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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to we fixed it. You're welcome. The show where we take over companies, you come along for the ride and we try to put them back better than we found them. We suddenly live in a world where there's extra investment in real world outcomes. And by investment, I mean real money being put on the line. What will happen next? Will inflation go up? You can make a wager on that. Think you can guess Olivia Rodrigo's album sales? Yes. Yup. There's a market for that. Will I say the word platypus again before the end of the episode? If enough people are willing to stake it, there's probably a place that will let you and the first place you'll look that's likely going to be Kalshi. Today we're going beyond stocks and traditional sports wagers to talk about Kalshi and prediction markets. And the bigger question underneath, can betting on real world events actually make us better people? Because when you care about outcomes enough to stake your own money, maybe you start to care for real. With marketplaces like Kalshi and Polymarket hitting mainstream awareness and adoption, there's a lot of potential for not just what they are right now, but what they could be. That's what we're here to fix. But we're not going to speculate alone. Joining Melissa and me today is Andrew Lebos, senior vice president of licensing at Benzinga. In the investing world, Benzinga is well known. It's one of the most influential financial media and market data companies out there. It also reaches roughly 25 million readers a month. Andrew works across financial data brokerages, fintech platforms, hedge funds and global licensing partnerships. And just weeks ago, Benzinga announced a formal partnership with the company we're talking about today, Kelshi. So this story is breaking as we speak. Andrew, thanks for being here with us. Tell us a little bit more about your role at Benzinga and just a little bit about how the partnership with Kalshi came about.
- [01:46]
B
And absolutely. Thank you for having me on. I've been at Benhoma for seven years. We've built our licensing department from an afterthought. It was six, six products, couple of clients to now our biggest business line. Over 350 clients taking our news and our data and displaying it in their apps. I run the licensing department, SVP of licensing. We focus on primarily traditional fintechs, the big brokerages that you park your money in, you know, the Robinhoods, fidelities, those sort of brokerages. But now with the space changing, going back to the Kalshi Partnership. There are a ton of new use cases, AI prediction markets, private markets. We're expanding very quickly as the innovation grows in the space.
- [02:34]
A
Thanks Andrew. I understood most of that. We're happy to have you with us. I know you're going to help make this accessible for the rest of us. And we're going to talk in some detail for people that are few steps ahead too. Like, like you. So you'll help us balance this topic with your expertise. Because some people are probably going to ask what even is a calshi, even as we're halfway through. So we'll, we'll make this for everybody. Well, let's say let's get into it. So for, for a lot of us, Kalshi seems like it appeared out of nowhere. But it was founded in 2018 by two MIT graduates, Tarek Mansour and Loana Lopez Lara, with a deceptively simple idea. What if ordinary people could trade directly on real world outcomes instead of only trading stocks, bonds, comm or on sports? Sounds like a novelty at first, but the concept underneath it is huge. Before you could go online and predict whatever you wanted, just go on social and spout it off. But there's no accountability. If it didn't happen, oh well, you just went on to the next thing. Trading markets like Kalshi let you put your money where your mouth is. Suddenly that outcome you were so vocal about seems so much more important because you have a literal stake in it. And the reason Kalshi became such a cheap deal is because it is a real market. In 2020, it became a federally regulated exchange. Meaning if I understand it right, trading on Kalsheet is a legitimate and sanctioned form of investing. That's really good for business, but that means a lot more scrutiny and responsibility. Also, should you really be able to trade on anything? Well, no. The company has public policies banning markets involving terrorism, assassination, war and certain violent or socially dangerous outcomes. It also operates with newer parental safeguards designed to prevent miners from trading. So that's good oversight. But companies like Kelshi want to grow and they have to grow somehow. They need more people doing trading. The company's raised enormous amounts of money over the last few years, including major institutional investment rounds that pushed its valuation into the multi billion dollar range. This could get bigger than any of us can imagine. So we're going to jump into it. Kalshi's clearly done a lot of things right since 2018. That's a relatively short time, but it's been around for a few years. So why, why is there Such an appetite right now for futures trading. Why, why is this the moment where, where it just broke open? What do you think, Andrew?
- [04:48]
B
I think it's so popular today because it's, it's something new in the market. It's. It's hard to find something new in the investing market. Right? I mean, if we remember when crypto first hit the scene, everyone was, was rushing to it, the crazy meme coins, the. I mean, it was the Wild West. And then AI hits the scene and it's the news cycle. I mean, still dominating the news cycle a little bit. But whenever something new hits the market and people can make money off of it or potentially make money off of it, then all eyes are on it. I know that it was legalized in 2020, I think that is when it was officially legal. But I think that there's been a ton of investment and a lot of partnerships that have happened. Like now you can access Kelshi Markets through Robinhood. So it's. You don't have to download a new app. It's right next to your portfolio that you are investing in every automated. Every week. You can now invest or trade or bet on anything. So I think that accessibility is why it's dominating the news cycle.
- [05:58]
A
So basically everyone already has it, especially investors or casual investors of a certain age or generation. If you already have the app, you just do one click over and there it is.
- [06:08]
B
It's right at your fingertips.
