Kalshi wants its traders to keep their Bitcoin and trade with it too.
The prediction markets company announced a partnership with BitGo Holdings Inc. on October 21, 2026. Eligible clients can now borrow against crypto held in custody at BitGo Bank & Trust and use it as margin for Kalshi’s perpetual futures.
How the arrangement works
The program runs through Kalshi Prime, the company’s US-registered futures commission merchant. A futures commission merchant is the regulated middleman that handles customer orders and collateral for futures trades.
Three types of collateral qualify: Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and stablecoins that comply with the GENIUS Act.
The loan itself is a tri-party structure. The client is the borrower. Kalshi Katalyst acts as the lender. BitGo serves as the custodian holding the pledged assets.
The borrowed funds then back positions in Kalshi’s perpetual futures. Perpetuals are futures contracts with no expiration date. Traders can hold a leveraged long or short position indefinitely, as long as they keep enough margin posted.
Who this is built for
Kalshi is aiming at two groups. The first is crypto-native traders, the people who already live in perpetuals markets and treat their coin holdings as working capital. The second is large entities that would rather not liquidate their crypto positions.
Kalshi is also widening its distribution. Under a separate agreement, Webull customers will gain access to Kalshi’s perpetual futures.
A fast year for Kalshi’s crypto push
Kalshi secured approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in May 2026 for crypto perpetual futures, starting with a Bitcoin contract. It launched its first BTC perpetual in June 2026.
So in roughly five months, Kalshi went from regulatory sign-off to a live product, a retail distribution partner, and now a collateralized lending arrangement.
BitGo brings the custody side. Placing collateral at BitGo Bank & Trust gives institutional clients a regulated custodian they can point to when their compliance teams ask where the coins actually live.
What this means for traders and the market
The immediate effect is capital efficiency. Clients who previously had to choose between holding crypto and trading derivatives can now do both, at least those who meet Kalshi’s eligibility requirements.
The risks deserve equal billing. Borrowing against volatile assets to fund leveraged positions stacks two layers of exposure on top of each other. If Bitcoin or Ether falls sharply, the collateral value drops at the same time leveraged positions may be losing money.
Stablecoin collateral is the more conservative option, and the GENIUS Act requirement narrows it to tokens operating under the federal framework.
Things to watch from here: whether Kalshi expands eligible collateral beyond BTC, ETH and compliant stablecoins, how quickly Webull users adopt perpetuals, and whether competing US-regulated venues roll out similar lending arrangements.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.