Wealthsimple Predict will offer nearly 4,000 event contracts through Kalshi. Less than 5% of Canadians have tried prediction markets, creating adoption and regulatory risk.
Wealthsimple plans to launch a prediction-markets app this summer, giving Canadians their first mainstream access to event contracts through the US exchange Kalshi. The app, Wealthsimple Predict, will host nearly 4,000 contracts covering climate events, economic indicators, and financial markets – all with a minimum settlement period of 30 days.
The risk story is not the product. It is the gap between the audience Wealthsimple wants and what that audience knows.
A May study by the Angus Reid Institute found fewer than one in 20 Canadians had ever placed a prediction-market bet. Knowledge skews sharply by demographic: 30% of young men said they knew a lot about prediction markets, versus just 8% of Canadians overall. That gap creates an adoption problem and a regulatory one. Regulators in Canada banned binary options, a common form of prediction trading, in 2017. Wealthsimple needed approval from the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization to offer futures-style event contracts. It is the second firm to get that approval, after Interactive Brokers. Questrade has signaled interest in the same product.
In the US, the same contracts have drawn scrutiny. The Department of Justice last month charged a Google engineer with insider trading on Polymarket, alleging he used confidential company data to win more than $1 million. Experts have warned that prediction betting could influence elections or shift public perception of major events. Those accusations will follow any Canadian operation tied to the same contract types.
Wealthsimple's base of young, app-native users matches the demographic most familiar with prediction markets. That same demographic is also the most vulnerable to the gambling-like mechanics of short-duration event contracts. The company did not disclose financial targets or user projections.
The app launches this summer. The 30-day minimum settlement period stops short of the flash betting that fuels Polymarket. That design choice may matter for regulatory comfort. For traders, the question is depth: at 4,000 contracts spread across three categories, liquidity on any single event will be thin. Wide spreads and slippage are the first cost of being an early mover.
The metric that matters is adoption through the first two quarters after launch. One bad headline – an insider-trading case involving a Canadian contract, or a regulator re-examining the binary-options ban – could freeze the product before it finds its market.
Prepared with AlphaScala research tooling and grounded in primary market data: live prices, fundamentals, SEC filings, hedge-fund holdings, and insider activity. Each story is checked against AlphaScala publishing rules before release. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.