- [06:09]
C
Now I think it also has to do with just like the psychology of the audience and the client and the consumer. So sports betting, for example, is such a huge market right now, right? Everyone is into these prop bets, into all these different kinds of things. I'm always amazed. I'm a huge basketball fan and we have TC's and tickets and I've gone and the whole row of young guys, my son's age, you know, under 30 behind us, are on their phones and it's all about profits. They don't even care about the outcome of the game. They're like screaming at one player to get off the bench and make one more rebound. Right. You know, that that's the kind of thing. So I feel like in a way that with this open marketplace, you know, it's kind of legitimizing betting in a way and opening it to Andrew, to your point, to the masses, to people that maybe didn't really think about that. Oh, I can actually, you know, bet on oil prices. I can bet on this. I can bet on a company, I can bet on SpaceX, whatever. I want to bet on. And it makes it almost like a financial strategy versus a hobby that can be either great or detrimental. And, you know, like I said, there is that psychology behind it. We've talked about addictive behaviors and gambling and how companies kind of create these experiences to draw those, you know, draw people like myself in, you know, and draw others in. And so I feel like there's a lot to unpack here because to me, Andrew, and this is specifically for your company, around company KPIs, you know, how do you make sure that there's some sort of. And this is your space compliance around. It feels like insider training because, you know, I've been at multiple companies and Definitely we have OKRs that are set and things like, you know, retention numbers and very strong corporate KPIs and OKRs. And if I dropped a hint to my neighbor or my best friend and they were like, oh, I think that they're gonna, you know, I was at startups, you know, I think they're getting ready to IPO or they're. You know what I mean? Like, how do we control some of that? Because I feel like that's the bad press that Kalshi's been getting lately is around, you know, the opening of the street, you know, that, the war types of things where you have the. The soldiers betting on it and, and Congress, you know, betting on things and making money. So what's your thoughts on how to. How are we going to like, manage this kind of marketplace?
- [09:04]
B
I think, and this is all just my personal opinion. This is not Benzinga. This is just my. My personal opinion. I think that in any new market, it does open up and it's the wild west, and then slowly things happen similar to even in business. Right? Like if I think, oh, we should try this, we try it broadly and then things. Scenarios happen and you slowly converge into the final form of it, the ideal form of it. You don't really know the ideal form until you make a bunch of mistakes. And so I think that the same thing is happening in prediction markets where it's the market for everything. You can trade the odds on anything that you could possibly think of. What does that mean? It means that we probably shouldn't trade on the life or death of someone. It means that we probably shouldn't trade if we have insider info. And so I know for a fact that a lot of these prediction markets are adding controls to try and curb some of that insider trading and curb some of the dark sides of the market. This is a broader concept. But I've always felt then the reason that I got into finance is because I felt that the market like traditional finance. I mean, when I joined, there was no Kelshi, it was just the stock market. I thought that the stock market was an incredibly interesting example of the human condition. It's people investing in ideas that they believe in that they think will provide them monetary value. It's people that are trying to monetize other people that are investing, beat them to the punch, get 1% basis point to try and make money off of it. There's people, there's bad actors, there's the enrons of the world who take advantage of others within the market and outside of the market to try and make money for themselves. And it's like the stock market provide a good living and good wealth for your family and good impact on society. If used correctly and if used incorrectly, immorally, it can cause massive harm to one person, millions of people, whole countries in some scenarios, yeah. And it's just like the human condition of like good versus evil. Like when you're evil with it, it causes terrible things. And when you're good with it, it can, it can permeate and help in many ways and innovate society. And I think that this market is the same, you know, like there's, there's use cases that you can better an outcome in your personal portfolio with the KPI markets like you mentioned, right? Like I live in Miami. One example is I live in Miami and Miami is infamous for cybertrucks and Lamborghinis and it's, it's a real stereotype. That stereotype is real. If I saw a hundred Cybertrucks at the 2027 launch, then maybe I would trade that there would be more deliveries for cybertrucks, right? Or if I had a stake in Tesla and I thought that, you know, there was less cybertrucks in Miami, then instead of me selling my stock in Tesla, I could trade that there would be a decrease in cybertruck deliveries that month. And so it opens up a new way to trade or invest in the ideas that you have based on whatever theory or thesis that, you know, any, whatever reason you invest. People have a million reasons why they invest in things. Now you have a different way to access that same investment. And in this scenario, it's a lot more targeted. It could be like, you know, Spotify subscribers instead of buying Spotify, if you think that the market's too high.
- [12:54]
C
Now, I really like that, that example because it did make me think about it from more of a financial perspective because I know similarly, when you have a product and then you're and you believe in it, for example, the idea of investing, for example in Tesla or investing in Apple or investing in one of these businesses, that's what people are used to. And so to your point of investing in a very minute part of that company. Right. Versus know, the entire product line or entire experience line is a very interesting concept. I guess the other thing that I, you know, I am concerned about from a customer's perspective, myself included, would be that, you know, the number, the people thinking that it's as safe as investing in like a company like that versus the, you know, the risk involved because, you know, Kalshee admits that 2.9 losing users for every 1:1 winning, which still sounds pretty good, but that ratio is really 67% of poly market profits are captured by just 0.1% of accounts. So that's for every 2,000, you know, accounts that made nearly half a billion dollars, 1.6 million lost. Right. So like the idea that like you're winning, you know, that like, because we're hearing about in the, you know, in the press, you hear about these people that made, you know, on the straight opening up between this day and this day, made $700,000 on a, you know, on a $10,000 bet.
