A Kalshi billboard displaying New York City mayoral election odds in New York, US, on Monday, Oct. 27, 2024. Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesKalshi bettors can now buy and sell tokenized versions of their wagers on Solana, the company told CNBC exclusively on Monday. It’s the latest sign the prediction market company is deepening its push to win over the same cryptocurrency holders that have pumped billions of dollars of digital assets into its rival Polymarket.Tokenization refers to creating a digital version of a real-world financial asset such as a stock, bond or treasury note. The resulting token, which can be held or traded like a normal asset, lives on a decentralized ledger called a blockchain, such as Solana or Bitcoin.The tokenized versions of the contracts work the same way as the regular ones found previously on Kalshi’s platform. However, by trading the tokens instead of the actual contracts, users have more anonymity. This puts Kalshi on par with Polymarket, which allows users to trade directly on-chain.Support for tokenized wagers linked to Kalshi’s event contracts is live on Solana, Kalshi told CNBC. Decentralized finance protocols DFlow and Jupiter will serve as institutional clients, bridging the exchange’s off-chain orderbook to Solana’s liquidity. Kalshi is doubling down on its push to court crypto holders as demand for event contracts surges. Prediction markets’ combined trading volume hit nearly $28 billion through October of this year, hitting a weekly record high of $2.3 billion during the week of October 20, according to data cited by Crypto.com’s research arm. By tapping into the $3 trillion digital asset market, Kalshi will be able to shore up liquidity needed to scale its offerings at a time when investors’ appetites for pre …
