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Points of Focus
- Kalshi plans to end its Volume Incentive Program no earlier than Oct. 13.
- More than $5 billion in repeated ETH perp trades have drawn wash-trading claims and reported CFTC scrutiny.
- Kalshi’s filing doesn’t link the termination to those allegations, which the exchange disputes.
Kalshi plans to terminate its Volume Incentive Program days after more than $5 billion in similarly sized Ether perpetual trades drew questions over whether the reported volume reflected genuine trading activity.
A Sept. 28 CFTC filing shows KalshiEX intends to end the program no earlier than Oct. 13. The filing gives no reason for the termination and doesn’t connect the move to recent wash-trading allegations.
Kalshi volume rewards face Oct. 13 cutoff
The program rewards eligible traders according to their share of qualifying volume during designated periods. The filing says its purpose is to increase trading volume and liquidity on Kalshi’s central limit order book.
The program applies across Kalshi markets and explicitly references perpetual futures when defining eligible volume. Members operating under Market Maker Agreements are excluded from the program.
Kalshi says the repeated ETH perp trades involved a separate market-making structure. In a Sept. 22 response, the company said market makers receive flat payments for maintaining resting liquidity rather than rewards based on executed volume.
CFTC records also show Kalshi filed a separate Deposit and Trading Reward Incentive Program on Sept. 25. That filing remained under a 10-day review as of Sept. 30 and is separate from the Volume Incentive Program Kalshi plans to terminate.
$5B ETH perp trades remain under scrutiny
Trader Beni flagged roughly $538.6 million in 24-hour ETH perpetual volume against about $3.1 million in open interest. He later said trades near $5,500 represented 48% to 58% of ETH perp volume across four separate days.
This thread is 100% gonna blow up and I am gonna look like a salty c****again but @icobeast pissed me off so now it's gonna get ugly
Kalshi fakes their crypto volume and I can prove it
NOTHING pisses me off more than watching a company treat its own customers like complete… https://t.co/1LWMVGVaeU
— Beni (@beniduboss) September 19, 2026
The Wall Street Journal reported that nearly one million similarly sized trades generated more than $5 billion in ETH perpetual volume over roughly a month. The report said the CFTC was reviewing the activity, while no formal investigation or enforcement action had been announced as of Sept. 30.
Kalshi rejects the wash-trading claims. The company says self-trades are mechanically blocked, coordinated trades are prohibited, and hundreds of separate takers interacted with market-maker quotes.
The dispute now turns partly on which incentives applied to the questioned trades. Kalshi’s termination filing doesn’t show that those trades were improper, nor does it say the exchange is ending the separate market-maker arrangements cited in its defense. The filing sets Oct. 13 as the earliest effective date for ending the Volume Incentive Program.
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