Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Why Timothée Chalamet Is Shilling Kalshi: Inside The Plan To Monetize Everything

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

Why is Kalshi suddenly everywhere? SUPPORT MY WORK: Buy a paid subscription to my newsletter at usermag.co      Support my work on Patreon: http://patreon.com/taylorlorenz Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket have become one of the most powerful forces in American media, politics, and culture. In this episode of Power User, I sit down with NPR's Bobby Allyn, the country's top prediction-markets reporter, to break down how Kalshi went from a tiny startup that 50 lawyers refused to represent to an inescapable cultural juggernaut backed by the Trump family, celebrities, and major news organizations.We dig into how Kalshi exploited a legal loophole to bring sports betting and election betting to every state, why Donald Trump Jr. became an advisor to both Kalshi and Polymarket, and how the companies called the 2024 election for Trump before the mainstream media would, cementing their place in the MAGA universe. Bobby explains the rise of Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour, Polymarket's offshore "crypto bad boy" founder Shane Coplan, and the regulatory war happening right now inside the CFTC.We also cover the dark side nobody is talking about: undisclosed influencer marketing flooding your feed, the Timothée Chalamet Kalshi deal, secret ads during the NBA playoffs, the Mr. Beast video editor insider trading scandal, betting markets on wildfires and war, and the casinoification of the entire economy. We dig into the lawsuits, the looming Supreme Court showdown, and whether this whole gambling empire could vanish overnight! We cover:How Kalshi went from a rejected idea to a multi-billion dollar empire.The shocking court ruling that changed everything in 2024.Why MAGA influencers embraced prediction markets early.The Mr. Beast video editor insider trading scandal.How sports gambling bans were bypassed with a loophole.Timothée Chalamet's controversial Kalshi ad.The media's role in normalizing this "gambling for everything".Why Democrats and Republicans are fighting over regulation.The lawsuits that could end Kalshi.What happens when you can bet on wildfires, wars, and more.

Literally there is a market over what color Donald Trump's tie is going to be tomorrow during his appearance in the Oval Office. What's the value there? How is this benefiting society, right? If you watched any of the NBA playoffs this year or have been online for any of it, you've probably been subject to undisclosed Kalshi marketing. And even if you happen to somehow miss all the viral Kalshi Nix coverage, you might have seen Timothy Shalameh post this last week. Really, it feels like Kalshi has become inescapable. And prediction markets are playing a bigger and bigger role in entertainment, media, and culture.

Bobby Allen is a reporter at NPR, and he's the top journalist in the country covering prediction markets. Today he's joining me to talk about the rise of Kalshi, polymarket, how we've casinoified every aspect of our economy, how Kalshi is using influencers and celebrities to amass enormous cultural capital, and why this moment might not just be a watershed moment for Kalshi, but for this whole new, incredibly deranged economic ecosystem that they've created. Bobby, welcome to Power User. Hey, Taylor, happy to be here. So to start off, I want to kind of give people a little bit of a history on Colchie. I feel like we're all familiar with Colchie and Polymarket.

But tell me how this prediction market boom got started. Sure. So the CEO of Calci is this guy named Tarek Mansour. And he used to be a trader on the Goldman Sachs trading desk. And he remembers ahead of the 2016 election. He was getting all sorts of investors calling the trading desk and being like, how can we bet against or bet for, you know, you know, Trump winning. And he was like, there's no way to bet directly on the outcome of a political race. You can sort of like short the entire stock market or do like what he was describing to me as sort of

like, you know, complicated currency swaps. But he was asking around Goldman and they're like, yeah, there's no direct way to do that. And that was kind of his like, aha moment. He's like, why is there not a way in the world to have investors, whether you're a retail investor or an institution, to just put money down on something in the real world happening or not? So, After Goldman, he tried to make this happen with his co-founder, and they were charging hard trying to get a lawyer to actually believe in this idea. And he says he called 50 lawyers, and they all said, you're crazy.

