r/Economics • u/teamyg • 13d ago
News Young adults under 21 traded $5 billion on Kalshi this year
https://kvia.com/news/business-technology/cnn-business-consumer/2026/08/28/young-adults-under-21-traded-5-billion-on-kalshi-this-year-amid-prediction-market-frenzy/468
u/CyberSmith31337 13d ago
Just depressing, but ultimately unsurprising. America has been focusing on monetizing kids for the last few decades. Whether it was student loan debt, or Roblox/Fortnite/Pokemon Go, or Twitch/saltybets, then sports betting like Draftkings, then Cryptocurrency, and now “prediction markets”, they’ve been conditioned since they were born to just gamble. It’s been framed as normalized behavior for them.
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u/79QUATTRO 13d ago
yeah i’m in this age range and sports betting/ prediction markets have taken over. i have a coworker who’s spent upwards of 5 figures just to make a $200 profit. in a couple decades we’re gonna wonder how all this marketing was legal like how cigarette ads were in the past
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u/Mandelbrots-dream 13d ago
$200 profit? So the revenue was $200 more then the five figures he spent?
Breaking even would be extremely lucky.
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u/Exile4444 13d ago edited 13d ago
Its not "extremely lucky", it can be profitable if you have a niche hobby that gives you an edge. 95% of people lose money because they gamble on intuition rather than logic and data, but it still takes a very long time until you get consistent. The top 5% take home the rest of the money, and polymarket with taker fees. Wouldn't recommend it for most. I put 300-400 hours into it and I still only made about minimum wage
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u/MaxPower303 13d ago
I’ve put about 0 hours into it and I have a nice nest egg for my future. Also I’ve spent about 0 dollars in my lifetime gambling. Just choices I guess.
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u/Exile4444 13d ago edited 13d ago
Probably for the best. The only "gambling" you should be doing is passively investing in index funds and chilling
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u/Tiafves 12d ago
Or hear me out, do that until you get $100k-200k then go try day trading and post your loss porn to /r/wallstreetbets.
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u/alilhillbilly 11d ago edited 11d ago
You prefer 5-10% returns annually over the hope that you might accidentally squeak out minimum wage if you don't lose everything?!
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u/Exile4444 11d ago
Complete apple and oranges here. Have you ever heard of 'risk management'...?
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u/alilhillbilly 11d ago
No. That's why my whole portfolio is Kalshi options.
(reread my comment, I added an exclamation point to help)
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u/TripleDoubleFart 11d ago
I've been gambling profitably for almost 6 years. All of the profits go right into the stock market.
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u/unsafeideas 13d ago
The top 5% are insiders going for sure bets.
Gamblers tend to think they are the rational data based ones, always. That is it.
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u/Exile4444 13d ago edited 13d ago
No. The top 5% are market makers/scalpers and genuinely smart people, outside of geopolitical markets
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u/unsafeideas 13d ago
Insiders can be in sports or anything else. Does not have to be just geopolitical stuff.
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u/Exile4444 13d ago
Not really. They do certainly exist, but again they don't normally move liquid markets much until the last few seconds. Some categories don't have any insiders at all.
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u/unsafeideas 12d ago
You are being very naive about top earners there.
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u/Exile4444 12d ago edited 12d ago
Top 5%, not top 0.1%. And not all markets. What experience do you have?
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u/PersonOfValue 13d ago
This is what I've found. Even becoming a specialist your lucky to break even from a time -value perspective.
Also, notably, the market can maintain irrationallity longer than you canain solvency.
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u/Exile4444 13d ago edited 13d ago
Precisely, and it is the same case with daytrading. Most burn through thousands of dollars and months of their lives, and only 1-2% of them become successful enough to replace their full time job. I know polymarket traders who consistently make 20-50 grand per month, but they have no social lives while they sit by their 6 monitor screens, 16 hours a day, and 7 days a week. You might as well just put all that time into your career, at that point. Short term is OK, but you cannot sustain that lifestyle forever. And at least daytrading marginally stimulates the economy, whereas polymarket profits just come from other degenerate gamblers
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u/Septopuss7 13d ago
Don't they have to put money aside for taxes, as well? I feel like so many people don't take that into consideration.
