Why Wasn't Kalshi Paying Traders That Won NFL Futures

Why Wasn't Kalshi Paying Traders That Won NFL Futures Bets? Subscribe Sign in Why Wasn't Kalshi Paying Traders That Won NFL Futures Bets? Eventually it did, but it took me calling them out to make it happen. Roundup: Crypto.com launches parlays; Kalshi CEO supports insider trading bill. Dustin Gouker Jan 08, 2026 1 6 Share Reset the tracker: It’s been zero days since Kalshi had to react to something I posted on Twitter . This time, it was a PR debacle around Kalshi grading some NFL futures bets incorrectly and not paying the rightful winners… at least not until I made the issue public on social media. Thanks for reading Event Horizon! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe Here’s the backstory: Users on Kalshi’s Discord were complaining on Tuesday about NFL win totals being graded incorrectly. The clearest example I could see was where one user bet on over 10.5 wins for the San Francisco 49ers, and he didn’t get his winnings. (The Niners won 12 games in the regular season.) Kalshi’s solution to this, per messages posted on Discord, was to refund the original trade amount but not pay out any winnings. Presumably, the people who technically lost these bets/trades were paid out as winners. I tweeted about it with some screenshots from Discord, and the story went viral almost right away. It eventually got more than a million views: Dustin Gouker @DustinGouker wtf…people who bet 49ers win total correctly were only reimbursed cost and not winnings when it was graded wrong? And they won’t just eat it? 3:52 AM · Jan 7, 2026 · 1.18M Views 309 Replies · 184 Reposts · 5.08K Likes At some point in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, Kalshi decided to pay out the people who had rightfully won their bets. This is an example of an email sent out to affected users: Hey there, You are receiving this email because you have traded on a NFL Win total market that was determined in error. Upon review, we have decided that users who held correct “Yes” positions at the time of Expiration shall be paid out their full contract settlement value of $1. Affected users will receive a credit for the difference between the original position cost reimbursement that has already been issued, and the full $1 payout. We thank you for your patience with the resolution of this matter. We really appreciate your support. Best, The Kalshi Team Kalshi confirmed on Twitter that all people who had winning positions that resolved incorrectly got paid their winnings. We don’t know how many NFL win total markets were graded wrong (it was definitely more than the referenced 49ers market), how much money Kalshi had to eat to make this right, and how many users were impacted. The whole situation was arguably both an operational and a communications/PR failure. Let’s start here: Grading things incorrectly wasn’t the biggest issue here. It’s not great! But incorrect grading happens at sportsbooks and it happens at exchanges. It’s not the first time, and it won’t

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