So 50 lawyers tell them no, but somebody must have said yes, right? So 2018, Tarek has left Goldman. He starts Kalshi. He finds like the one sole lawyer that's willing to take this on because everyone else in the legal community of commodities and securities just thinks it's an insane idea. And in 2018, they, they become a company. But at this stage, they're mostly just trying to get their name out into the

world. Like the usability hasn't really scaled. And that's because they're facing intense regulatory pressure. So every single time they want to list a market for, say, is it going to rain in New York City? Or, you know, what color tie will President Biden wear tomorrow? They're up against a lot of resistance and scrutiny. And there's this test that's happening at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission where they ask, is there a public interest in this? Could this backfire? Could this be manipulated? And for the most part, they were getting lots and lots of nose because regulators were really, really worried about what this would unleash into the world if they just let these prediction markets go wild. I mean, at this point, I had never heard of Kalshi. I started to pay attention

to prediction markets around 2020 and 2021, really, with the rise of Polly Market. Polymarket is a Kalshi competitor. It was founded by this guy, Shane, who's like, a young Genzi crypto entrepreneur guy. He, it seems like, founded his company without seeking any of that regulatory approval and went ahead, merged prediction markets with cryptocurrency. And it sort of immediately started to get a lot of traction. How did Kalshi react when this starts to happen? Right. So Kalshi always has seen its biggest existential threat as Polly Market, because they, instead of going to Washington and knocking on regulators doors and playing nice and submitting all the paperwork and going about it the proper way, they have a very different leadership team, right?

As you mentioned, it's led by Shane Copeland who's like this, NYU dropout crypto bad boy who said, screw it, let's just go offshore, have people connect via VPN and we can just go wild. And they did, right? They were really, really popular and remained popular, but they went about it sort of the opposite of the regulatory approach. And when I talked to Tarek, he says, you know, again, this is part of his self-mythologizing. I don't want to put too much into his founding story. You know, startup founders love talking about how they're little geniuses. But he says, I'm a former Wall Street guy. I worked at Goldman. I worked at Citadel. Of course, if I want to scale on the global level, I'm going to make sure I get the blessing from regulators. And Shane, on the other hand, said,

I don't need those regulators. Come and find me. We're going to set up shop in Panama. Yeah. I mean, honestly, it seems like Shane kind of got the upper hand initially. I mean, certainly it started to proliferate. There was an investigation into him. I think that was later dropped. But it seems like Shane really embrace this like move fast break things ethos the uber model the facebook model right it's like create technology worry about the implications later worry about the regulators later just get prove that there's a market when does kalshi start inserting itself into this conversation more i started to notice them a lot in 2023 and 2024 when they were doing a bunch of influencer marketing right so for most of kalshi's early years they had a really hard time getting off the ground and that's because

most of their markets, regulators just saw as completely outlandish. So for most of Kalshi's existence, it was listing markets like, which way are crude oil future is going to move up or down? Is it going to, is it going to rain in Chicago? Yes or no. Like these kind of like very like nichey things that are tied to agricultural products or commodities or the weather. Then in 2024, they wanted to list political markets. And this is because they saw there was a lot of demand for it. Investors thought there would be a lot of demand for it. They thought this could basically be kind of a rocket booster for them. And they went to regulators and said,

hey, the question of who's going to control Washington, Republicans or Democrats, you know, often polls are wrong. There are sampling errors. There's all sorts of issues with mainstream media coverage. Why don't we create an alternative source of information that people can turn to and make decisions about the future based on that? So in the lead up to the election, they tried to list this market. They were told no.

