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1. Phantom Prediction Markets Reach US Users
Phantom, the crypto wallet, began opening prediction markets to users in the United States on Friday, October 23, in a staged rollout. The feature runs through Kalshi, which Phantom described as its first US integration of this kind. Trades require a Kalshi account and identity verification, and Phantom charges $0.01 per contract on top of Kalshi's own $0.01 exchange fee.
A prediction market lets participants buy and sell contracts tied to the outcome of a future event. Each contract pays out if the event happens and expires worthless if it does not, so its trading price is commonly read as the crowd's estimate of the probability. Kalshi is a US exchange that lists such contracts under the oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal derivatives regulator.
For Phantom, a self-custodial wallet widely used on Solana (SOL), the launch moves prediction trading into the same app where users already hold tokens and manage payments. Rather than sending users to a separate website, the wallet places the Kalshi order flow inside its mobile interface. The rollout is staged, meaning access is being switched on gradually instead of for every eligible customer at once.
2. How Does the Kalshi Account Setup Work?
Anyone who wants to trade must first have a Kalshi account, and Phantom either creates one on the user's behalf or links an existing one. Before a first trade in the mobile app, the user has to pass Kalshi's identity checks, which can require a Social Security number and a US government-issued ID.
That requirement marks a change from how the product was first presented. Phantom introduced Kalshi-powered markets in December and promoted them as trades that needed no separate account. The US version does need one. Kevin Jacobs, Phantom's general counsel, wrote that Kalshi "approves and holds users' trading accounts, and executes the trades they submit using Phantom." In other words, the wallet supplies the interface, while the exchange remains the party that vets customers, keeps the accounts and carries out the orders.
Balances are also kept apart. According to Phantom's help center, money sitting in a user's Kalshi account through Kalshi's own app or website does not appear inside Phantom, and funds placed through Phantom do not show up on the Kalshi side. Customers who already use Kalshi directly should therefore expect two distinct views of their money rather than one combined balance.
3. What Did the CFTC Relief Require?
Phantom's design follows from a regulatory permission it obtained from CFTC staff in March. The relief, issued in Staff Letter 26-09, means Phantom does not have to register as an introducing broker, the category normally applied to firms that solicit or accept customer orders for derivatives and pass them to a clearing intermediary. Jacobs said the company sought that relief with this exact product in mind.
The permission comes with 10 conditions. Users must sign up as direct members of the exchange, and they must be able to reach the exchange without going through Phantom. Phantom and each exchange or broker it works with must also agree to be jointly and severally liable for any violations committed by Phantom or its personnel. Joint and several liability means a wrongdoing can be pursued against either party for the full amount, which gives the regulator more than one counterparty to hold responsible.
A no-action letter of this type is a statement of staff intent not to recommend enforcement if the stated conditions are met. It is narrower than a rule and can be limited in scope. CFTC staff extended similar relief to other software providers in September, indicating that Phantom is not the only wallet or interface operator working within this framework.
The conditions explain why the US launch looks different from the earlier pitch. Requiring users to be direct exchange members, with access that does not depend on Phantom, pushes the account relationship toward Kalshi and away from the wallet.
The case for putting a regulated exchange behind a wallet is easy to see from the wallet's side. Wallets compete on what users can do without leaving the app, and trading, swapping and payments have already been folded into many of them. Event contracts add one more activity that keeps users inside the interface. The compliance structure described in the CFTC relief is what lets a software company take part without becoming a registered broker itself, provided the exchange stays at the center of the customer relationship.
The arrangement also clarifies who answers to whom. If a customer has a dispute about an account, identity check or executed trade, the account sits with Kalshi, which holds it and runs the order. Phantom's role is the front end and the funding rails. That division of duties is exactly what the CFTC conditions on direct membership and independent access are designed to preserve.
4. What Do Trades Cost and How Is Money Moved?
Trading costs two separate charges per contract. Phantom takes $0.01 per contract, and Kalshi adds its own $0.01 exchange fee, so a single contract carries two cents in trading fees. A variable network fee also applies when money is moved to Kalshi, and the size of that fee will depend on conditions on the underlying blockchain at the time of the transfer.
Users can fund purchases from their Phantom Cash balance or with any Solana token. Money travels to Kalshi for each purchase. When a position is sold or a market settles in the user's favor, the proceeds return to Phantom Cash through Stripe, the payments processor. This arrangement lets people hold tokens on-chain while the trading balance itself lives with a regulated exchange.
Phantom also attached a plain warning about liquidity. If there are not enough buyers for a contract, a user may be unable to sell it, "even when your position shows a profit." The statement is a reminder that a price shown on screen is not a guaranteed exit. Prediction contracts on narrow or lightly followed events can trade thinly, and a displayed gain only becomes real when another participant is willing to take the other side.
A simple example shows how the fees add up. A user who buys 100 contracts would pay $1.00 to Phantom and $1.00 to Kalshi, or $2.00 in trading fees, before the variable network fee for sending money to Kalshi. Because a prediction contract is priced below $1 and pays a fixed amount if correct, a flat per-contract fee weighs more heavily on low-priced contracts than on high-priced ones.
Payment flexibility is the main convenience. Allowing any Solana token as a funding source means a holder does not have to sell into a bank account first, and the return of proceeds to Phantom Cash keeps the cycle inside the wallet. Users should still keep in mind that moving money between the wallet and the exchange is a transfer with its own cost and timing, not an instant internal ledger entry.
5. Where Are the Markets Restricted?
Availability is not uniform across the country. Phantom's own post says only that markets depend on availability in certain jurisdictions. Restrictions are reported to apply in Michigan, Nevada and Washington, three states where officials have taken a hard line on prediction-market products.
Jacobs said the company is "confident and comfortable" with its position despite the lawsuits that states have brought against prediction-market operators. Max Crowley, Kalshi's vice president of business development, said in Phantom's post that Phantom "did the regulatory work up front," and described the integration as a model for how prediction markets can reach more people.
The legal backdrop remains unsettled. On September 2, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said she had won a preliminary injunction requiring Kalshi to geofence Michigan out of its sports contracts. Violations carry a fine of $500,000 per day. A geofence is a technical barrier that blocks or limits access based on a user's location, which is why wallet-based distribution has to account for where each customer is.
Federal appeals courts have split on a central question: whether sports contracts count as swaps, which would place them under CFTC jurisdiction, or as gambling that states may regulate. New Jersey officials have asked the US Supreme Court to review a Third Circuit ruling that went in Kalshi's favor. Because the circuits disagree, the geographic map of where such products can operate may keep shifting.
6. What Comes Next for the Staged Launch?
The most immediate development is the rollout itself. Because Phantom is enabling access in stages, more US users should gain the feature over time, though the company has not published a timetable in its announcement. Each new customer will go through the same Kalshi onboarding and identity verification.
The larger open item sits in the courts. If the Supreme Court takes up the New Jersey petition, its eventual ruling could determine whether state regulators or the CFTC have the final word over event contracts, a question that bears directly on products like Phantom's. Until then, the wallet is relying on the CFTC staff relief granted in March and on Kalshi's status as a federally regulated exchange, while accepting that some states remain off limits.
For users, the practical takeaways are straightforward. The service requires a verified Kalshi account, keeps balances separate from the wallet, costs two cents per contract in trading fees plus a variable network fee for transfers, and carries the risk that a position cannot always be sold when a holder wants out.