Lynnae Williams Journalist
Lynnae is a journalist covering the intersection of technology, culture, and gambling. She has more than five years of experience as a writer and editor, with bylines at SlashGear and MakeUseOf. On the iGaming side,...
Read Full BioIn posts on X and LinkedIn on Thursday, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour took a strong public stance against insider trading on prediction markets. Mansour argues that the practice “erodes trust,” and that when traders believe the market is unfair, “liquidity dries up, volume collapses, and the market dies.”
Mansour’s statement is in stark contrast to what Kalshi’s direct competitor, Polymarket, has said about the issue. On several occasions, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan has made statements about insider trading, suggesting it could improve market accuracy, describing participants with an “edge” as a “good thing” and a “sort of inevitability.”
The Kalshi CEO appeared to take direct aim at Coplan’s philosophy, explicitly rejecting it in his statement on insider trading: “Some say insider information can make prediction markets more accurate. But the same argument can be made for stock markets, where insider trading is banned.”
He went on to warn that allowing insider trading “could incentivize bad actors to leak information they shouldn’t,” turning the market into an incentive structure for misconduct.
According to Mansour, Kalshi has spent years building out its market surveillance program, which is modeled on traditional financial exchanges. He also pointed to a new set of partnerships and oversight measures designed to strengthen the company’s ability to detect suspicious activity, investigate it promptly, and escalate serious cases to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) or, in some cases, law enforcement.
Policing Market With Poirot System
In his social media post, Mansour outlined Kalshi’s approach to combating insider trading using a sophisticated market surveillance system modeled after those used by the NYSE and Nasdaq. The company calls the system “Poirot” after the famous fictional detective in Agatha Christie’s novels.
The Poirot system uses pattern recognition models to flag suspicious behavior in real time, focusing on trades that “stand out because they often are weird and are bigger in size.” Mansour noted that most people don’t commit fraud for small amounts.
If the system detects unusual trading patterns, the account in question is handed over to a dedicated market regulation team, which reviews KYC data, funding sources, and trade history.
Mansour says that in the past year alone, the team has conducted over 200 investigations and frozen accounts linked to flagged trades. “Of these, over a dozen have become active cases, and several have been referred to law enforcement,” Mansour wrote in his post.
To scale these efforts, on the same day as Mansour’s post about insider trading, Kalshi announced a major expansion of its enforcement infrastructure through a series of high-level partnerships and appointments.
The company promoted Robert J. DeNault to Head of Enforcement. DeNault joined Kalshi’s legal team in late 2025 after working as a white-collar criminal attorney at White & Case LLP. As Head of Enforcement, DeNault will oversee the compliance department’s efforts to prevent and detect insider trading and coordinate with the Surveillance Advisory Committee and Kalshi’s surveillance partners.
“Kalshi’s growth is built on an unwavering commitment to regulatory compliance … our deep commitment to compliance is what separates us from the pack,” DeNault said.
Institutional Partnerships for Advanced Surveillance
On February 5, Kalshi also announced it had entered into a strategic partnership with Solidus Labs to bring institutional-grade behavior monitoring tools to its platform. As part of the collaboration, Kalshi will use Solidus HALO, an AI-powered platform that layers user behavior and social sentiment data on top of traditional order flow to detect sophisticated manipulation across Kalshi’s 4,000+ markets.
Asaf Meir, founder and CEO of Solidus Labs, highlighted the importance of modernizing oversight for this new asset class: “We are proud to support Kalshi on its mission to reinvent financial markets with event-based trading. At Solidus, we believe that a platform built to trade on the future deserves a trade surveillance partner that isn’t stuck in the past.”
In addition to technological upgrades, the company has enlisted former Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Brian Nelson, to advise the company on market integrity, trading surveillance, and financial compliance matters.
The exchange has also established an independent Surveillance Advisory Committee to support its efforts to strengthen the company’s market surveillance and compliance programs. Committee members include:
- Lisa Pinheiro: Managing Principal at Analysis Group, specializing in data-driven analysis of market manipulation.
- Daniel Taylor: Director of the Wharton Forensic Analytics Lab and a premier expert in fraud prediction.
Kalshi has tasked the committee with producing quarterly reports and publishing statistics related to flagged trades and disciplinary proceedings. These latest moves by Kalshi show that the prediction market is serious about separating itself from unregulated offshore platforms. The company has positioned itself as the leader in combating insider trading and market manipulation, pushing back against the notion that it’s an unpoliced exchange operating without guardrails.