- [14:41]
A
Yeah. Well, even if it's a lottery ticket, it's a lottery ticket where you got some kind of at least pretend control over the outcome or you're determining the circumstances around that bet. And if you just buy a ticket, maybe you buy a ticket, maybe you put your family's birthdays on it and there's a little bit of emotional investment. But if you're determining all the circumstances around it and you're choosing not any other event that's happening in the world at this very specific minutia or important real world event. That's what I believe in or that's what I'm going to put my money behind. You're going to pay more attention to what's happening there. Support for today's episode comes from Square. Starting your own business is the dream. Running one can keep you up at night when you have payments in one place, inventory in another, reporting in a whole different system, and then you still smile and serve customers. That's a lot. Well, get square. Square helps you run your business without running yourself into the ground. Back when I started my first business, I used square right away for payments. In fact, I still use it. And when I walk into a shop And I see they use Square, too. I can tell it's going to be easy.
- [15:49]
C
I.
- [15:50]
A
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- [16:22]
B
Yeah. And you may invest energy in it happening. If it's close enough to you. It's another piece of food for thought. I was at an event last Monday, and I was talking to someone about the prediction markets. Everybody's talking about them. And I was like, how do you feel about them? And he said, I'm kind of disappointed that we as a society are moving towards having to monetize anything to care about it. I was like, whoa. You know, coming from a finance background, where all day we, you know, we're, we're, we're a news organization, right? We're covering. We have 250 stories a day talking about why this company may go up, may go down, what numerical values are associated with their deliveries, et cetera. My job is my, my whole screen is a million numbers. And then I was like, wow, are, is that a good thing?
- [17:11]
A
Maybe. But try, try, just try a thought experiment or an experiment. Go sit at a restaurant and watch a waiter, and then talk with the people at your table and say, I bet that waiter is going to come to that table before us. You know, I'll bet you. Not saying you think gambling, but I'll bet, I'll bet you an imaginary dollar. You know, let's see what happens. And then you watch, like, you scrutinize that waiter, and you're watching every detail, and they, they start to pivot and turn and, you know, they turn toward you and then they go the other way and you go, yeah, um, so you. But that's, that's a pretend dollar. But you could, you could get very, like, active present in the moment on a scenario like that, so times it by a hundred, a thousand. However much you're, you're willing, what your appetite is for putting funds on the line and couple that with something you care about, you know, either politically or because you're a fan or something like, that's, that's real stakes. Like, it's Everything gets very heightened very quick.
- [18:13]
B
One other thing I'll say is another conversation I had around it was an old, like an old time Wall Streeter. He had been on the street back in like the heyday and 80s 90s and I was talking to him about how he felt about prediction markets and he's like, we've, we've been doing this. He's like at, at the bar on Stone Street. We did this every night for 20 years. You know, we met if this was, you know, this war was going to happen, this person was going to get elected and we made our own odds and it was all on pencil and paper. But they've just made it accessible to everyone. He's like, I don't think it's a bad thing. It's just adding technology behind something that is human nature.
- [18:51]
A
Yeah, yeah, but there's a difference, I guess Andrew, like are they going to serve pretzels or peanuts tonight? You know, like no one else might care about that, but that could become very important to your little friend group at the bar. But you know, are people using a market like Kalshi too back things that they actually do have some kind of care about and are aligning with their belief system and what they want the outcomes to be or are they just looking at day trading and taking market advantage of certain situations where they feel like they, for one reason or another, they have not control over the outcome but some understanding of what the outcome should be?
- [19:31]
C
I think it's a little bit of both. I think that one of the things that's really interesting to me about this is that it's really like how she's trying to be attractive to both sides to what Aaron, you're saying like people that just are trying to in the engagement aspect with, you know, the predictive marketplace and also kind of going for the consumer's behavior, which is, you know, compulsive behavior. We have gambling, you know, Andrew, we've talked about that and that this is just in our nature. Nature some, you know, you, you bet on, you know, is it going to rain today? Is it not going to rain today? You know, that kind of thing. I always laugh like when you brought this up Andrew, is that my father in law used to always have some sort of bet going on with my, with the grandkids. And it started really, you know, innocently. Like he'd be like how many M and Ms. Do you guys think are in this jar? And if you guess you get the M and Ms. Right, that kind of thing. And then as they got older, it was like, okay, 25 cents for we're going to bet on this basketball game so that we would watch the basketball game. Like the kids, they don't care, but like they want to bet. Right? So it's a, it's kind of getting into that. And so I really feel like, you know, when you think about compulsive behavior, there's a strong stigma around sports betting and things like that. You know, you talk about all the, you know, the rehab for sports, you know, addictive behaviors and betting and people going in massive, massive debt. Prediction markets tend to feel, feel more socially acceptable because to your point, Erin, you're talking about news, you're talking about the financial markets, you're talking about companies, and you're talking about things that feel more real and less like that compulsive thing. So I do feel like people, parents included and other people are not as alarmed when they hear that somebody is on these predictive markets because that tends to feel more socially acceptable. They might say, oh great, at least they're watching the news or at least they, at least they're interested in Tesla. You know, it more of a company. But is, are they, you know, it's, it is a question.