And then they take the pretty audacious, they'd make a pretty audacious decision decision, which is to sue their regulator, to say, we think we are right. The regulator is wrong, and they file a lawsuit against the CFTC. So all this craziness is happening right into the lead-up of the election. Yeah, no, that's right. In September, there was a major court victory for Kalshi. This really surprising court ruling comes down, allowing Kalshi to list election market. So anyone can place bets on who's going to win or lose. And this was an enormous victory for the company because it came months before the November election in September, right? And so that,

That was really the first time that we saw, okay, here is a regulated exchange, a prediction market that it will take bets, many millions of dollars on who will win or lose. And they saw this as the first time that, you know, Kalshi was just really in the mix in terms of, you know, people citing their odds and comparing it to traditional polls and them being part of the political discourse. So this major court decision comes down. We start to see these markets go live and pretty quickly it's clear that they're determining Donald Trump is the frontrunner. And I'm certainly in the lead up to the election, it seemed like

Cali was kind of intertwined with the MAGA movement. I saw a lot of MAGA influencers doing ads for Cali. Obviously, during the actual inauguration, there was tons of influencers making kind of Cali content. And I think I heard that Donald Trump Jr. was some sort of advisor to Cali she, right? He was. He's an advisor to both companies. But before that even happens, Taylor, we have to take one step back because the reason why CaliChi and Polly Market, for that matter, really became part of the MAGA universe is because they were calling the election for Donald Trump before any media organization would. Right. So according to their markets,

Donald Trump was gonna win and there's, you know, there's tweets of Donald Trump Jr. holding up polymarket odds and being like, don't believe the New York Times, look at these polymarket odds, we're clearly going to win. And to this day, when you talk to MAGA people who love prediction markets, they're like, well, they called the election before the media would

and they think that's part of, you know, the media's corruption, the media's inability to report the facts correctly. And after that, Donald Trump Jr.'s VC fund invests $10 million into polymarket, and he becomes a advisor to both companies. So now the company's growth and the company's profits are totally intertwined with the Trump family. So Donald Trump gets into office, and it seems like this is when things really start to go gangbusters. How did Trump's second term supercharge Cal She's business?

Right. So Cal She is assessing the political situation. They know they have this big victory over election betting. they have an appeal. Their priority number one is trying to get the Trump administration to drop that appeal. It's dropped. Then they are back-channeled from political appointees that, hey, you might not have explicit permission to list markets on literally anything, but go ahead. And they do. And so from 2025 on, we see markets on war. We see markets on what words the president is going to say. We see markets on all sorts of elections. And I mean, anything you can possibly imagine there is a market on. Former CFTC officials are pulling their hair out because they can't believe this is happening, but Kalshi thinks it's great.

And who is installed to be the cop on the beat of the crypto world and prediction markets? Michael Selig, who is a former meme coin lawyer, who does not have any other commissioners right now. He's one out of five on the CFTCs. That means he rules by Fiat. And his mission right now is to just clear every single regulation out of the way and to let this industry just grow and grow. If you're watching this video and you like my work, please support me on Patreon via the link below or buy a paid subscription to my tech and online culture newsletter at usermag.com. That's usermag. I don't have any long-term brand partnerships and a lot of my content is effectively demonetized.

I've lost major brand deals for speaking out on certain issues and for challenging power. As you can imagine, advertisers are not exactly eager to work with somebody who covers a lot of the topics that I cover and talks about the things that I talk about. These videos I make are entirely funded by you, and I can't continue to make them without your support. So if you get any value out of the videos that I create and you want me to be able to create more, please support me on Patreon or Substack via the links below. On Patreon, I do bonus episodes, monthly Q&A live streams, and post frequent updates about my work. My Substack newsletter gives you a bi-weekly roundup of everything that I'm seeing and reading and paying attention to online. You can also get my newsletter on Patreon.

Once again, the links to everything are below in the description. Every dollar of your support makes such a difference. I feel like this industry was always popular with like the young hyper online like crypto bros and stuff. And certainly the MAGA movement embraced it really early. But I feel like Kalshi especially has done a really good job of integrating themselves into culture. I mean, it's not just MAGA influencers that are doing deals with them now. We have Timothy Shalame. We have, you know, them sort of participating in all these major viral moments.

So how did they start to amass cultural relevance? Yes. So I think there's three. bullet points here. The first is sports culture. Kalshi came into the U.S. in 2025 with Trump 2.0, and in every state, like we're here in California, sports betting, online sports betting is illegal. But with Kalshi, it's now legal. So they did ads all over California and all over really every state where sports betting is illegal and said, hey, if you want a sports bet, come on over to our app. Oh, and, you know, sports betting laws say you have to be 21 on our app.

