Occasionally I like to bless free sauce, this should be an easy one guys. little 4 leg action for NFL sunday.
If this works for you and you like the result shoot me a dm
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I logged every 15-minute Bitcoin Up or Down market that settled on Kalshi and Polymarket from September 6 to October 10, 2026, with the price at each tenth of the way through, and checked how often the side in front went on to win.
Data TLDR
Each of these markets asks one thing: will Bitcoin be higher in 15 minutes than it is now. A new one opens the moment the last one closes. For every market that settled we kept which side won and the Up price at nine points, from a tenth of the way through to nine tenths. The leader at any point is the side priced above 50c. A market sitting at exactly 50c, or with no price yet, has no leader and is left out of that point: 28 on Kalshi and 2 on Polymarket at halfway.
Return on stake is a flat buy of the leader at its recorded price in every market of a group, held to the result. The price is the last traded price at that moment, not the ask you would pay, and the headline figures are before fees. That is why we show the Kalshi result after its taker fee as well.
Everything here is one measurement on one date from a frozen export, 3,270 Kalshi markets and 3,262 Polymarket markets, so every figure can be re-derived. These are modeled results on a historical record, not realized returns.
Three out of four halfway leaders win, on both venues
Pooled, the side ahead at 7 minutes 30 seconds won 4,889 of 6,502 markets, 75.1%. Kalshi and Polymarket are a tenth of a point apart, which they should be, because both are pricing the same 15 minutes of Bitcoin.
Up and Down split evenly. Up won 1,635 of 3,270 on Kalshi, exactly half, and 1,621 of 3,262 on Polymarket. There is no drift to lean on. The information is in who is ahead and by how much.
Where the wins land through the 15 minutes
How often the side ahead at each point went on to win, with the average price of that side at that point.
| Time in | Kalshi win rate | Kalshi price | Polymarket win rate | Polymarket price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1:30 | 59.9% | 59.8c | 60.4% | 59.9c |
| 3:00 | 67.2% | 65.6c | 64.6% | 63.3c |
| 4:30 | 69.1% | 67.7c | 68.9% | 68.1c |
| 6:00 | 73.5% | 72.4c | 71.1% | 70.2c |
| 7:30 | 75.2% | 74.6c | 75.1% | 74.7c |
| 9:00 | 80.1% | 79.3c | 78.2% | 76.7c |
| 10:30 | 81.1% | 81.8c | 81.4% | 81.5c |
| 12:00 | 86.2% | 87.1c | 83.9% | 84.0c |
| 13:30 | 88.9% | 90.1c | 89.3% | 89.8c |
The first nine minutes are where the leader is cheap
Read the table across. From 1:30 to 9:00 the leader wins a little more often than it costs on both venues, by up to 1.6 points. From 10:30 on it flips: the leader costs as much as it wins or slightly more. The late favorite is the crowded trade. The early and middle leader is the one the market is still slow to believe.
Buying the leader costs money, and the strong ones still clear it
Buy every halfway leader at 70c or more and hold it. On Kalshi that is 2,031 markets, 1,731 wins, an average price of 83.4c and a 2.2% return on stake. On Polymarket it is 2,000 markets, 1,706 wins, 83.9c and 1.6%. Pooled it is 3,437 wins from 4,031 markets and 1.9%.
Kalshi's taker fee at that price is 0.97c a contract, 1.2% of the stake. Take it off and the Kalshi result is about 1.0% a trade. Small, but it is there on every one of the eight series we checked, and one of these markets settles every 15 minutes.
The clock is much more important than the streak
People trade these on streaks. Three Ups in a row, so a Down is due, or so the run keeps going. Neither holds. After exactly three of the same result in a row the next Kalshi market repeated it 187 of 399 times, and the next Polymarket market 192 of 396. After exactly two it was 400 of 841 and 397 of 835. After five or more it was 95 of 182 and 95 of 180. All of it is a coin flip.
