--- title: "Anonymous Kalshi User Makes Huge Bet That the White House Is About to Confirm Alien Life or Technology" description: "An anonymous user on the prediction market Kalshi just placed a massive bet on the US confirming the existence of aliens." date: "2026-02-28" modified: "2026-02-28" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/future-society/kalshi-bet-aliens-real" categories: - "Future Society" --- # Anonymous Kalshi User Makes Huge Bet That the White House Is About to Confirm Alien Life or Technology ![A dark, futuristic UFO emitting a bright red beam of light downward, illuminating a large pile of scattered US dollar bills beneath it. The scene has a mysterious and sci-fi atmosphere with the money glowing in the red light.]() *Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins Futurism. Source Getty Images* Is the US government about to confirm that aliens are real? That's the claim floating around among those who believe in prediction markets as reliable soothsayers of the future, a promise that prediction markets would very much like you to buy into, so you overlook the obvious fact that they're [just another form of gambling](). Let's cut to the chase. After it reviewed Kalshi trading data, [*The Atlantic* reports]() that a single trader just bet nearly $100,000 that the Trump administration will confirm the existence of alien life or technology by the end of this year. Actually, that was just the first big bet. Just 35 minutes later, another wager appeared, possibly by the same person, for nearly double that amount. What did the bettor(s) know? Could they possibly have inside knowledge on an impending ET revelation? It's not quite the spectacular smoking gun that Agent Mulder might've stumbled onto in the original run of "The X-Files." But the beloved show's upcoming reboot might consider shining a light on prediction markets as avenues of conspiracies in their own right. Prediction markets allow users to bet on an unbelievable plethora of real-world outcomes beyond sports, ranging from geopolitical events to how many times Elon Musk tweets in a week. Because they're less regulated than traditional gambling, critics fear that they'll be a hotbed of insider trading. Several scandals exemplifying these fears have already emerged. An anonymous Polymarket bettor on a freshly created account [correctly guessed]() nearly every song that Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny would perform during his Super Bowl show, a statistical improbability. Others implicate military and government insiders. Hours before the US launched an invasion into Venezuela and abducted its president Nicolás Maduro in January, an anonymous user placed a large bet that Maduro would be removed from power by the end of the month, [netting them more than $400,000](). In February, Israel [arrested]() several citizens and IDF reservists for using classified information on upcoming strikes in Iran to place Polymarket bets. The big Kalshi bets come amid an alien-laden news cycle. In an interview earlier this month, former president Barack Obama [remarked]() that aliens are "real," kicking up a media frenzy. Obama merely meant that the vast scale of the cosmos meant that aliens almost certainly existed somewhere. But UFO truthers took it as a sign that Obama had seen actual hard evidence, and president Trump capitalized on this "tremendous interest" to announce that he would direct government agencies to release files "related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs)." For whatever reason, the big bets on the confirmation of aliens weren't placed until days after this media frenzy played out, with no new revelations coming to light since then, *The Atlantic* noted. It was also noteworthy that the bets were placed all in one go, instead of doled in slices to avoid spooking the market. But perhaps the most puzzling fact is that there's no clear purpose to the bets. Ben Shindel, an expert on prediction markets, told *The Atlantic* that the bold wagers may have simply been made by an inexperienced trader. "The other possibility is that it's an insider," Shindel conceded. **More on prediction markets:** [*Prediction Markets Are Sucking Huge Numbers of Young People Into Gambling*]() ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()