You only have to be 18. So the sports betting rush into Kalshi was, huge, huge in terms of giving them momentum. The second big thing is partnering with influencers on TikTok and on Instagram and on X to really do anything to promote the brand. So these affiliate deals where they're paid hundreds of dollars a post to say really anything at all and sometimes misinformation and complete falsehoods,

as long as they're retweeting or giving some promotion to Kalshi. I mean, I watched the Knicks games recently and there's a streamer, a TikTok streamer, walking around Midtown Manhattan doing man on the street interviews with a mic that said had a flag that said Cal She. I imagine most people who tuned in were like, what is Cal She? But that's part of their strategy here. It's just get people wondering, they'll Google, they'll get pulled in and they'll become, you know, totally, you know, part of this trading community. And they also, you know, they found who

the super users are and they've been whining and dining them, pushing them to journalists and trying to get the narrative out in the world that Cal, oh, if you have student loan debt, you can delete it with Kalshi. Oh, you want to buy a home? You can do it with Kalshi earners. They've found these sort of brand ambassadors who are not like the typical better, but are good ambassadors for the company and their PR team has been pushing them to the media. It's interesting you mentioned the media because I feel like the media has also helped normalize this. I mean, you start to see accounts like Pop Krav or some of these others tweeting out polymarket odds or Kalshi ads. Obviously, Polymarket is trying to keep pace with Kalshi as Kalshi becomes more mainstream and integrated into

culture. And it seems like suddenly all of these polls that I'm seeing online or on like platforms like CNN even are like prediction market bets. Totally. Yeah. And I mean, another storyteller that you and I covered quite a bit. It was the misguided push to ban TikTok. Remember this? I got a DM from Tarek Mansoor in the Biden administration saying, hey, we were able to list a market actually on whether TikTok would be banned. Why don't you incorporate this into your story? And I literally replied two years later because I didn't know who he was at the time. But it really goes to show that from the top down at Kalshi, they see legitimizing the brand and becoming mainstream. You know, how they do that is to get the media to cite their market odds as being some kind of Oracle that we can put next to, say, a Pew

report or something, right? And they really, really have doubled down on this. And their PR team now is full of, you know, ex-meta people who are just any opportunity they have to put a trader in front of you who want a lot of money and did something great with their life. they will try to push it to you, right? So this is, this is definitely a PR strategy that they're doubling down on. Yeah, it's interesting. I hadn't heard from some meta PR people in a minute. I was wondering what they were up to. And it's interesting to see their names pop up and realize that they work for Kalshi now. And it seems like they've recruited these quite shrewd, like tech PR pros that are just really good and have these deep relationships with the media places like New York times and PR, etc, where they can just try to like get in front of you. I mean, the sports world seems increasingly influential. The Knicks are huge. right now you mentioned this one TikTok or there's been a bunch of viral videos with the cal she logo in it everybody's talking about cali rooting sharing these calci videos whether they realized or not there was also that scandal quote unquote around the mr beast video editor that i think was

secretly betting on cal she so one of the big controversies that has been swirling around cal she and the prediction market industry for a while now is insider trading how often does it happen how often are people getting fleeced because they they are in you know insiders and what is how is she doing to detect it and crack down on it? And, you know, for a while, it seemed nothing, right? There would be all of these sort of like strange trades that would be noticed first by people on Discord, Reddit and X, and the company would kind of shrug until they tried to make an example out of a Mr. Beast video editor who was editing Mr. Beast's videos and then logging on to prediction markets and seeing, oh, what will Mr. Beast say in his next video? I know as the video