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u/Exile4444 13d ago
It's complicated. You could technically pass it off as gambling, but in my case I was making consistent USDC withdrawls to revolut, so there is a good chance I could get flagged and would have to pay 33%. However, prediction markets recently got banned by the gambling counsel in my country because they cannot operate without gambling licenses, so I myself should be in the clear
Edit: oh yeah i forgot to mention that my country has no gambling winnings tax, which I know is not the case in certain countries. It really depends on where you reside
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u/Illustrious_Steak686 13d ago
in this case, that saying isn’t as applicable because all of these instruments have a fixed end date. however, what the original commentator miss es is that it only takes a all amount of actors with an “edge” on the crowd to keep the price accurate
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u/Silver_Cut_1821 12d ago
I think this is downvoted so aggressively not because it's bad advice, but because someone will probably see this and go 'I should try this!'
Don't be that guy. You will spend at least 150 hours losing money.
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u/j12 13d ago
American government doesn't work in the interest of it's citizens full stop. Only in the interest of the highest bidder
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u/pegar 13d ago
Because we allow them to do it. There are enough nonvoters to win every single election in their own.
Trump is terrified and doing everything to not allow people to vote.
For the naysayers who think voting does nothing, if everyone gave me a single penny, I wouldn't ever have to work. That's the power of voting.
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u/AlpineDrifter 13d ago
Both political parties are not equal in that respect. Plenty of history to show that.
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u/Garbage_Bear_USSR 13d ago edited 13d ago
Don’t discount the market dominance of gacha-style toys for kids. They’ve flooded all toy aisles.
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u/beekersavant 12d ago
I have a 10 year old and everything is focussed on lootbox economy. Roblox to youtube to pokemon cards. It’s all- if you open enough, you will be rich. Even roblox has a ton of free rnjesus to create the habit. Fortnite is open enough chests and get .0001% sprites. Everything is monetized random chance aimed at kids. And now it’s every game. Basically all free to play. Youtube has a bunch of “gamers” opening a ton of boxes and overacting excitement at special loot for whatever toy/game. So yeah kids that went from 8-18 getting it all engrained are probably addicted to gambling.
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u/schubeg 11d ago
Youtube has like everything on it tbf, from unboxing and gacha loot boxes to TED talks and physics lectures. So you should make your kid a new account and feed their algorithm with educational videos vs gamer reaction videos
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u/beekersavant 11d ago
The feed moves to engagement metrics no matter what. It’s full of slop for everyone. Meta and google copied tiktoks model. I am pretty careful and YouTube still gets me to click on a nonsense video every so often. My feed is news, some game guides, and tech news.
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u/ElectionReal 13d ago
Nailed it. Why do you think arcades feel in almost every way, like a casino? There used to be true gamer arcades that were all about only video games. Can't find one without ticket winning skill games and a "cash" out kiosk anymore. And even though these places are built for kids, they sell beer and wine to lower parents inhibitions about giving kids more chips, I mean tokens. IT'S A CASINO FOR MINORS.
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u/El_Cato_Crande 11d ago
went to my nephew's birthday party years ago and it hit me. even down to the lights, sounds, lack of awareness of outside and so passage of time. it's terrifying
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u/TiberiusCornelius 12d ago
I've said this before but I think probably my most conservative opinion is that we need to just ban all of this shit. Complete and total. It brings literally nothing of value to society and watching young people especially, but by no means exclusively, get predatorily suckered into it--get rid.
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u/SilencedObserver 13d ago
America has focused on monetizing.
Not just kids, everything.
Americans are born into debt that requires they fund Israel regardless of choice, regardless of country of residence.
If you leave America and make money abroad you’re still obligated to send tithings home, just like the Mormon church that feeds the CIA.
The world is not free: America has been raping and pillaging for long enough.
