Kalshi perps volume debate: what happened when exchange fees switched on On 8 June Kalshi filed its first perpetual fee schedule (takers 12.0–2.6 bps, makers 5.0–0.6 bps), effective 24 June at 10:00 ET. A "Temporary Perpetual Fee Rebate Program" returning all net fees to self-clearing members was filed the same week, but its stated effective date was 9 July, retroactive to the filing. For roughly 40 hours from 24 June, market participants therefore faced the full schedule with no rebate in force. Within hours of the fee going live, venue-wide volume fell 80–92%. Over 25 June the BTC and ETH contracts traded $23m and $21m, against $296m and $109m on 23 June, and were close to dormant in the quietest hours. This was not a market-wide lull. Binance BTC+ETH volume sat near its June high on 24–25 June, so Kalshi's volume expressed as a share of Binance, which nets out any common movement, fell by more than a factor of ten. Volume then resumed abruptly around 08:00 UTC on 26 June and exceeded pre-event levels. Fixed-ticket volume was three to five times its 23 June level, and the ETH ticket doubled from $5,000 to $10,000, holding 69–75% of ETH volume over the following days. Link to a first working paper version with more deeps dives is in the comments.

An army of social-media users has found a lucrative side hustle in creating promotional content from secondary accounts. on.wsj.com/4dKUYD6

NEW: A story full of scoops big and small from @ceostroff and @byneilmehta. > Polymarket removed one of its anti-money-laundering programs during a fraud attack, alarming some staff; CEO Shayne Coplan downplayed risks > Persistent engineering glitches have cost some customers thousands > Internal audio & text messages reveal Coplan’s management style > Some current & former employees & investors are concerned Poly has prioritized growth at all costs > Company is trying to course-correct; eyeing an IPO by the end of 2027 > Talks with Drake fell through; rapper name-dropped Poly in a song anyways; a market on the album saw suspicious trading And more. Gift link below. wsj.com/business/polymarkets…

GameStop is running a website that looks a lot like an online casino. It's called GameStop Power Packs. Users pay to open a digital trading card pack, win a graded card, and can get the card shipped to them or sell it back to the site for cash. The products are known and "digital repacks," and big collectibles brands are getting in on the action. Fanatics calls its digital repack product "the future of collecting." Others see something different: another instance of gambling taking over an American tradition. I found 52 of these digital repack sites in my reporting. The larger ones age-check customers, but others that heavily advertise on social media just ask you to check a box that says you're 18, and accept cryptocurrency deposits. Ripping packs online comes with risks. Birches Health, a leading virtual treatment provider for gambling addiction, says it logged a 207% increase in patients talking about “trading cards,” “digital repacks,” and similar terms over the past 12 months. One digital repack site, Arena Club was co-founded by Yankee legend Derek Jeter. In video advertisements Arena Club began running in July, fathers and sons bond over opening digital repacks together. “I’m able to recreate my childhood,” one dad says; his kid chimes in, “Now we’re ripping packs together.” They fist bump as the dad delivers the tagline: “That excitement, that thrill—you’ll be hooked!”

Today, I was informed that the Department of Defense is firing me for insubordination after I told a CBS reporter that I work for Stars and Stripes – not the Pentagon, not any administration, and not any policy maker.

Last summer, we got our hands on screen recordings showing North Koreans interviewing for jobs under stolen identities. What made these videos interesting: We could see the them reading verbatim from ChatGPT. 🧵 1/