editor, I'm going to put down money and turn a profit. And when you talk to, you know, scholars who study this industry, they'll say, I mean, give me a break. This guy won like, you know, in the matter of thousands of dollars, there are insiders who are making hundreds of thousands or millions that are not being detected. But what Cal She knew and Taylor, I mean, I'm sure you can, you can riff on this or you'd agree with it. If you put Mr. Beast in a headline, it's an instant international story. So if they caught the guy who works for Mr. Beast, it's going to look like to a global audience that they're taking insider trading really seriously when in fact there's billions and billions of dollars traded on CalShill loan every week and there's like three or four cases. So it's like

most insider training is not being detected. Yeah. I mean, ultimately these, I cannot believe these things are legal as you mentioned like sports gambling is supposed to be illegal in all these different states. Like this just seems like legalized gambling to a to a mass audience. Also younger and younger people are participating in. I know you're supposed to be 18, but I feel like people get around that. Like, Where do things stand now? Like, is this just going to become part of our economy? Are these markets growing? Or is, are we starting to see some backlash?

Because I've also noticed a lot of sort of anti-Kal-She sentiment online and people in the comments of influencer videos when influencers do a prediction market partnership. You know, there can be a lot of negative sentiment around that and people being like, oh, you're a sellout, you're a shill. This is bad. You're selling gambling to children. Yeah, every time, I mean, I also see that on my feeds when I'm scrolling that anytime there is a Calci or Polymarket sponsored piece of content,

that the comments are, you know, really dragging people for this. I think they're, they really, these companies really are seen as sort of glorified gambling. And they, you know, the stuff that really, I think, ticks people off is less so the political elections, even though, you know, election integrity people are, you know, very concerned about that. But it's the extremely depraved ones, ones about like wildfires in California. How does that not give an incentive for someone to, like, make the fire go farther? If you're betting on the anchorage that is going to be incinerated or, you know, strikes in, in Middle Eastern wars. How is that not? you know, putting the enemy on notice and also profiting off of death and destruction. I mean,

the stuff that this is now creating, that's casinoifying everything, is just, it's just really headspitting. It's just like every single thing now. And Tarek Mansour even says this. His goal was to turn every difference of opinion into a tradable asset. So now when we're walking around the world, we're thinking, oh, that's a thing. Can I make money off it? Like literally there is a market over what color Donald Trump's tie is going to be tomorrow during his appearance in the office. What's the value there? How is this benefiting society, right? I know. I feel like it's so bleak. And yet at the same time, I just want to get back to the Timothy shallomay of it all because like this is a major a list hyperculturally relevant celebrity that really hadn't even

experienced much backlash ever until like Marty Supreme kind of where they were like, okay, he's trying too hard. But this is a man, you know, like him or not with enormous cultural capital, huge fan base, a list celebrity, like at the peak, you know, I don't know if it's peak of his career, but he's certainly on top, you know, at the Oscars, da-da-da. And here he is now doing a partnership with this brand that like two years ago, I feel like was just like desperately clawing for partnerships with like CD MAGA influencers, you know? So what do you think this moment says? And why do you think Timothy Chalame would get involved at this point? Well, I think with Timothy Shalome, it goes to the point of like everyone has a price. I'm not sure

exactly what his deal was, but I'm sure it was astronomical. But I'm sure, you know, Shalame's people looked around and said, well, these prediction market companies are partnering with CNN, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press. Awards shows now increasingly have prediction market odds, sort of like built into the programming. The genie is definitely out of the bottle, and they're no longer a cultural pariah. They really do feel quite mainstream. I think a year, two years ago, Timothy Shalamee wouldn't even touch Kalshi, but in this political environment, in this cultural environment in which anytime you listen to any kind of political analysis, the words Kalshi or Polymarket come out of pundits' mouths pretty quickly. It really has become this

mainstream sensation and that turnabout is stunning. It just really is stunning. And as a journalist covering this industry and talking to the traders and talking to the companies, it is so frustrating how opaque Kalshi is. I mean, anytime I want to know what were the wins, what were the losses, what fees did they take, I need some kind of like former Kwant who has to be. like access to the backend API data to even get a sense of what's going on. They don't lift the hood. They don't have transparency and they just want you to sort of move on to the next market and put up money. But here's the other thing, Taylor, that's so important. All of these influencer deals, all of these affiliate deals, you know, having the Timothy Shalame commercial goes to their bottom line

