A Kalshi TikTok ad sold prediction markets as a way to pay rent. Ricky Mulvey called it ‘inexcusable’

“I was about to be unable to pay my rent, but I got two years of rent through Kalshi’s predictions.”

A TikTok ad promoting prediction-market platform Kalshi used that line to pitch a way out of a rent crisis. Financial journalist Ricky Mulvey called it “inexcusable.” The ad later appeared as an exhibit in a class-action lawsuit against Kalshi.

“You’re going after people who are in a financially vulnerable spot to bring them in as fish for the advanced traders on the platform,” Mulvey said during a July 22 interview with FoxTalk.

Mulvey, a former co-host of Motley Fool Money and co-host of This Time Is Different, told FoxTalk he will begin a five-month temporary stint co-hosting NPR’s The Indicator from Planet Money in August. He has reported for the program on suspicious prediction-market trades, national-security concerns and the platforms’ social-media advertising.

Mulvey said his criticism did not begin with opposition to prediction markets themselves.

“When I was working for The Motley Fool, I interviewed the CEO of Kalshi, Tarek Mansour, and I liked the idea of prediction markets,” he said.

Mulvey said he initially saw potential in a model without a traditional sportsbook acting as the house. Kalshi describes itself as a federally regulated exchange where users buy and sell contracts tied to whether an event will occur. A correct contract pays $1; an incorrect one pays nothing.

The advertising changed his view.

“But I think that when you start realizing what’s going on behind the machinery, especially with their advertising on social media,” Mulvey said, “that’s when I was like, ‘Do you feel good about that?’”

The same rent advertisement appeared in a May episode of The Indicator co-reported by Mulvey. NPR played it for U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who said such promotions could potentially violate existing federal and state consumer-protection laws.

A Wall Street Journal analysis found that a small number of sophisticated traders and firms captured most prediction-market profits. Kalshi spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana told the Journal that the platform had 2.9 unprofitable users for every profitable user based on the previous month’s data. She said the figure could change as the exchange grew and that Kalshi no longer ran the rent ad.

Kalshi has pushed back on comparisons to casinos and sportsbooks. Diana told Media Matters that the company is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has no house taking the opposite side of users’ trades and does not make money by encouraging people to lose. She called Kalshi “fairer and less predatory than gambling.”

Mulvey also stopped short of calling every market transaction gambling. Elsewhere in the interview, he distinguished long-term ownership of diversified businesses from bets on short-term outcomes.

“The stock market in and of itself is not a casino,” he said, “but parts of the stock market are a casino.”

For Mulvey, the rent advertisement crossed that line because it presented a risky market as an answer to immediate financial distress.

“Do you feel good seeing an ad that says, ‘POV, I was unable to pay my rent, but then I was able to because of these amazing predictions on Kalshi?’” he said.

“Like, come on.”