Kalshi and BitGo announced on October 22 that some Kalshi clients can now pledge Bitcoin, Ether or GENIUS Act-compliant stablecoins as collateral for loans that fund margin on Kalshi’s perpetual futures. The trader keeps the coins. The loan pays the margin. That’s the whole pitch, and it’s aimed squarely at money now trading perps offshore.

The structure has three parties. The client borrows. Kalshi Katalyst, a lending affiliate of Kalshi Prime, makes the loan. BitGo Bank & Trust holds the pledged crypto in custody. Kalshi Prime is the company’s US-registered futures commission merchant, so the margin lands with a regulated broker instead of an offshore exchange’s internal ledger. Kalshi says more custodians will follow BitGo.

Kalshi and Polymarket built their entire identities around being each other’s opposite. Kalshi is the “regulated from the inside” exchange, holding the first federal license the CFTC ever granted an event-contract platform and pitching itself to lawmakers and institutions as the safe, onshore choice. Polymarket built the opposite brand, crypto-native and historically offshore, technically off-limits to American users even as VPN access made that limit porous, before working toward a US re-entry through its QCEX acquisition. Neither company’s survival argument works without the other looking like the risk.