Kalshi’s 15-Minute Gold Market Surpasses Ethereum, Generates $5 Million in September Fees

Kalshi’s 15-minute gold market has grown rapidly enough to overtake its Ethereum market just over a month after launch.

Cointelegraph reported on Oct. 7 that prediction-market data platform Predict Charts estimated Kalshi’s 15-minute gold contracts generated about $5 million in trading fees in September. That compared with $2.6 million for 15-minute Ethereum contracts during the same period, or about half the gold market’s total.

The 15-minute gold contract allows traders to wager on whether gold prices will rise or fall over the next 15 minutes. The product launched in August. Trading volume reached 542 million contracts in September, well above Ethereum’s 318 million.

Bitcoin still dominated Kalshi’s short-term financial products. Estimated fees from 15-minute Bitcoin contracts totaled $60.4 million in September, far exceeding the gold and Ethereum markets.

The gold market’s rapid growth has coincided with Kalshi’s expansion in commodities trading. Kalshi said cumulative trading volume in its commodities markets reached $400 million within seven months of the September launch. That was more than four times the volume recorded by its digital-asset markets over the same period after launch.

Short-term contracts are also becoming a key source of revenue in Kalshi’s non-sports segment. InGame analysis showed that fees from 15-minute crypto, commodities and financial markets totaled $20.4 million in the week through Oct. 5, accounting for 80% of all non-sports fees.

Fifteen-minute contracts made up just 13% of Kalshi’s total trading volume during that period, but accounted for 20% of fees. InGame said Kalshi’s fee structure gives contracts priced closer to 50-50 odds a larger fee share relative to volume, helping drive the high fee contribution from short-term markets.