$5,500 ETH Perpetual Trades Spark Wash Trading Concerns on Kalshi

Kalshi has responded to claims of wash trading in its Ether perpetual futures market. The exchange said that repeated $5,500 trades are due to its market-making programs, which reward liquidity providers for placing orders rather than generating volume.

The exchange also explained that similar-sized trades can occur when users take fixed orders during price moves. However, analyst Beni disputed this explanation, finding that identical trades made up a large share of activity in the market.

Beni's analysis put ETH perpetual volume at about $539 million, compared with $3.1 million in open interest. This raised concerns about reported volume, exchange transparency, and market-making practices in the crypto derivatives/CEX space.