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Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour confirmed in a podcast interview that his staff asked social media influencers to promote memories of the FBI’s raid on the home of Polymarket’s arch-rival, the CEO.
Both of these companies offer competitive event betting markets, a new type of betting industry where people bet on the outcome of events ranging from elections to popular culture.
The The FBI raided the home of the CEO of Polymarket Last month, Shayne Coplan and it turned out that Kalshi tried to capitalize on his opponent’s misfortune by asking influencers to send memes about it, Mansoor said.
“Some of our team got quite heated. They did not pay anyone; they just asked our longtime affiliates to post some memes,” Mansoor said Nichole Wischoff said on this week’s episode of his FirstMoney In show.
Pirates Wires, a media outlet founded by Mike Solana, informed Kalshi said employees paid influencers to post content that showed Polymarket and its CEO, Shane Koplan, engaged in illegal activity. However, the Pirates Wires article also acknowledged its apparent conflict of interest with this report. Solana is the chief marketing officer of Founders Fund, one of Polymarket’s main investors, and Polymarket is an advertiser for Pirates Wires.
A podcast segment discussing Kalshin’s reaction to the raid and competition with Polymarket was deleted shortly after its initial broadcast. TechCrunch has obtained and listened to the deleted portion.
In the podcast, Mansoor accused Polymarket of engaging in similar social media tactics against Kalshi. “Both companies do that,” he said, adding that his team believed Polymarket was behind some of the social media posts, “and we were raided by the FBI. That didn’t happen.” “We didn’t get a rating from the FBI.”
TechCrunch could not confirm these claims. Neither Polymarket nor Kalshi responded to our requests for comment.
But the CEO said on the podcast that he had allowed his company’s members’ social media wars to “go too far,” adding: “I don’t think there’s any basis.
While Kalshi did not fire the employees involved, Mansoor said the individuals “realize it was wrong and they shouldn’t do it again.”
Polymarket claimed that the reasons for the raid were politically motivated around betting on the US presidential election, although both markets were betting on the outcome. According to Bloomberg, The Department of Justice is investigating Polymarket For allowing US users to engage in restricted trading. After the 2022 settlement with the Commodity and Exchange Commissions, Polymarket is prohibited Bloomberg also refused to allow US traders to place bets on its platform.
Kalshi, unlike Polymarket, is legally allowed to accept trades of US residents from 2021. In September, the company also won the case which allowed him to accept bets on election results.
Kalshi’s backers include Sequoia and Y Combinator is currently raising a funding round More than $50 million or more, TechCrunch reported last month.
