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Kalshi cancels $54 million in bets on Khamenei after killing.

  • Prediction platform Kalshi voided all wagers on a contract betting on Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s removal after he was killed in an airstrike, citing a fine-print death carve-out.
  • Traders wagered $54 million on the contract, which Kalshi promoted on social media, sparking fury and accusations of theft when it was voided.
  • US Senator Chris Murphy and six Democratic senators have urged regulators to ban death-related contracts, calling the practice insane.
  • On offshore rival Polymarket, roughly half a billion dollars Iran-supreme-leader-killing” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>changed hands on contracts tied to military strikes on Iran, a market with obvious life-or-death ramifications.
  • Crypto-based prediction markets for death events are a long-standing phenomenon, dating back to cypherpunk essays and early platforms like Augur.

Prediction market Kalshi is engulfed in controversy after allowing $54 million in trades on the removal of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, then voiding the entire market when he was killed. The platform’s rules contained a specific carve-out for death, a detail that enraged traders who saw their correct predictions nullified. “Getting rugged on a 100% correct prediction because of a fine-print ‘death carveout’ is wild,” one user lamented on Discord.

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Consequently, critics accused the company of profiting from a market it never intended to honor. US Senator Chris Murphy called the situation “insane this is legal,” pledging to introduce a ban. Meanwhile, ex-SEC official Amanda Fischer noted these markets promote betting on proxies for war or assassination.

The scandal extends to Kalshi’s less-regulated competitor, Polymarket, where trades on Iran strikes reached nearly $500 million. This event is the latest in a long history of crypto death markets, which theorists have discussed since a 1995 cypherpunk essay. Previously, Polymarket has hosted markets on a YouTuber’s survival fast and saw an anonymous trader make $400,000 on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

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