Is a 99¢ Kalshi contract free money? We checked 167,648 of them
Bought blind, near-certain Kalshi contracts lose about a cent each. Bought carefully, they might not. The numbers, and the forward test that decides.
A viewer told us the near-certain contracts are where the money is: buy at 97 to 99¢, win 99 times in 100, collect. It is the most common idea new Kalshi traders have, so we checked it on our own records.
The short answer: bought blind, they lose. Bought carefully, they may not, and we are now testing that on new trades.
Bought blind
The first time each side of a 15 minute market was offered at 97, 98 or 99¢, we bought it one second later at whatever the asking price was by then. Twelve markets (nine cryptocurrencies, gold, silver and oil), 27 July to 11 October 2026:
| Price | Times | Average paid | Won | After the fee, one at a time | In lots of 100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 99¢ | 52,323 | 98.68¢ | 98.30% | −1.38¢ | −0.46¢ |
| 98¢ | 58,504 | 97.73¢ | 97.32% | −1.41¢ | −0.56¢ |
| 97¢ | 56,821 | 96.83¢ | 96.43% | −1.41¢ | −0.62¢ |
They won a little less often than the price paid, and the fee did the rest. Bought one contract at a time, the fee rounds up to a full cent, which is most of the loss. Every one of the twelve markets lost at all three prices.
Bought carefully
The viewer's point was that the edge is in the filter: only buy when the price is far from the line, measured against how fast the coin is moving and how much time is left. We scored every trade that way, on the nine crypto markets from 16 August. The far-from-line trades did win more often, enough to turn roughly break even, and slightly positive in larger lots. But the careful version rests on a few thousand trades, its result shrank in the second half of the period, and it depended heavily on a few coins.
What we are doing about it
We froze two versions of the careful rule on 13 October and are grading them every night on trades that had not happened yet. Each has its pass mark written down first: 1,000 new trades, positive after the fee, and still positive without its best coin. We will publish the result either way.
Members get the full breakdown below in the members appendix: every distance bucket, every coin, the time left that matters most, and the two frozen rules.
None of this is advice. It is the record.