- Cantor Fitzgerald will act as an introducing broker for institutional-size block trades in Kalshi event contracts.
- Kalshi’s rules set a 25,000-contract minimum for a block and limit both sides to eligible contract participants.
- Blocks must be reported to Kalshi within 15 minutes and are published separately from ordinary order-book trades.
- Susquehanna Predictions will supply pricing and liquidity, and Kalshi is the only venue at launch.
NEW YORK – Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. opened Kalshi block trading to its institutional clients on Aug. 19, acting as an introducing broker on large trades negotiated at one price and kept off the exchange’s public order book.
The Introducing Broker Role
Cantor is arranging and facilitating the trades rather than taking the other side of them. Acting as an introducing broker, the firm lets a client and its counterparty settle on one price between themselves, then send the finished trade to Kalshi as a block instead of into the public queue. Institutional-scale pricing and liquidity come from Susquehanna Predictions, an arm of Susquehanna International Group.
The business sits inside Cantor’s Global Markets division under co-CEOs Pascal Bandelier and Christian Wall. Kalshi is the only venue at launch.
“Prediction markets are growing rapidly, but institutional participation has not kept pace because investors have lacked the ability to transact at scale on a regulated exchange,” Bandelier said. “The liquidity is here.”
What A Block Trade Skips
A block trade never crosses the public book. Under Kalshi’s rules, a block trade is a large transaction between two eligible parties that is reported to the exchange afterward. The minimum is 25,000 contracts, and separate orders cannot be combined to reach it.
Both sides must be eligible contract participants as defined in the Commodity Exchange Act. The price has to be fair and reasonable given the size of the trade, available data in associated markets and the circumstances of the markets and the parties.
The reporting window is 15 minutes from the moment the two sides agree in principle, and Kalshi publishes the resulting prints separately from standard market transactions. Block eligibility extends to all listed markets, so the framework covers sports contracts alongside the weather, commodity and economic contracts the exchange lists, even though the announcement names no sports product. Event contracts sit alongside the sportsbooks and casinos tracked across USA gambling sites as a separate, federally regulated venue.
The Price Retail Sees
A retail account watching the screen sees the central order book, the public display that has drawn traders to prediction markets in the first place. Institutional size negotiated off that book does not move the visible bid and ask while it is being arranged. It appears afterward, as a separately published print, at a price the exchange requires to be fair and reasonable rather than one set by competitive bidding on the screen.
That distinction matters for how the number is read. A contract quoted at 62 cents pays $1 if it resolves yes, a price that implies a 62% probability rather than stating one, and the implication rests on what the market’s participants were willing to pay. A large trade priced away from the book carries no order-book depth behind it.
Institutional Plumbing, Contested Sports Contracts
The block desk is the latest piece of infrastructure aimed at professional money, and it lands while the retail side of Kalshi’s business is being litigated state by state. Kalshi said on Aug. 12 that Jeff Bandman, who led the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Division of Clearing and Risk, would run Kalshi Prime as chief executive. Kalshi launched the CFTC-registered futures commission merchant in June.
The courts remain split on the sports contracts that drive Kalshi’s retail volume. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a preliminary injunction on April 6 barring New Jersey from enforcing its gambling laws against the exchange, in KalshiEX LLC v. Flaherty, No. 25-1922.
Connecticut went the other way. U.S. District Judge Vernon D. Oliver denied Kalshi’s motion for a preliminary injunction on Aug. 10 in KalshiEX LLC v. Cafferelli, No. 3:25-cv-02016. The contracts do not meet the statutory definition of a swap, the court held, because they turn on an event’s outcome rather than on whether the event occurs.
The volume that made prediction markets now out-trade America’s sportsbooks came from that retail sports trade, not from the institutional book Cantor is opening. Cantor said additional venues are expected to follow Kalshi.