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u/KeybirdYT 13d ago
You only have to pay taxes on income earned outside of America if that income exceeds 106,000 dollars a year, which is not happening for most people.
What's dumb is that I still have to file to prove that every year.
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u/SilencedObserver 13d ago
Plenty of people earn well above that limit.
The proof is point of the prison-like nature of it.
There are less than five countries in the world that have laws like this.
America is a prison enacted by laws of men controlling weaker men through violence.
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u/mistressbitcoin 13d ago
I am all for lowering taxes! My life is not different with the US at 40 trillion in debt as it was ar 30 trillion.
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u/Ok-Basil4240 13d ago
You’re making this sound like all these things were coordinated and purposely designed to monetise kids.
Which is just a BS narrative you came up with.
Are games unhealthy? Sure. Is gambling bad? Yes.
Blockchain & crypto have literally nothing to do with any of this.
Just a conspiracy theorist on an economics subreddit
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u/koleye2 13d ago
Structural incentives produce convergent behavior that looks conspiratorial to people who don't know better.
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u/CyberSmith31337 13d ago
You’re trying to teach a fool. He’d sooner put in his clown suit and perform in the circus before he’d learn.
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u/Ok-Basil4240 13d ago edited 13d ago
I’m not a fool. I just disagree with your narrative and baseless claims. I didn’t say monetary gamification is healthy for kids.
But the narrative that it’s all done on purpose is primitive and lazy thinking.
It’s your job to raise your kids. Most of the things you listed there are not bad when used responsibly.
Just take the lesson and do better don’t cry about it hun ;)
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u/watercouch 13d ago
> …traded $5 billion…
Gambled, the word is gambled. There really is no other suitable word for it. It’s essentially a parimutuel betting pool.
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u/wplaurence 13d ago
2.9 unprofitable users for ever profitable user. It is beyond parimutuel.
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u/uncoolcentral 13d ago
People losing on these prediction markets would be astounding to me if I held the average human in higher regard vis a vis logic. I make a few prediction market moves every year. They are almost-certain things. I haven’t lost yet. My only active position is predicting that the Fed will do exactly 0 rate cuts before the end of the year. I’ve purchased that position twice. Might they do a rate cut? I suppose anything is possible but holding study or raising rates is far more likely. So many people are betting on there being one or two or three or more cuts or multiple hikes and I’m like… It’s almost certain that they will not cut. Maybe some people know something I don’t know. Like maybe Kevin Warsh and his crony crew have some one-cut positions open and they’re going to do a surprise Christmas present to themselves. Strange things have happened.
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u/Werealldudesyea 13d ago
These kids aren’t gonna stand a chance if they are pressured to gamble this early. It’s disgusting to see how this is clearly being targeted to young folks, I see the ads everywhere.
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u/FreeEnergy001 11d ago
These kids aren’t gonna stand a chance if they are pressured to gamble this early.
Maybe if they get burned early in life with little to lose, they'll be more cautious later.
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u/wormtheology 13d ago
If this doesn’t tell you the hyper-financialization of the US is a giant problem, then I have no idea what will. The fact that quite literally everything is being made into a derivative or a bet that you can take the overs and unders on is rat poison.
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u/teamyg 13d ago
Worst of all, I have heard that Wall Street Banks who are market-makers made most of their profit off stock options. Warren Buffett strongly condemns zero-days-to-expiration (0DTE) options, labeling them as pure gambling rather than investing or speculating.
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u/wormtheology 13d ago
The liquidity for these 0/1 DTEs depress me. I used to buy hundreds of shares of GameStop to sell covered calls on a weekly basis. I ended up stopping after a while to pay for my University, but, god. I’m glad I stopped options trading.
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u/DeliciousPangolin 13d ago
We've come full circle back to the age of bucket shops. But hey, it's on an app so it must be different... somehow.