- [21:54]
A
Well, it's a good question. Yeah, because everyone's second screens now when they watch a game or watch an event. But you could be not just wagering on whether, staking whether the team wins, you could be staking whether the, the player, the star player is going to serve, you know, prison time for a felony that was committed. And that's what you care about. You know, so it's just a whole different way of engaging and that, you know, is that the most productive way when you could be. There's other real world situations that have outcomes that maybe have all positive outcomes. It's just, is it, does it go your way or someone else's way?
- [22:31]
C
Well, Kalsh is really benefiting from the idea around this is human nature. Right. So this very intentional product design and how it, you know, how it is being shared. I mean, they also got in trouble for trying to, they, when they first started, they tried to share on social media with, you know, younger college kids, things like the kids that were under 21. Right. And that, and that that aspect got shut down. So again, you know, my question is from, you know, a business perspective and Andrew, you mentioned that it's going to get narrower and narrower. The, you know, the funnel is. But at this time it is the wild, wild west. It is like herding Cats, like everybody's kind of doing their own thing. So at some point, when is it going to be? You know, I think it is starting, you know, you're starting to see committees from Congress come down on, you know, you know, senators that shouldn't be able to be, you know, betting on these things. And you know, I would say Andrew, in your world, like companies, when you're Talking about company KPIs and the data that's being shared, like I'm sure they're going to try to put into place, you know, like if I'm working at Apple, I don't get a bet on Apple. Right. You know, of course that makes sense but like, you know, when you think about the spread like social media, those kinds of things, how do you, how do you control that? It's not some long lost relative of mine that's placing the bets for me.
- [24:06]
B
I guess I'll take a step back before I answer that. One really cool use case for these prediction markets is they stand as a tool for research for investors, for politicians, for editors. There's a bunch of studies across, you know, Harvard and the thought leaders in economics about how crowdsourced probabilities are the most accurate. Like they're far more accurate than a single source. The analysts can't create probabilities that are as accurate as a mass majority of individuals, like statistically significant amount of people. And so one way to get people to share their opinion is, is to incentivize them. And one way to incentivize them is to allow them to trade on that opinion. And so Fed, I don't, I don't really have statistics on this. I, I wish I did, but I bet you that the probability of a rate cut is more accurate on Kelshi than it is if you surveyed 10 different financial analysts. You're surveying, you know, however many hundreds of thousands of people that are, that are providing their opinion and so that can be used by a politician to you know, prepare for a potential. I don't know, I don't, I don't know the exact use but like, yeah, you know, those things can be used as a, it's like a predictive tool that can be used across many different domains. Even if you're not betting on it yourself, you can use the, the odds that are produced from it. Going back to your question, like from a business perspective, how the holy grail for this if, if I'm thinking about it from, if I, if I was leaving the company, they're just a broker, so they're not taking, it's not like Vegas where they take, you know, they take the other side and it's a 54% chance that they win. And over time they make a bunch of money. They just take a little couple percentage points. And so volume is their main priority. And where does volume come from? It doesn't come from individuals, it comes from institutions. If they got one hedge fund to put 100 million on KPI Markets, they would probably outpace the entire hundred million users that are betting a dollar on basketball games. Right. And also that use case for Kalshi and all the other prediction markets is probably the cleanest and the least assigned to gambling. I think the holy grail is like getting these hedge funds and institutions to use it as a part of their investment strategy.
- [26:51]
A
Yeah, that's true. You're right. It's like Vegas or anywhere else, Monte Carlo. The rest of us are table stakes. You know, if we're at the kiddie table, like they'll take our money. You know, we're happy to, we're invited, we're happy to play along. But you know, like you said, the $150 bets, they're, they're going to come and go. It's, it's really about who, who are the whales in this situation?
- [27:14]
B
Yeah, the private room.
- [27:15]
C
You know, that's interesting, Andrew, that you brought that up because I was going to bring that up as a watch out that the retention problem is really being masked at Kalshi by their volume growth. Right. Because that's, that's a business strategy risk to your point. Right. Because you're not, you know, are you always going to be able to like have this map? I mean they're right now at, their platform grew 800% in the last, in the last six months. So that's not always going to happen. And it's around certain events. Right. Like they, they've even shared, you know, they've shared their data where like around the election they had this huge spike, you know, in the mill, millions of grades. And then the neck, you know, the day after it dropped by over 40% and never went back. Right. You know, and then the next time it went up was another big like kind of, I want to say world event. Right. Or whatever might, it might be. So it definitely is, you know, when you, when you're thinking about a business and if Kalshi's, you know, kind of like you said, like that open marketplace, they're not necessarily that. It's not like a casino. It's not like they're the house, they've got to figure out that strategy because that is the thing that, that will like, they'll go out of style, right? It'll be, it'll be somebody next that will come in with another cute name, you know. You know, and all of a sudden it's the new soup of the day, you know, kind of thing. So I do really think that that's a watch out that they have to, you know, that these marketplaces, not just them, but the marketplaces, have to think about how do we retain customers to keep them. Because especially if you're losing, you know, the ratio is that you're not winning and if you're not doing insider training, which is, again, trading is illegal. So, you know, you've really got to think about, like, how are you engaging that consumer? How are you engaging them and bringing them back? And I think that's the thing that the prop bets and all of the sports betting has finally kind of gotten good at, is that they can, you know, you get the one, one win, you know, one trifecta, you're like, okay, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in. And then you're like, you know, three months of losing. So not really sure how that works with this marketplace.
