Kalshi cofounders' favorite users include 'this guy who lives in Kansas' who is their best inflation forecaster

• Kalshi's cofounders said their platform was designed to help random people flourish.
• They said their best market makers "may not actually be the experts or the authority figures."
• One of their favorites is an "Ariana Grande superfan" who knows a lot about music charts.

The brains behind Kalshi say some of their best prediction market makers are "actually random people."

"The foundational principles around prediction markets, is like a lot of these markets, the people that will price them the best may not actually be the experts or the authority figures that you usually would think about," Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour told Stripe cofounder John Collison during a recent episode of Collison's "Cheeky Pint" podcast.

Mansour said there's no single demographic for these "super forecasters," who comprise some of the prediction market giant's most important users. Out of the group, Mansour and cofounder Luana Lopes Lara have some favorites — including "a guy from Kansas."

"The best inflation forecaster on Kalshi over the last few years is not— none of the institutions or the big-name hedge funds," Mansour said. "It's this guy who lives in Kansas, never traded financial markets before, just likes to read the news, and just knows how to predict inflation. He can feel it."

Lopes Lara said his favorite user is an "Ariana Grande superfan."

"He found Kalshi during the election season, and he's like, 'I don't like the elections, whatever.' Then he found our Billboard ranking markets of like charts," she said.

The user, Lopes Lara said, has made over $150,000.

"He paid back student loans. He put himself through a master's degree, bought a car, and all those things," she said. 'And he just like loves these markets. And he's never really traded, never done anything like that before. But it's the first time that he actually has a way to monetize this very compulsive hobby that he had on music charts."

Mansour also shouted out Alan Cole, a 37-year-old economist in DC, who told The Wall Street Journal that he wagered his life savings against DOGE by betting on a Kalshi prediction market on whether federal spending would increase. (Mansour did not mention Cole by name, but the economist's story has been publicly reported.)

"Now you have a market that if you have that sort of knowledge, which maybe oftentimes is esoteric, like I'm assuming none of us have read all these tax codes, you can actually go out in the world, do research, get smarter about the world, and then get rewarded for that," Mansour said.

Kalshi has exploded in popularity since the 2024 election, when it successfully sued the US government to allow users to bet on the outcome of US elections, something that had previously been allowed only overseas.

The Trump administration has said it will ease up on prediction markets. Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Exchange Commission, has threatened to fight with state regulators who say they have the power to regulate sites like Kalshi or its rival Polymarket.

Congressional lawmakers are also looking to rein in prediction markets after high-profile news of potential insider trading as well as bets on events like the war in Iran. Kalshi has stressed that it has policies against insider trading and doesn't allow trades on war or death.