Kalshi Moves to End Its Volume Incentive Program Amid Wash-Trading Scrutiny

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• KalshiEX LLC filed with the CFTC to terminate its Volume Incentive Program no later than October 13, 2026, roughly a year ahead of its original schedule
• The program, launched in March 2023, paid traders proportional rewards for boosting liquidity on Kalshi’s central limit order book, with per-contract rewards capped at $0.005
• The move follows regulatory scrutiny of roughly $5 billion in repeated $5,500 ETH perpetual futures trades that inflated Kalshi’s volume metrics, which the exchange maintains involved no wash trading

KalshiEX LLC submitted a self-certification filing to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, dated September 28, 2026 and made public this week, notifying the Commission that it will terminate its Volume Incentive Program no later than October 13, 2026, at the exchange’s discretion.

The Volume Incentive Program, launched in March 2023, was designed, in the filing’s words, to “increase volume and liquidity on the central limit order book and thereby enhance pricing efficiency” by paying participants rewards proportional to their trading volume in designated markets. The program applied across Kalshi’s markets, excluded affiliates, market makers, and certain broker arrangements, and capped rewards for event contracts at $0.005 per contract on trades executed at prices between $0.03 and $0.97. Kalshi’s filing states the termination complies with the Commodity Exchange Act and that the program’s terms will remain publicly available on Kalshi’s website even after it winds down.

The termination follows regulatory attention to trading patterns on the platform: the CFTC has examined roughly $5 billion in trades involving repeated $5,500 ether perpetual futures positions that inflated Kalshi’s reported volume figures, according to reporting that cited the filing alongside a Wall Street Journal examination of the trades. Kalshi disputed any wrongdoing in a company blog post rebutting the allegations, maintaining that no wash trading occurred on its platform. Kalshi reported a record $52.98 billion in trading volume for September 2026 as of September 29, up from $38.67 billion in August, with the exchange’s ETH perpetual futures alone showing $539 million in 24-hour volume against just $3.1 million in open interest.

Kalshi’s original 2023 filing establishing the program anticipated it would run through at least October 1, 2027; ending it roughly a year early, and doing so shortly after regulatory scrutiny of the platform’s volume metrics became public, ties the program’s discretionary termination date to the broader questions raised about how much of Kalshi’s reported trading activity reflects incentive-driven repeat trading rather than organic demand.

The episode adds to a wider pattern of regulatory attention on incentive programs across the prediction-market and crypto derivatives industry, after the CFTC’s Division of Market Oversight flagged deficiencies in incentive-program filings more broadly earlier this year. As prediction markets and crypto perpetuals have scaled rapidly in trading volume, regulators and rivals alike have increasingly scrutinized whether headline volume figures reflect genuine investor demand or reward-driven trading that inflates a platform’s apparent liquidity without matching economic substance.