- [29:43]
B
I'll completely derail this conversation again and, and ask the question, if we're going to legalize sports betting in the US which we have, and we have all these sports betting apps, is it better to wager directly with peers or to wager against Vegas? I personally prefer to wager against peers. Yes, I see that the odds are better, the cost is lower, it's more. I have accessibility to real time cash outs. Whereas against Vegas, if I did a bad bet, I can't get my 3% back. If I know I lost the bet, I'm selling it at 10%. As a society, we agree that sports betting is legal and that people just need to keep it under control and use it productively. Then Kelsey is a great solution to the Vegas situation. In my, I'm a huge fan of what they've done there.
- [30:36]
A
Yeah. And Andrea, I, I, I'll argue the other side of it. I said, who are we? They, they don't care about it. But they, they obviously. Melissa, you were saying like stability and, and just baseline growth in between the, the market dips and peaks and valleys. Like they need. Vegas isn't just a, a back fancy room. It's, it's a grand palace. They need everybody. So, and that includes uninformed, you know, or Just very, very speculative fans. Like I said Olivia Rodrigo earlier. But, you know, there was, there was money being she had two one word titles for the first two albums. So there was money on whether the. What's the word of her next title. And it's, you look pretty sad for a girl in love. Like, who predicted that? Who put money in? Nobody. But the fans that didn't have any, you know, information or any reason to believe other than historical, you know, to two points of reference, put money down saying it's going to be a one word title and they lost it. But they did it because they're passionate about something, not because they're savvy investors. So they. For a market like this to not just have those peaks where they, you know, it's ca. It's a cash in day market goes crazy. Everyone's flurrying, you know, get, get there. You can't get there fast enough. They need those everyday users just to find those little things, those little irks and irritations or positivities in life that you want to throw money at. Like, that has, it has to be part of the equation for this to sustain.
- [32:00]
B
How do we, how do we put a, like assign a value to fun? You know, like, how as a society, like, do we care about people having fun? And if we do, how much is it worth to us? Because at the super bowl, for example, I was with some friends, my friend was in town and she was like, cardi B. Is gonna be at the halftime show. I know it because I follow her and this outfit and blah, blah, blah. I don't know anything about Cardi B. I couldn't even name a song by her, right? And she was so excited about it, so fired up that she's at the halftime show. I'm like, I'll bet on it. Like, let's. I'm sorry, I'll trade that. And it was like a 33% chance. And the entire halftime show, we're all sitting on edge of our seat waiting for it to pop up. Popped up and it was like, we won super the bull when we saw her at the performance, you know, and
- [32:46]
A
like, I don't know which one's Cardi B. But we won.
- [32:49]
B
That was. Yeah. And I won like five bucks. And it was like the best $5 ever, you know, like, we'll remember that. That was like a electric bonding experience for my group of friends.
- [33:00]
A
Yeah.
- [33:00]
B
You know, like, is that good? Is that smile good for society? Maybe it was.
- [33:06]
A
Maybe. But then how do you keep the whole market fun? You know, you think about like NFTs, you know, which we're crazy, like maybe they're still worth something. But I remember just, just, just looking around and saying, oh, if I could just get the, give me the cheapest one just so I own an NFT and I can be part of this and you can't, you know, they're gone and well, I missed the gold ones. Maybe I'll get the blue ones, you know, and they're gone too. So. But then when's the last time you heard about NFTs? That's an entire market that is maybe still out there to some degree and people own them in their crypto wallets. But how do you keep this market? Okay, it's sanctioned, like there's controls over it, but how do you keep it viable and how do you keep it interesting?
- [33:48]
B
Yeah, that I don't know. As, as everybody burns through their accounts, like I'm, I'm down on my, I started with a hundred, I'm down to my last 30 bucks. Am I going to refund it? Probably not. I'm just burning money, right? So the retention thing is real. The other thing that makes this difficult is I have friends and family personally that I know have struggled with gambling. And I mean all the fun. Like I said, I like, I, I like the prediction markets, I like what it's doing for the financial markets, but at what cost, you know, like making it so accessible and if people are using it for the wrong reasons, it can get out of hand really quick. But that, then we have to ask ourselves, should we say the same thing about options markets? I know friends that have lost more money on trying to sell naked calls than I have in gambling. And should we say the same thing about alcohol? Right. It's like I know people that are bound down on alcohol and had to start their life over, but I love having a glass of wine on a Friday. And so it's like, I don't know the answer to that. That's something that I can't fix.
