Prediction market platform Kalshi has hired digital assets influencer John Wang as its head of crypto in a move the CEO called “betting on slope.”
In a Monday notice, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said the company had hired the 23-year-old New York-based influencer, who dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania “to pursue crypto” in 2024. According to his LinkedIn, Wang worked as a fellow at Paradigm and an intern at Immutable before co-founding blockchain security company Armor Labs in 2022.
“Slope is about high quality thinking, dreaming big, and working mercilessly hard,” said Mansour. “The more time I spent with John, the deeper my conviction grew. I can’t wait for us to tackle the roadmap we are putting together.”
Wang’s position comes while Kalshi is under scrutiny as US lawmakers consider Brian Quintenz’s nomination to chair the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), an agency with regulatory authority over the company.
The CFTC filed an enforcement action against Kalshi in September 2024 while under the Biden administration, but filed a motion in May to drop the case while under President Donald Trump.
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Political motivation for platform offering election betting?
Wang, as the new head of crypto, suggested that prediction markets could make people more engaged “politically, financially, culturally,” citing his experience monitoring bets over the 2024 US presidential election:
“As an Australian, I can’t vote in the US elections. But prediction markets changed the way I experienced them. In that moment it clicked: this is how society will process truth. Not through punditry or biased takes, but through markets that transform belief into something tangible.”
Though launched in 2021, activity on Kalshi surged ahead of the 2024 US elections, for which the platform offered many options for users to bet. Though the CFTC filed for a temporary injunction to block Kalshi from listing political event contracts, a court ruled in October — one month before the federal elections — that the platform could offer such bets.
Kalshi closed a $185 million funding round in June, making the company’s valuation about $2 billion. The funding round and Wang’s hiring followed the platform announcing it would accept Bitcoin (BTC) deposits in April as part of efforts to onboard more crypto-native users.
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