Prediction pulse: Trump-Putin’s meeting dominates while Kalshi and Polymarket face a meticulous examination of market controversies
A week can be a short period of time in politics, but in the prediction markets, it can look like an eternity. Only a few days after our impulse of inaugural prediction, the world of Kalshi and Polymarket managed to arouse more controversy, refining the debate on the path of the path in the transformation of current events into raw materials.
Last week, we noted the penchant of Polymarket to grasp viral moments and recondition them as trading opportunities – sometimes with little respect for taste or timing. Since then, the trend has only aggravated and Kalshi seems to have plunged his toes into similar waters. The result is growing discomfort as to whether these markets clarify public feeling or exploit it.
For the moment, however, all eyes are fixed on a geopolitical scene rather than on a trading floor. The meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin has become the last flash point. Kalshi and Polymarket are busy forming diplomacy in high issues in terms of probabilities and payments (as we have seen with Iran), eager to trace the trajectory of a relationship that could shape global affairs for years.
The question is whether traders capture the pulse of geopolitics, or simply benefit from its heart rate.
What is on this week’s prediction markets
Kalshi
Kalshi traders were occupied this week, and nothing attracted more attention than the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska. The hottest bet on the platform has put 98% of the two leaders who shake hands before Saturday August 16. A small gesture, perhaps, but that the prediction markets decided to magnify in a reigning event.
Then came the assumption game on who would join Trump during the trip. At the beginning of the week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio looked like a lock, a 92%merchant. In the middle of the week, however, the beaten media had changed. His ratings fell, vice-president JD Vance climbed, and Trump’s long-standing golf partner and “Putin Whisperer”, Steve Witkoff, suddenly resembled the choice of initiate.
On Friday, the market had turned again, this time in favor of the defense secretary Pete Hegseth at 75%, thanks to chatting on the negotiations with a hard nose on Ukraine.
Of course, prediction markets like volatility, but reality tends to catch them. The final delegation is now confirmed: Rubio, Vance, Witkoff, Hegseth and the secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. For the whole drama of the week, the bettors were not completely false, just a little expensive in the way they arrived.
It was not only geopolitics that made the markets guess this week. Kalshi also lit from Paris to whom Jerome Powell will succeed once his mandate as president of the Fed expires next year. The last name of the conversation in the conversation was David Zervos, chief strategist of the Jefferies market.
Wednesday, his chances went to 15% after reports has surfaced that President Trump weighs a large field of 11 contenders. The list now includes Zervos, the former governor of the Fed Larry Lindsey and Rick Rieder, director of investments for BlackRock for world fixed income. For a brief section, Zervos even preceded Kevin Warsh, the unique favorite, the traders giving him 17% chance against 14% of Warsh.
The favorite, however, remains Governor Fed, Chris Waller, holding a 30%stable. The director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, is in second place at 21%. Hassett and Warsh both saw their chances jump after Trump congratulated “The Kevins” during an interview with CNBC last week, calling them “very well”.
If the Trump-Putin handshake and the Fed chair competition kept Kalshi occupied on Wednesday brought a clearer controversy. Reports have surfaced that the platform briefly listed a market to find out if the baseball star Shohei Ohtani would be arrested. In the afternoon or in the evening, the market has disappeared from the site.
The timing suggested an instinctive reaction to the headlines on the Ohtani and its agent prosecuted for a real estate agreement in Hawaii. The capture, of course, is that the case is civil, not criminal. This made “arrest” both misleading and inflammatory. The URL that once housed the market no longer works, but Kalshi observers quickly pointed out its existence.
Even another bet, on the question of whether the Hawaii short circuit would be put on the side of Ohtani and his agent in the trial, seems to have been withdrawn. The two contracts are noted in Kalshi’s “self -certified” categories, in this case “Casewin” and “Arrest”, which allow rapid publication when a news breaks.
Kalshi has already on the tips of controversial lists. He remained away from the most scandalous price than the prosperous polymarket, like bets on sex toys thrown at WNBA games, but he took heat earlier this year to publish a market on the fate of the man accused of having murdered the CEO of United. The Ohtani episode suggests that, despite the railings, Kalshi always feels the limits of taste and responsibility in real time.
Polymarket
Polymarket, never one to miss a chance of over-analysis, cut the Trump-Putin summit in Paris the size of a bite. Will they shake hands? Will they exchange insults? How long can the handshake persist? It is less a diplomatic summit than a bet of Vegas Prop Bet.
New Polymarket: What will Trump say at his conference with Putin tomorrow?
– Polymarket (@polymarket) August 14, 2025
Friday, the merchants were almost certain, 95%, that the hands would tighten. The real action came to the secondary markets. The bettors gave a chance of $ 71 that Trump talks about a ceasefire, and as much as he would start new sanctions again. Even Joe Biden, who is far from Alaska, has somehow found himself as a possible cameo in the Paris sheets.
RUP: "No bag policy" was implemented for the WNBA match tonight in order to repress the dildo throws.
– Polymarket Sports (@polymarketsport) August 6, 2025
Polymarket does not only manage the markets today, it also pursues virality on social networks. Twice in last week, his X / Twitter accounts published things that were simply not true. The most notorious was a position of his sporting account declaring:
“Breaking: ‘No Bag Policy’ was implemented for the WNBA match tonight in order to repress the dildo launchers.”
The tweet has accumulated more than 43 million views, according to X measures, but there was a problem: politics does not exist. No media reported it, no league announcement supported it, and when Yahoo Sports and the new sports people examined the issue, they published parts demystifying the complaint. A journalist at the Front Office Sports even confirmed with the Golden State Valkyries that no change in the bag policy had been made for the match of this night.
I saw a few articles here on the WNBA change its bag policy for this evening match at Golden State.
The Valkyries tell me that it is not true, they have not changed the policy of the bag for the game.
– Margaret Fleming (@ mgfleming12) August 6, 2025
The episode is part of the Polymarket during the bizarre tendency of dildos thrown on the courts of the WNBA, a spectacle which he transformed into a line in Paris. Why a company that boasts like a “truth machine” is so determined to transform the false bag prohibitions and to pilot sex toys in sources of income is the assumption of anyone.
Star image: Canva / Grok
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