Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour on The Case for Prediction Markets | Ep. 48

Tarek Mansour is the co-founder and CEO of Kalshi. Kalshi is a regulated prediction market exchange valued at $22B in 2026 where people trade on the outcomes of real-world events – things like inflation prints, Fed decisions, elections, or weather events. Instead of betting against a house, users trade against each other in a market, and prices reflect the collective probability of an outcome happening. Before starting Kalshi, Tarek worked as a quantitative trader at Goldman Sachs as a structured credit and equities analyst and at Citadel as a global macro trader. During his time at these firms, he realized a common thread: a lot of trading stemmed from an opinion on a future event. We covered the idea behind prediction markets and how they offer a more direct way to trade on beliefs about the future. The conversation follows the long, difficult path to building a regulated exchange in the U.S., from early skepticism to ultimately winning a landmark legal battle. We also discuss how these markets can improve forecasting, enable new forms of hedging, and change how information gets priced. Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:23) Kalshi’s genesis (5:05) Regulation-focused from inception (11:06) Suing the government (18:02) Gambling vs. financial markets (20:58) Defining insider trading (25:38) Incentive structure of the system (32:40) Investing vs. trading (35:31) Hedging use cases (41:38) Scaling a lean team (44:02) Defining Kalshi’s culture Links: https://x.com/jaltma https://x.com/mansourtarek_ https://kalshi.com/ https://uncappedpod.com/ friends@uncappedpod.com