because they like to say there is no house. We don't have a house. It's me trading against you. But they take like one to two percent on every trade. So if you see the Timothy Shalmy's, you, salome ad and you make a trade of a hundred dollars you know cal she makes a dollar or two multiply that by many millions they are just raking in hand over fist money and they know that they they know that the more their name gets out there the more people are going to use the richer these companies will become that's where it seems like especially with these prediction market companies is all attention is truly good attention and it is kind of like i mean that is sort of the crypto ethos as well with the meme coins and everything but that also leads to a lot of dark marketing because obviously we have you know

the Timothy Shalame, I didn't even really understand the ad very much. Yeah, I didn't either. It was kind of incoherent, right? Yeah, but I'm sure it's like they let him do whatever. All they need is the headline, you know, Timothy Shalameh, Calci, beautiful GQ spread announcing it all. Exactly. Even Timmy's caption, it just said Kalshi. So it's kind of like what?

But, you know, they're also willing to engage, I think, in a lot of really unorthodox marketing. And, I mean, Polly Market, too. You just wrote a story that I think you broke last week about, you know, Polymarket, pushing forward election misinformation on the L. mayoral race. And it seems like both Calci and obviously Polymarket too, they're very in line with a specific political movement. And it seems like they are intent on that political movement also remaining in power so that their businesses can continue to thrive. Because I feel like if the Democrats got control back, there would be a lot more regulation around all this. Oh, completely. Oh, completely. And so they're facing blowback now over, you know, some of their affiliates who are spreading

misinformation. They're saying we're stepping back from that. We have new rules. We're telling people to take down posts that are spreading election fraud. Falshood. And it's kind of, doesn't it feel like deja vu, Taylor? They're kind of like speed running the information wars, the content moderation wars that social media companies have been dealing with for years. Like finally, it's coming to prediction markets. But yes, to your other point, I totally agree.

I think with Democrats assume power in the next presidential election and the regulators become, you know, tough on this industry regulators. Kelshi and Polymarket are going to be in real trouble, but they are anticipating this. Neil Kaltiol, for instance, huge Democratic, Democratic lawyer is working for Kalshi. There's a number of former, you know, Democratic senators who are now lobbyists for Kalshi. They are anticipating this,

but potentially a change in the political winds that could change their business fortunes because they don't want to be labeled as the MAGA app. So in the beginning, every time I would point out, hey, it seems like, you know, the Trump administration is like rolling out the red carpet for you guys. They would fight so hard against that notion because they're so afraid of being seen as part of, you know, the Trump family's grift. They don't want to be seen as as part of the pro-innovation, pro-crypto push that we're seeing from the White House. So they're staffing up with lots of Democrats

and making inroads with people who are part of the Democratic machine. It's so much the Facebook strategy, like so much, where it's just like capture and it's like dominate both sides so that no matter what they will win because they own both sides. They own everything and it's just like crazy that they have all these meta people working for them because it really is like such a similar playbook. I'm curious kind of like what this means.

Like if this stuff gets normalized, like what does it mean? I think a lot of, you know, Kalshi and Polymarket, like, they try to position themselves as like, we want information to be free. Like, this isn't gambling. This is actually just like markets and information. And we already have markets and information and blah, blah, blah. Is there any truth to that? Or do you think that we just completely normalized mass gambling in a way that, like, will ultimately, you know, really affect our economy in a negative way? Like, where do you see all of this going? And where are you seeing the downstream effects of these markets already hitting? Yeah, to me, prediction markets are sort of the logical conclusion of the rise of crypto and like Robin Hood retail trading.

This was all leading to the point where literally everything will become gambling. The succorification, the casinoification of all things. It was going to lead to this point, I think eventually. And yes, the CEOs, when you talk to them, they like to wax poetic about how prediction markets will eventually replace legacy media, that you're worried about liberal bias, you're worried about stories not being told, you're worrying about them telling you that a candidate will be elected when they won't. Let the markets drive the answer.

