Kalshi denies CFTC investigation amid scrutiny of ether perpetual futures trading patterns

Kalshi, the CFTC-regulated prediction market that muscled its way into crypto derivatives, is pushing back against suggestions that federal regulators are investigating its ether perpetual futures trading. The company says it hasn’t heard from the CFTC, and that the trading patterns drawing attention are exactly what healthy market-making looks like. The numbers raising eyebrows The Wall Street Journal reported that Kalshi’s ether perpetual futures market has seen nearly one million trades clustered around identical sizes, roughly $5,500 in notional value each. Those trades accumulated over $5B in volume within a single month. The volume-to-open-interest ratio in Kalshi’s ether perpetual market has reached as high as 174x. To put that in context, a ratio that high means the dollar amount changing hands dwarfs the actual positions being held. Think of it like a restaurant where 174 people walk through the revolving door for every one person who actually sits down to eat. In traditional futures markets, elevated volume-to-open-interest ratios can signal legitimate high-frequency market-making. They can also signal wash trading, where a participant buys and sells the same asset to inf...