TLDR
- DoubleZero added Kalshi’s election and politics markets to its Edge data service on Sept. 9.
- The service delivers trading data over a dedicated network, showing live prices and order sizes.
- Market makers could use faster data to manage risk and possibly offer tighter prices.
- Better deals for everyday bettors from this upgrade have not yet been proven.
- The tool may widen the gap between professional trading firms and casual mobile bettors.
Election bettors on prediction markets can watch a price disappear before they finish placing their bet. This happens when news causes many traders to buy or sell the same outcome at once.
On Sept. 9, DoubleZero said it had added Kalshi’s election and politics markets to Edge. Edge is a service built to deliver trading data over a dedicated network.
The feed carries Kalshi’s order book. That shows the prices and quantities people are willing to buy and sell at any given moment.
How Prediction Market Contracts Work
On Kalshi, a standard yes-or-no contract pays $1 if the outcome happens and nothing if it doesn’t. Buying a yes contract for 60 cents means risking 60 cents for a possible 40 cent profit before fees.
That price is often read as roughly a 60% probability. Fees and trading conditions can change that number by a wide margin.
Traders can also sell before the election ends. Buy 1,000 contracts at 60 cents and sell them at 65 cents, and the trader earns $50 before fees no matter who wins.
That is why traders watch the order book closely. The best bid is the highest price a buyer will pay, and the best offer is the lowest price a seller will accept. The gap between them is called the spread.
Who Benefits From Faster Data
Market makers are firms that continually offer to buy and sell contracts so other people always have someone to trade with. They try to earn enough on those trades to cover losses and costs.
If a market maker offers a contract at 60 cents and news pushes its real value closer to 70 cents, other traders can grab that old price before the market maker updates it. Losses like this can lead firms to widen their spreads.
Faster data could let market makers update their prices sooner. If several firms compete this way, spreads may narrow for everyone else.
DoubleZero says that is the goal behind the deal, but the benefit for regular bettors is still unproven. Confirming it would require comparing prices and available contracts during busy election events before and after the feed’s rollout.
Using the Edge feed also requires software and money. Large trading firms can spread those costs across many trades, while smaller traders may not see the same payoff.
DoubleZero’s network combines private fiber links and hardware, and its crypto services include connections for Solana validators. Election data now travels through the same kind of infrastructure used for blockchain trading.
Election odds could also factor into other financial decisions. A crypto investor might watch a congressional race for signs of upcoming legislation, then apply that information to a Bitcoin position.
That chain of reasoning still involves several uncertain steps. Winning a chamber does not guarantee a bill passes, and a passed bill does not guarantee how an asset’s price will react.
The CFTC’s Feb. 25 advisory pointed to cases unrelated to data speed. It described a candidate trading contracts tied to his own race and a YouTube editor trading based on unpublished video details.
Kalshi already runs its own streaming connection, called a WebSocket, which sends live updates to trading programs. Services like Edge are competing over how quickly that same public data reaches traders, and the real test will be what happens to prices the next time election news breaks.