You know, these are people putting their money where their mouth is. Wisdom of the crowds, like they like to say, right? And I do think that, you know, the second order effects of this are quite disturbing. I mean, there was, you know, Chris Hayes from MSNBC. There was election on what he would say during a late night appearance. And there was like millions of dollars on the line that he would say Trump. I mean, he's a political reporter. Obviously, you're going to say who the sitting president is.

And he said the president four times. He never said Trump and people lost millions of dollars. And that fueled all kinds of conspiracy theories about like, did he have a family member or a friend who was, you know, who is trading on Kalshi? Like, why did this happen? What's going on? Like the discord discussions go really off the rails. But what I think this is a window into is anytime someone wins or loses money on a prediction market, it is sparking all sorts of theories and, you know, conspiratorial thinking about was this an insider job? Was this insidered? And it's hard to, it's hard to prove a negative sometimes, right?

Chris Hayes, he's a friend of mind. There was no insider trading with him. But the point is like, yeah, if the president, you know, has some remarks in the Oval Office and avoids, like, the most obvious word and his family is investing in this industry, I don't know, a reasonable person could think, like, what's going on there? Or these celebrities, like, I'm so interested in how this is all being integrated into entertainment. As you mentioned, it's like you've got polymarket at the award shows. You've got now, you know, Shalameh with the call sheet. And I think this is going to pave the ways, like, I talk to a lot of, like, agents and managers in the influencer space that I also were. with big celebrities. A lot of agents and managers will not want their clients to work with

gambling apps or, you know, vice sort of signaled products. But I also feel like this kind of just normalizes it. I mean, I think the media is hugely responsible, as you said, how can you argue that Timothy Chalameh or Rebecca Black or some other who got, God forbid she does this? But like, I don't know, Charlie X, some other like culturally relevant like stars shouldn't work with these companies when CNN is working with them. When, you know, major American media organizations are doing these deals and partnerships. And it's just been so normalized. And like you said, everyone has a number, you know? Everyone has a number. And what I think this is an illustration of Taylor is just how desperate the media industry is right now. In light of Google zero, no one's clicking on our stories

anymore, you know, in light of, you know, our revenue model just completely collapsing, being completely sort of contingent on, you know, the whims of platforms. A lot of media organizations are grasping for new audience and new sources of revenue. And the bullish case, prediction markets is, well, if people are betting on what's happening in the news, maybe they'll have a subscription to the news, right? And some of the diehard prediction market traders, they're like, yeah, I pay for Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, New York Times. I mean, because that gives them edge, right? That gives them an edge over everyone else to get Wall Street Journal push alerts, run as fast as you can to polymarket and make a trade. I mean, I don't

think that prediction market traders are going to miraculously save the news industry, but there is a case to be made, and I've heard it made before, by some media executives who say, I don't we embrace this because everything else seems to be failing right now. And a sports media. I mean, if there is one breakout brand from the playoffs, it's Cal She like all of the content around the NBA playoffs has been like secret Cal She ads. So it seems like they've just really managed to break through and normalize themselves and integrate themselves in into a culture and our economy. And it's terrifying. I know I see a lot of independent journalists taking the money and it's bleak.

It's bleak. It's hard out there. You know, Mueller, she wrote. She was messaging me and she said I could use this in my reporting so I can talk about it. She sent me a bunch of screen grabs from someone on the affiliate team of Kalshi begging her to, you know, post about Kalshi. And just to like see what the rates would be? She really pushed them on, like, what would you pay me per post? Like, I have a pretty big audience.