- [34:54]
C
But that is part of what's really fundamental to these predictive marketplaces, right is, and to sports betting and to all of these addictive behaviors is like people are out there taking advantage of the, the fact that I don't have the self control to stop or that I have the desire to win it, win big. And you know, I just need one more shot. One more shot, one more shot and then I can pay off my house or whatever it might be, but I'm willing to risk it all. Is not, you know, it's not Kalshee's fault, it not Benzinga's fault. That that's not, you know, on you. But it is where we are as a society, to your point. And I love what you were saying about the Super Bowl. Like, we have a Super bowl party and we always have like a whole list of like on a whiteboard bets. Right. That we have, you know, like, you know, the first interception. And you can do that all on prop bets now. Right. You know, but like the best commercial, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I do feel like there's this, you know, from a business strategy, there is this idea around the consumer psyche that you're taking it, I wouldn't say taking advantage of, but in a way you are. So there do need to be, you know, and I know that they're doing this. I know Kalsha, for example, has mental health status updates and they actually have a, like a wallet where your loved ones can kind of see what your activity is. So maybe they can do an intervention. I don't know. But I do think that's important that there's at some point, at some level, and that's why I keep kind of bringing it up, is like there's some sort of compliance, some sort of legitimize, you know, it is legitimate marketplace. But how do we make sure that we're, you know, being careful about that? Because I'm also one of those people, you know, you mentioned, like, the crowdsourcing and like, oh, it's great to have all of that happening. And so you want to be part of it. You don't want to lose out. But at the same time, you're the only one that knows your situation. So how much should you actually be betting? And it's different betting on Cardi B for $10 versus Cardi B for $150,000 when you are already $3 million in debt. You know what I mean? I think that's the thing that is. Is going to be an interesting thing. And maybe there's a sense that, you know, because one of the things you always hear about are the great stories in the predictive marketplace are great stories where people are making millions of dollars. There's also the 70% of the people or are even more, 99% of the people that don't. So, like, is there a way to be transparent about what the win rates are in general or even it doesn't have to be, you know, published every day, but it could be published every quarter, every month so that people could kind of see that, like if you're, you know, if you're betting in climate, let's just make, I'm making a category climate category. The win rate is 0.3%. Just so people know, like, like that that's, you know, okay. But I'm still going to bet on tornadoes in Oklahoma hitting every single trailer park because that always happens. Like, it just always happens, you know, that kind of thing. I mean, that's probably a good one to bet on. Is like if you live in a trailer park, you're going to get hit by a tornado in the next three months.
- [38:32]
B
But if we, if we start publishing win rates on climate, are we going to put a win rate at every slot machine of every factory worker that is burning their pension in the Detroit casinos?
- [38:47]
A
I think they do. I think they have win rates on them.
- [38:51]
B
I don't use them, so I don't know.
- [38:53]
A
I could be wrong. But does the stock market have win rates?
- [38:56]
B
That's true.
- [38:57]
A
You have to do your own analysis. They don't say historically, you know, here's what you need to know. Here's all the precautions before you put money in this stock. It's like you need, you need a Benzinga to help you analyze it. But the stock itself isn't going to shout at you and tell you what, what to do.
- [39:14]
C
But it does, but they do disclose, if it's publicly traded. They disclose their financial, you know, their numbers and their KPIs. So if you're, you know, for example, you know, if you're a day trader, you're looking at these kinds of, you're looking at the risks and benefits right when you're, when you're making those decisions. So that's just what I'm concerned about. And you know, again, I'm taking this very personally because I'm thinking about like, which, you know, I'm going to call you, Andrew. I'm not going to be like, okay, where should I be betting this? You know, Miami, Cybertrucks? I'm all in. So what should the responsibility be of the predictive marketplace and the businesses that are, you know, opened up now? You know, and again, that's, it's a tough situation because the floodgates have already opened. So we have to figure that out.
- [40:07]
A
Yeah, Andrew, you're saying everything in moderation, but this isn't, it's not wordle where you get to do one thing a day and then come back tomorrow and then do another thing. This is, it's Candy Crush. It's, it's bright and shiny and always on and always there. And what's the next thing? So what is it? How do you create moderate moderation and something like that other than policing your own behavior if the marketplace isn't going to slow you down for anything?
- [40:32]
B
Yeah, that's a great analogy. I never thought of it that way. It is Candy Crush 24 7, 365 casinos open. You know.
- [40:40]
A
Yeah.
- [40:41]
C
Ding ding, ding.
- [40:43]
B
Like I said, I'm in Florida so we only have hard rock for our gambling app and they. I know someone who got soft banned for losing too much in a short period of time. I'm sure Kelshi has a soft ban but that didn't stop him from betting with his friends or betting on the Bahamas. Vpn crypto gambling, you know, like.
- [41:10]
A
Yeah. Taking it somewhere else.
- [41:11]
B
Yeah. I mean I feel that if we agree as a society from a democratic perspective to allow this, it's like it's all or nothing. Right. It's either like hey you there, you have access to this and you got to control yourself or this is illegal and you can't go to the casino, you can't bet on sports with your friends, you can't use these applications. It's kind of like you can't trade unless you, you know, educated investor options are illegal unless you're an institution. You know, I mean it would, it's like, I feel like it's, there's the middle ground is the ideal state. Right. Where we're using it in a way that is responsible and fun. But I think, I don't know about, I don't know a way to do that besides personal moderation.
- [42:05]
A
Yeah, well we said like I've used this analogy before about these open markets. As you said, as they mature they become something and we don't know what it's going to become. But you see like, like an Etsy or an ebay is that everyone can come along and be a seller and everyone. But then you know, pretty soon there are companies that get more sophisticated about it and they create real storefronts and they have the million five star reviews and the track record and you know that it looks like a, like a legitimate e commerce enterprise and then sure, you can still go on there and sell but who's, who's going to buy your, your rinky dink little, you know, homemade T shirt when you could go to this power seller store? Maybe we're at just at the precipice where it's, where you know, it's pre maturity.
