Kalshi’s Volume Comes Under Fire, A Bored Ape Burn Has Cap Eyeing Mutants

Kalshi’s reported volume came under scrutiny after Cap questioned how the platform could record hundreds of millions of dollars in daily trading while a chart showed about 17,000 individual participants. Speakers alleged that some market makers were wash trading while receiving fee rebates and trading-linked equity incentives, but they also stressed that they did not know what the trades represented or how Kalshi’s market-maker agreements worked. Beni cited repeated $5,500 ETH trades that he said accounted for 48%–58% of ETH volume on four days; an additional claim about agreements requiring market makers to generate activity was anonymous and unverified.

The discussion distinguished legitimate market making, which can add liquidity, support deeper markets, or hedge positions, from repeatedly trading against oneself to inflate volume. Oxy said market makers commonly receive fee rebates under agreements that separately compensate them for providing liquidity. Kalshi said the Artemis chart showed prediction-market share, not perps, and that it does not pay rebates for crypto prediction markets; it also said its contract and notional calculations are consistent with those of other prediction markets, and that its exchange incentive programs are common and publicly filed when required. Speakers did not know whether Kalshi excludes market-maker activity from user-reward calculations or whether the suspected conduct violated CFTC rules.

The alleged activity’s effects on users were also unclear. Inflated volume could mislead investors or users about Kalshi’s scale, but one speaker said suspected wash trading had not directly harmed them as a user. Oxy said activity on perpetual swaps might not harm ordinary users, while thin liquidity in 15-minute prediction markets could worsen entries or affect payouts; the speakers did not know whether market makers were manipulating those markets or hedging through perps. Bungler speculated that market makers may have shifted activity from Polymarket to Kalshi after Polymarket’s V2 upgrade coincided with a sharp volume drop, but he said he did not know whether either platform’s volume involved wash trading.

Kalshi’s online response to Cope’s question about why anyone would wash trade despite trading fees became part of the controversy: speakers said Kalshi leaders clapped back over the weekend and later deleted a post after an attorney advised taking it down. Cap and Joey warned that aggressive brand posts can create reputational and employment risks, and that “opinions are my own” may not protect an employee posting on an employer’s behalf. Kalshi has raised $2 billion and is not publicly traded; Cap said the latest public-listing timeline he had seen was a filing in late 2027 or early 2028. Speakers expected more media and researcher scrutiny, including possible mainstream coverage or a Coffeezilla investigation. They called the episode an avoidable error that could take hundreds of staff hours and at least low six figures to manage, while disagreeing about lasting damage: it might fade before fundraising or an IPO, though some raised the possibility of much larger consequences without calling them likely.

The Bored Ape burn prompted speculation that NFT prices might be near a bottom, but speakers cautioned that sentiment across legacy collections was weak and liquidity especially thin. The transaction details were unclear: discussion included a reported 20 ETH bid, a previous 117 ETH purchase, and the claim that this was the third Ape sent to the burn wallet. A speaker recalled that after an earlier burn, the floor later rose from under 1 ETH to more than $400,000, alongside roughly $400,000 in airdrop value, but did not claim the burn caused that rise. They called the current burn an odd flex and a possible signal, not proof of a market bottom. One speaker also said a roughly $17,000–$18,000 purchase and burn suggested the NFT retained cultural meaning or clout.

Cap was considering buying one or more Mutants, not an Ape, after the Mutant floor dipped to around 0.82 ETH. He liked some examples but had not decided whether to buy one, two, three, or wait for a confirmed bounce. He thought the floor could still fall to 0.5 ETH or even 0.1 ETH, with another 20%–50% decline possible, given the thin liquidity and wide gap between offers and asking prices. His guess was that Mutants would be worth more than 0.82 ETH at some point within a year, though he was unsure whether that meant a recovery to 1 ETH or a doubling and said he lacked inside information. He saw a Mutant bought for roughly $2,000–$2,200 as potentially worthwhile for community access and ApeFest, but any future perks or renewed demand from ApeFest updates remained speculative.