What does carry information is the price and the minute. A leader at 1:30 wins 59.9% on Kalshi. The same leader at 7:30 wins 75.2%, and at 13:30 wins 88.9%. Large buyers trade it that way too. In the 1,098 Kalshi Bitcoin markets that drew large buys at 85c or less, the side with more of that money won 734, 66.8%.
Kalshi Bitcoin by the leader's price at halfway
Markets grouped by what the side in front cost at 7:30. Return is a flat buy of every leader in the row, before fees.
| Leader's price | Markets | Leader won | Win rate | Avg price | Return on stake |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 to 55c | 270 | 136 | 50.3% | 52.4c | -3.9% |
| 55 to 60c | 292 | 169 | 57.8% | 57.0c | +1.5% |
| 60 to 70c | 649 | 404 | 62.2% | 64.4c | -3.3% |
| 70 to 80c | 728 | 559 | 76.7% | 74.4c | +3.2% |
| 80 to 90c | 746 | 646 | 86.5% | 84.6c | +2.4% |
| 90c and up | 557 | 526 | 94.4% | 93.5c | +1.0% |
Polymarket Bitcoin by the leader's price at halfway
| Leader's price | Markets | Leader won | Win rate | Avg price | Return on stake |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 to 55c | 313 | 172 | 54.9% | 52.5c | +4.7% |
| 55 to 60c | 301 | 165 | 54.8% | 57.3c | -4.4% |
| 60 to 70c | 646 | 406 | 62.8% | 65.1c | -3.4% |
| 70 to 80c | 712 | 546 | 76.6% | 75.1c | +2.1% |
| 80 to 90c | 744 | 641 | 86.1% | 85.0c | +1.3% |
| 90c and up | 544 | 519 | 95.4% | 94.0c | +1.5% |
The same thing on Ethereum, Solana and XRP
The 15-minute series for the other three coins over the same weeks. Halfway leader's win rate, then the leaders at 70c or more.
| Series | Markets | Halfway leader won | Avg price | At 70c or more | Return on stake |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kalshi Bitcoin | 3,270 | 75.2% | 74.6c | 85.2% | +2.2% |
| Kalshi Ethereum | 3,270 | 77.0% | 75.8c | 86.2% | +1.8% |
| Kalshi Solana | 3,270 | 77.0% | 76.8c | 86.1% | +1.3% |
| Kalshi XRP | 3,270 | 78.2% | 76.8c | 87.1% | +2.6% |
| Polymarket Bitcoin | 3,262 | 75.1% | 74.7c | 85.3% | +1.6% |
| Polymarket Ethereum | 3,257 | 76.7% | 76.1c | 85.9% | +1.0% |
| Polymarket Solana | 3,159 | 77.5% | 76.8c | 86.5% | +1.2% |
| Polymarket XRP | 3,165 | 78.6% | 77.1c | 87.1% | +1.9% |
The ones buying the leader loses on
The weak leader. A side at 60 to 70c at halfway is the one spot that loses on both venues: it won 62.2% on Kalshi at an average 64.4c and 62.8% on Polymarket at 65.1c, a return of -3.3% and -3.4% before fees. A small lead at halfway is priced as if it were a bigger one.
The near coin flip. Under 60c the two venues disagree with each other row by row, which is what noise looks like. A Kalshi leader at 50 to 55c won 136 of 270.
The comeback. A side at 90c or more at halfway lost 31 of 557 times on Kalshi and 25 of 544 on Polymarket. With 90 seconds left the leader still lost 360 of 3,267 Kalshi markets and 346 of 3,260 on Polymarket, about one in nine. Even at 90c or more with 90 seconds left it lost 59 of 2,282 on Kalshi and 47 of 2,221 on Polymarket.
Data: every settled 15-minute Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and XRP market on Kalshi and Polymarket, September 6 to October 10, 2026, recorded by Rivo. More studies and downloads: rivo.markets/research
One possible reason is that AI knows everyone is AI trading, so that becomes a shaky foundation, and now the actual inverse of AI-generated models pays off better.
Some guy posted on twitter: a $10 entry with a potential $10,000 payout on Kalshi. His FanDuel comparison showed $6,400 for what he described as the same picks.
