inside information. He put the probability at "98-99 percent" for another trader who won over $400,000 on a Google search trends bet.The insider trading issue has exposed a sharp divide between regulated platforms like Kalshi and offshore competitors like Polymarket, with competition shifting away from product features toward governance and institutional credibility."If I made $2.5 million last year, someone else lost that," Domer said, explaining why many successful traders operate pseudonymously to avoid attention from the IRS or angry opponents.Kalshi itself faces court battles, with a Massachusetts ruling threatening the platform's sports contracts even as the sector posts record fee revenue exceeding $2.7 million."Millions of people now actively rely on prediction markets, whether they are arbitraging price inefficiencies to make the market more accurate, or utilizing the forecasts as a complement to their news feed," Mansour wrote, thanking the Times for spotlighting the traders who "made prediction markets what they are today." This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.

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