- [42:49]
B
Right.
- [42:49]
A
We don't know what Kelshi and Polymark and these marketplaces are, what their eventual state is going to be. Right now it's that open buffet playing field for everybody. But they might have some growing up to do in the next, you know, few years to figure out. Is it for brokerages and there's a really small subsection for the populace, you know, like, what's the, what's the eventual state of all this?
- [43:14]
B
Yeah, and it's the same thing with crypto. Like when, when first hit the scene and there was. Anybody could make their own coin. It was wild West. I wouldn't have thought that Fidelity would launch an ETF and that would be the primary way that retirees buy into Bitcoin. How we were discussing it when it came about was it's going to either be the new world currency or it's going to be nothing, it's going to go to zero. And it's found a really unique place in the financial ecosystem. I'm hoping that something similar happens with these prediction markets where, yeah, there's a bunch of lawsuits that are going around. There's a bunch of. I mean, we're on a podcast right now talking about the ethical nature. Is it good or is it bad? What's good about it? And we're one of hundreds of outlets that are doing the same thing. It's a problem that has been unsolved. But I think that markets find a way to meet that equilibrium, and I hope it does, honestly.
- [44:11]
A
Well, we're not here to give financial investment advice. We're not allowed to anyway. But if, you know, if you had a hedge fund or a money manager or personal wealth manager that was diversifying your portfolio and putting it into future speculative markets like this, is that responsible? Is that capitalizing on the moment? Is that risky investment that you should be okay with? Is it, is it too early? Like, how is it, you know, as someone who's not maybe indirectly trading on something like this through there a go between that has more experience, should we let them do what they want and say these are on the table too?
- [44:52]
B
I think that any innovation in the market allows for new strategies. There's people that are way smarter than me that are already using these. Like I said about the KPI markets, right? Like there's ways to hedge your position, there's ways to decrease your risk. In traditional finance, I think that, I mean, is if, if you have your money with the money manager and they're putting 1% on OKC winning the NBA championship, I don't think that that's a good use of, of the platform. But if they're putting 1% on a hedge for one of your biggest holdings, I think that that's a good thing.
- [45:29]
A
Well, let's, well let's, let's pull this together. We can, we can fix this because I think we've created some nice equilibrium for Kelshi and maybe Polymark and some of these other, other futures driven markets or predictability markets. So I think we could argue the transparency part of things and whether there should be built in guardrails and slowdowns. I think there, you know, you can say, well, we're just the facilitators. You know, we, we don't do anything. We just, yeah, maybe there's some accountability there. So maybe there's just like Melissa, you're saying, can we show some, some odds? Can we start to, we, we have enough understanding, there's enough data to show past trends and, and bake that into the application where you don't have to go necessarily. I mean we could, we could bring in Benzinga and, and do, you know, show some of those past trend lines and be predictive about, based on historical, like it's all predictability. Just use that more. But you could, you could say, look this, right now, this category is a loser. You want to bet on it, go for it. You know, you might, you might defy the odds, but you got, you have to know that going in, maybe have some slowdowns. If people are really, you know, you look at their historic activity and then all of a sudden they're going crazy all in maybe, you know, they have to click accept a few times at least to say, look, we put you through this process. We, we, There's a pop up screen. You agreed to that. You agreed to that. We can't control your ultimate behavior, but we can tell you just a little bit of a reminder of what you're about to do because this is not, this is an outlier. Kind of like when your credit card company calls you and says wait, there's a huge charge in Malaysia. Is that you. And you say yeah, I'm traveling or wait a minute, what's up? So maybe you know, you can, you can play that game all day long of wait. We're just the facilitators that we just stand by and take, take a percentage or take, take a commit, you know, whatever. Like that's how, that's our model. But you're allowing this to happen. You're bringing yes, brokerages and, and powerhouse investors, but you're also bringing the rest of us along. So for people that are uninitiated or just feel really, really impassioned as a fan to, to give money at something like make sure we don't spend our retirement, that cardi b is going to come out at the super bowl. Maybe, you know, keep us around for a while, let us, let us lose something and lose again and then come back again. And it, you know, we don't, we don't come at you with, with hate because you just, you know, we just spent our entire savings on your platform. You need to, you need to keep goodwill for a good long time. Not just for the, the powerhouse whale, back of the room people, but for, for, for the rest of us. So some kind of guardrail might be, if not imperative, might be smart for Kelshi to implement. I don't, I'm debating this one, but if they had a subscription service, 20, 30 bucks a month, play for fun, play for prizes, they would get me, I would do it. You know, it's not connected to my bank account. I know it's one click over, but I, and it would cause addictive behavior and I'd be on it all day long and I'd be checking it while I'm in line for coffee. Like, I would, I'd fall into all the same traps and I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't be spending a bunch of money every day or, or it wouldn't be eating me up inside, you know, at night, good or bad, like, oh, what's gonna happen tomorrow? Like, I could live with, I could live with that. So I would, I would if. I know for me, at least it would introduce all the same behaviors as if I had money on the line. But it's, it's play money. Keep doing what you're doing. But if you want more people involved overnight, I bet you could get a bunch of people that aren't traditional day traders or investors to come play, do play scenarios and, and charge a monthly fee. And then you give out prizes or leaderboards or things like that. So, you know, and then we don't know what they'll, what the ultimate state's going to be. But I, I do have a feeling with these open marketplaces, they are going to lean more toward. It's a niche. It became a niche and a novelty for, for all of us. You still need all of us to some degree. You know, you have to have a baseline level or activity. But what about the power players? What about the companies that run on a market like, like Kalshi, those are the actual customer based clients. They're 95% of our attention. 5% goes to everyone else. I think that's the right equation, at least where we stand right now. Melissa, did we fix it?