That's a $3,600 difference on a $10 ticket. These were advertised payouts if the picks hit. the post doesn't show a $10,000 win.
I'd be curious to see both quotes taken at the same time. A gap that big is worth checking, especially once you account for fees, boosts and what happens if a player doesn't play. One posted comparison only tells us so much about Kalshi vs FanDuel.
For anyone wondering how Kalshi parlays work, Kalshi calls them combos. You combine several outcomes and get a live quote for the whole ticket. If one leg settles at zero, the combo pays zero. A player who doesn't play can also change the payout under that market's rules.
I get the appeal of a ticket like this. You look through the names and can picture each guy scoring. Getting all of them right on the same ticket is where it gets difficult. That $10,000 number doesn't tell you how likely it is to happen.
The version of this ticket I'd like to see is the one with a leg removed. How much does the payout drop? Which pick was only there because it pushed the number past $10,000?
Would you keep the full touchdown parlay, or drop your least convincing pick and take the smaller potential payout?
The main problem wasn’t weak models—it was severe overconfidence from a mismatched forecast source.
Current paper results:
- Bankroll: $67.34
- Realized P/L: -$32.66
- Record: 1–8 across only five unique markets
- NWS forecast error on recent trades: roughly 6–10°F
- Contracts settle using The Weather Company, not NWS
- The model treated 4°F and 9°F cushions as 77% and 91% probabilities
- Multiple “models” repeatedly exposed the bankroll to the same underlying
market
- Exact opposite-side shadows went 8–1, but the sample remains too small to
justify blindly reversing everything
I updated the paper strategy:
- Weather probabilities are now blended 75% toward the executable market
price, preventing unsupported 30–40 point edge estimates.
- Funded entries are limited to the 8–12 hour window—the only currently
profitable timing shadow, though based on just six unique markets.
- Maximum spread is now 8¢, blocking trades such as the recent 18¢-spread
Denver position.
- Existing positions and ledger history were preserved.
- Live trading remains disabled.
Core changes are in scripts/weather/core/value_ticket.py:61 and scripts/
weather/shared_config.py:16. The operating rationale is documented in docs/
OPERATIONS.md:26.
Validation:
- Full suite: 203 tests passed
- Syntax checks passed
- Diff checks passed
Counterfactually, the new window would have rejected all nine recent settled
entries, including the one winner. That is the right tradeoff for now: remain
in the game during the strongest observed timing window, but stop risking
paper capital on inflated provider-specific “edges.” This improves risk
discipline; it does not yet establish a winning strategy.
My favorite quote from AI: You are not really losing money; the model is just not working for you.
Ummm, Ok. :-)
Hi guys,
Any one building a prediction market here? I want to hear about it.
I've been trading for a while on other prediction markets, and now wanted to explore trading on Kalshi as well to capture more liquidity, as I saw studies stating there is more there (I realized that unfortunately, it's quite limited on the markets I trade).
I added $500 to play with the API. No problem, I could deposit using the Arbitrum network in a few clicks.
I tried to withdraw $100 as I saw some people had issues with it, and the process is really not smooth.
- I can't withdraw using Arbitrum. Not a big deal, but ok, it would have been nice to have it both ways.
- I thought I had already gone through KYC, but no, I have to go through it again: selfie, passport, etc.
I managed to do it, but I was quite surprised they let you deposit, while withdrawing is not secure. I saw some posts of people having money blocked. That's my main worry now if I start using Kalshi for real with a decent amount of money.
- I live in a country where Kalshi and Polymarket are legal. What if there is a sudden change: would I be able to withdraw, or would the money be blocked?
- Has anyone had issues with stuck money on it while respecting all the KYC requirements?
I've been wondering now if I should spend more time on it or just ditch it and see later.
I understand these markets are 'borderline', in the sense that countries keep changing their laws regarding this and betting lobbies from each country are fighting against them. So I understand there is always a risk that I won't be able to trade anymore if my country changes regulations; however, I never thought that I couldn't even withdraw the money I placed on the market.