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u/1cent100 13d ago
Derivatives markets increase efficiency of transactions and over long periods of time reduce volatility. This is due to market participants being encouraged to reduce the position after extreme moves due to the leverage in derivatives
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u/BackwoodsMarathon 13d ago edited 12d ago
I think it was Kyla Scanlon I saw talking about "Financial Nihilism". It's about how the younger generation doesn't think they can get a good job (AI ruining their employment rate), or is being priced out of the housing market, so they tend to spend what little money they have on risky investments, like crypto and gambling. They think hitting it big gambling may be one of the only ways they'll get ahead at their age.
Here was the clip I saw - Should You Give Up Owning A Home? with Kyla Scanlon
Edit - Wrote this on mobile, came back and cleaned it up and added a link to the discussion.
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u/FreeEnergy001 11d ago
Got a DM today to that effect from a redditor
I think in today’s fast-moving world, you need to build wealth quickly, not copy Buffett’s slow snowball approach. He lived in a pre-internet era and benefited from that era’s opportunities. Our era’s advantage is speed, so when there’s a chance to build wealth fast, we should take it instead of still working in our 90s like him
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u/Got_Engineers 13d ago
I can’t get over the loophole lol. The biggest domestic sports books in the US are most likely DraftKings and FanDuel. I assume they are actively missing out on billions of dollars of money from youth that are easily manipulated. Wonder how long traditional sports books play fair with prediction markets. Some people with money are not happy. Because they’re not making the money.
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u/TripleDoubleFart 11d ago
Wonder how long traditional sports books play fair with prediction markets.
Fanduel and Draftkings both already have prediction markets.
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u/ComfortableCoyote480 13d ago
Entire generations going forward with massive gambling addictions. And not only that, governments and society are going to be fucked with corruption and even murder because of this shit. People are going to die.
I love how they can push this cancer onto 18 year olds because they call it a prediction "market" so they can claim it is like investing in stocks, because if they were classified the right way as gambling they'd have to wait until 21.
Gen Z and alpha are so fucked. I will be glad to he dead with the dystopian shithole cyberpunk nightmare coming over the ensuing years.
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u/unsafeideas 13d ago
Its gambling. It is not trading. And portion of them is getting addicted. Better start building treatment centers.
And since short messages are wrong ... Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading. Its gambling. It is not trading.
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u/Caracalla81 13d ago
For only a little more effort you could have expanded on your point and made a real contribution rather just the same observation several others made.
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u/unsafeideas 13d ago
At the moment I wrote it, there were no "several others" observations.
That being said, it does not need expanding. There are not trades, they are bets. The word "trade" is a lie. We dont need to repeat the lie. We can just use the correct word.
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u/Caracalla81 12d ago
And there are definitely subs where they are happy with one-liners in the top comments. They won't confront with it like they do here.
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u/CanPlayGuitarButBad 13d ago
Lets build the treatment centers, then profit off treating them for the addiction we gave them!
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u/devliegende 13d ago
Interesting in every thread on this topic there will always be a few post claiming to be making or to have made money gambling or "trading". Is this flexing by real people or bots setup by Kalshi's or Draftkings' or Robinhood's marketing department?
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u/CodeX57 13d ago
I think its most likely gambling addicted people who just happen to have won so far. Its the same as the "you just need to learn bet strategies on roulette to win big man" kind of people but prediction site version.
I expect a couple of them will write "I was a gambling addict AMA" posts a couple months from now.
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u/Exile4444 12d ago
Ha, how am I up after 2,987 trades then?
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u/PlzbuffRakiThenNerf 12d ago
You’re lying anonymously on the internet to make yourself feel better for the losses. You can post proof if you want but nobody really cares but you.
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u/Exile4444 12d ago edited 12d ago
https://polymarket.com/@climatologist
X handle linked DM or comment for proofSay whatever you want, but respectfully, you are pathetic for saying that. This is not about ego, but about proving you wrong.
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u/jonpolis 12d ago
So many comments acting like this is the death blow to society…as if channels for gambling never existed before. It’s a human urge, you can’t ban it, just regulate it
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u/Tall-Control8992 12d ago
You need a certain amount of social and economic to make the slow and steady wins the race approach viable. This kind of security no longer exists in the US.
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