- [50:09]
C
You know, I don't know that we fixed it, but I think we've given them a lot of food for thought in about how they could have a real nice growth and retention strategy. I mean, obviously when you're growing 800%, you're growing, but you want to grow the right way and with intention. And so I love what you've said, Aaron, so far. I do think you need to build, I would, as a business owner, I would say they need to build institutional compliance APIs before the regulars mandate it. Because I will tell you, I've been in regulatory and compliance fields for all my life. A lot of those people that will be deciding that have no idea what is needed. And because like Andrew said, this is, this is such a, this is, this could be the next crypto, this could be the next big thing. And it already is. Do you want to decide your own destiny or do you want somebody else to try to, you know, govern, be the governor on you that they don't even really know what, what really makes sense? So I would say, and I'm sure that Kalshee's got smarter minds than us sitting here, but that are already working on creating like these compliance environments that are, you know, somewhat neutral but also kind of help to, you know, fix the, the bad, the bad traders, the inside trading, all of those kinds of things and deal with the legal issues because there's many legal claims going on right now for them. I'd be interested in knowing whether they want to separate from sports betting because they have sports betting and the predictive marketplace because again, the legitimacy of the predictive marketplace versus sports betting and like, again, a lot of legal actions being taken by the tribal lands and other, the casinos and things like that against Kalsheet. You know, so if they separated that, it may be something that allows them to focus on. You can have both, you can have Kalsh Sports, right? I don't, I don't care. And they can, and they can do their own thing and deal with the courts and deal with the casinos and, and deal with FanDuel and all those other places or the, and they could have this where the, you know, they're opening it up to like a whole different subset of people that are interested in these types of events and then creating a real retention Model like Aaron, you just suggested an idea building a retention model, building a growth strategy, go to market model that is, doesn't depend on chaos and doesn't depend on those 95% events. So the super bowl, an election, they've, they see drop offs of over 90% of activity. You know, how do you kind of keep them engaged and like, you know, and I even like your idea about wordle. Right. Like if, if, if you have so much money, you're only allowed to bet that in a day and then you, you have to wait till the next cycle. Right. You know, whatever it might be. But again, I love the idea. I love having, you know, Andrew, I love your insights. I've loved this. This has been really interesting. It's. I, I have to say when I came in I was more negative and probably because I felt like I lost after because I didn't make any money on the Iran war so far. So. But I, you know, you know, listening to you talk, I really feel like this is something that we're going to have to keep our eye on and I'm really excited to see where it goes.
- [53:48]
A
Thanks, Melissa. Andrew, how did we do? Do we find the positivity in here? Did we, do we find justification to keep Kashi around for, for a good long time and let them, let them mature and play along and see what happens?
- [54:03]
B
I think we have, I think we've also given some good food for thought. I'm sure internally at Cal State they're talking about the same things. I hope Tarek sees this. If he does, I'm a huge fan. I love the platform, love how you're innovating the space. I think that there is a long road to go until it is in the ideal state. I think that if we applied what we talked about today, we would get closer to that ideal state. But I can't say that we fixed it because I don't know what fixed means. I think that the market will find, the market will find what fixed means. It might take some time but, you know, we'll, we'll talk in a year or two and we may be there where it is, this, it's, it sits in the space in order to allow for sophisticated financial strategies. It is here for fun for everyone in a safe way. It is a better way to sports bet, frankly, than, than relying on Vegas. I think that one day it'll get there. I think that what we gave could help it get there, but I think it's going to fix itself.
- [55:14]
A
Well, they're doing pretty well I have to hand it to them and I did reach out to the founders for comment and I'd love to hear from them and see what they have to say about all this too. All right, well, that's going to wrap up our episode. Before we go, I want to give a big thank you to Andrew Lebos from Benzinga. Andrew, please let everyone know how people can keep up with the Benzinga and your work and everything happening in this rapidly evolving space.
- [55:40]
B
Absolutely. Thank you for having me. By the way, this is a great time. If, if you want to check out what we're doing@Benzinga Benzinga.com APIs you can also follow me on LinkedIn. I post an obnoxious amount Andrew Lebos on LinkedIn and I'll keep you up to date.
- [55:56]
A
Excellent. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Melissa. And thank you to you, our listeners. Before we go, for those of you listening from the beginning, I just want to say platypus, I hope I made someone very happy. While we can't predict the future, we expect to be back with an all new episode next week. So stay tuned for that and we will see you next time. We hope you enjoyed this episode of We Fixed It. You're welcome. We go into every episode somewhat cold and nothing we say should be construed as legal advice, financial advice, or anything that would get us in trouble. All trademarks, IP and brand elements remain property of their respective owners.