And they like refused to put that in writing. They wanted to get on the phone. And she never got around to like talking to them. But she shared it with me just being like literally they want everyone and anyone. And I'm not going to work with these people. I want to say that there's something of a political divide, you know, more megaverse people are willing to take the money. and more left-wing people sort of generally are skeptical. That said, every time I'm scrolling on Instagram Reels,

I see someone who, like, in a video has Kalshi ads. And I, like, squint and look closely, and I'm like, oh, it's a paid partnership. But unless you're looking very carefully, like, it's, I'm not gonna call this a sci-up, that's such a trendy thing to do. But unless you're looking very carefully, you would be like, oh, this person who has like,

really, like, educated, you know, well, sort of reasoned thoughts about politics, it's just, they're just using these prediction market odds naturally when no it is a paid ad it's just spawn con right that's all it is i i was talking to another independent journalist who has taken the prediction market money and he was saying yeah all i have to do is talk about the prediction markets in my segments you know there's all these ways to get around disclosure requirements but i guess you don't have to disclose it you know each time in your segment it's very easy to make this money and i do think that that with the relevance of the playoffs with the timothy shallomay stuff with all of the integration into entertainment and culture like

it's going to be power user by call she's sometime. You know what I mean? It's like with the right price, I would not. Well, I'm really waiting for if, you know, Democrats take over Congress in the midterms and if they take control of both chambers and they have both subpoena power and the ability to hold hearings, they might want to get to the bottom of how far up does the corruption go. I mean, Israeli military officials have been arrested for using Intel to bet on polymarket. We saw an army official who knew about Maduro and these classified meetings and made money.

I think there are some lawmakers who are going to want to say, we're going to issue subpoenas, we're going to hold some hearings to see if this is happening in the White House. Is this happening in the greater sort of Trump family universe? I think that will be super interesting if that happens. Yeah, but Bobby, nobody loves insider trading more than sitting members of U.S. Congress. But in addition to, you know, Congress potentially or not potentially cracking down, there's also a bunch of cases making their ways through the courts, right? Yeah, there are dozens of lawsuits against Kauci and Pali Market.

And it's some interesting political fault lines. It's both Democratic and Republican governors suing them saying you're violating gambling laws. There's tribes that get lots and lots of tax revenue from gambling that are suing Calci and Polly market. And eventually some of these federal cases will be consolidated and they will wind up before the Supreme Court. And what is really important to sort of underscore here about how any of this is legal? That's the biggest question I get as like a prediction market reporter. How is this legal?

Well, the companies figured out there is a giant loophole in the law. And until Trump got into office, no regulator believed that that should be exploited. Now it's being exploited. We'll see if the Supreme Court, when they look at the law, believe that it is an illegal loophole or not. But if they come down and say the way these companies are being regulated is an abuse of the law and it's unconstitutional, they're going to be forced offshore, right? They're not going to go away. We both know they're not going to go away completely. But it's going to be a really, really serious headache for these companies.

And they might start to decline in relevancy. I think if the Supreme Court says these things are illegal, let's put them under, I could see sort of, you know, all of these institutions and media organizations starting to distance themselves. So, yeah, a lot of eyes are on what's going to happen at the Supreme Court. And it's like a super, super technical sort of legal analysis that we won't get into right now. But the important point is this could all go away with a flip of a light switch, basically. When do you think that that sort of court ruling would come? You know, how long is it going to take to kind of snake its way through the system? Yeah, there's a couple cases.

that are at the federal appellate level. And there's like a split right now in the federal appellate level. That usually tee ups a Supreme Court case. I don't know yet when that would happen. But this year, maybe early next, likely going to happen in this administration. So I'll be following that.

And if you want to know more about it, you can follow me on Twitter at, no, I'm kidding. I'm not going to be that self-promotional. Well, Bobby, I know we'll all continue to follow your reporting on NPR. And thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks, Taylor. This was fun.

All right. That's it for this week's episode of Power User. If you like my work, please, please, buy a paid subscription to my substack newsletter at usermag.co, that's usermag.com, or support me on Patreon via the link below. On my newsletter, I send a weekly roundup of everything that I'm reading and paying attention to online. You can also get that newsletter on my Patreon where I do monthly bonus episodes, Q&As, and more. Not only am I not sponsored by any prediction market companies, but I currently have zero advertisers. So if you like my work, please consider buying a paid subscription

to my substack or Patreon to keep this show going. Thanks so much and I'll be back next week for a brand new of Power User. See you then.