Kalshi Opens Bitcoin (BTC) Collateral Loans to Fund Perpetuals Margin

Kalshi Taps BitGo for Crypto-Backed Loans

Kalshi will let customers borrow against their crypto and route the proceeds into leveraged perpetual futures, a service the US prediction market platform built with custody provider BitGo Holdings (BTGO) and announced on Thursday, October 22, according to Coinreaders. The launch is aimed at a specific kind of holder: the investor who follows the Bitcoin (BTC) price closely but does not want to sell coins to raise trading capital. Instead of liquidating positions, clients can post coins with a regulated custodian and put borrowed dollars to work on the exchange, with the coins staying put and the trading capital appearing alongside them.

Access runs through Kalshi Prime, a US-registered futures introducing broker, so only its clients qualify at launch. Digital assets lodged with BitGo Bank & Trust serve as collateral, while the loans themselves come from Kalshi Katalyst, a lending affiliate of Kalshi Prime. A three-party collateral management structure links the borrower, the lender and the custodian, keeping pledged coins under institutional custody rather than on the trading venue itself. Accepted collateral covers Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and stablecoins that comply with the GENIUS Act, the US stablecoin regulation framework. The borrowed funds land as margin on Kalshi's perpetual futures, derivatives that carry no expiry date and can be held indefinitely. Kalshi Prime CEO Jeff Bandman said more custodians will be added to the network over time, and framed the product around continuity of exposure: “We wanted to make it possible for customers to stay in the crypto market.” He identified two demand groups: investors unwilling to dispose of their Bitcoin, and companies in Latin America that run day-to-day operations on dollar-based stablecoins. For holders whose instinct is to HODL through cycles, the structure converts idle coins into trading margin without a disposal event.

Perpetual futures have become the core of Kalshi's product push this year: the platform launched contracts tracking gold, silver and crypto prices over 2026, and it is seeking listing approvals for products tied to oil and US stocks as well. The in-house clearinghouse, Kalshi Klear, filed an application with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission last month to apply margin trading to some event contracts, building the leverage infrastructure this loan service plugs directly into. Borrowed dollars would flow into that margin system, closing the loop between custody and trading on a single regulated platform. The commercial logic is explicit. Kalshi intends to use crypto-collateral lending to draw professional crypto trading firms and large digital asset holders into its exchange, in a direct competitive move against Polymarket, the blockchain-based offshore venue. Bandman said the product was designed with “digital asset investors in mind who have traded perpetual futures on unregulated offshore markets,” a pitch aimed squarely at the crypto whales and professional desks who trade perps offshore today. The counterargument to those venues is regulated custody: coins posted as collateral sit with BitGo Bank & Trust rather than on the exchange's own balance sheet. The company also runs its own clearinghouse rather than outsourcing clearing, which shortens the chain between a posted coin and an open position. Ledger has tested similar demand before: the hardware wallet maker previously tapped Morpho for Bitcoin-backed crypto loans in Ledger Live, giving users a way to borrow against coins held in self-custody.

Scale Still Undisclosed

The design speaks to the core tension in the current market: traders want leverage, while holders refuse to sell. For treasuries managed along the lines of a strategic Bitcoin reserve, borrowing against holdings keeps coins on the balance sheet while funding fresh exposure. The tri-party custody structure also answers the risk that caught leveraged users on offshore exchanges, where margin coins sat on the venue itself. What the announcement does not fix is scale. Kalshi disclosed no loan volume targets, rate ranges or collateral caps, so the size of the claim rests entirely on adoption among Kalshi Prime clients. The stated next step is adding more custodians to the network; until that happens, the offering's reach ends at one broker's customer base.