Your money & wallet
Your money stays in your own Polymarket or Kalshi account. HiveTrade is not a custodian: it never holds your money in a HiveTrade account, and neither HiveTrade nor a Captain takes a share of your trading profits. Trading fees apply on Polymarket orders; the rate is stated in the Terms. Which account holds your money depends on the venue your Hive is bound to. See Venues: Polymarket & Kalshi for the comparison, and Withdrawing for how to take money out on each venue.
Who can move your money
| Polymarket Hive | Kalshi Hive | |
|---|---|---|
| You | Fund and withdraw your own Polymarket account. Every withdrawal needs your own signature. You can revoke HiveTrade's access at any time. | Fund and withdraw in Kalshi's own app. You can disconnect or revoke your key at any time. |
| HiveTrade | Places orders for your copies within your budgets, and runs steps inside your own account: setup, wrapping funds for trading, and redeeming winnings. Not authorized to withdraw. | Places and reads orders with the API key you created, only after you accept the Hive's execution consent. Moves only the needed amount between your own Kalshi balances (Kalshi keeps some market groups separate) to fund a copy. Cannot withdraw. |
| The venue | Polymarket matches orders and resolves markets; settlement happens on-chain. | Kalshi holds your cash, fills orders, and credits winnings to your cash automatically. |
A permission that can trade can also make trades that lose money. The limits on HiveTrade's access bound what it can do; they do not protect you from losses.
Polymarket Hives
Where the money lives
When you fund your account, your deposit goes into your own Polymarket account, technically a smart-contract wallet on Polygon that belongs to you. Trades settle on Polymarket. Copy-trading means HiveTrade arranges for your Polymarket account to take the same position the Captain took: your account, your funds, at every step.
What HiveTrade's access covers
When you set up your account, you grant HiveTrade bounded authority to sign on your behalf. It covers Polymarket orders for your copies and steps inside your own account: setup, wrapping, redemptions and recovery. Withdrawals are excluded from it: the app prepares the exact amount and destination, and your own wallet signs that specific withdrawal. These limits are enforced by HiveTrade's software, not by an unbreakable on-chain rule.
You can revoke HiveTrade's signing access from your Polymarket account's settings in the app. Revoking stops new HiveTrade signatures; it does not cancel existing orders or close open positions.
When a market resolves, Polymarket settles on-chain and HiveTrade redeems your winning position back into your Polymarket account.
Funding your Polymarket account
On the web, open Portfolio → Budgets and use Deposit on your Polymarket account card. The deposit flow converts the cash or crypto you bring into USDC.e and delivers it to your Polymarket account. Available funding methods can differ by environment. If card funding asks you to approve a conversion, review and approve the displayed wallet action yourself; a card payment alone does not prove the balance is ready to trade. Confirm the available balance in the app.
If you send funds yourself instead:
- Send only USDC.e or pUSD, on Polygon, to the deposit address the deposit flow shows. USDC.e converts to pUSD before you can trade.
- Check the token contract. "USDC" on an exchange is usually native USDC, which is not credited.
- Never send funds to your signing wallet's address: money sent there is not credited to your Polymarket account.
If a deposit hasn't shown up, wait while your provider still shows it as pending. If your provider shows it as completed and Portfolio → Budgets still lacks it, contact support with the receipt and the transaction reference. Don't pay again to resolve a delay.
If you sent the wrong token
Your Polymarket account credits only USDC.e and pUSD on Polygon. Native USDC, USDT or DAI sent to it is not credited: it sits there, and Portfolio → Budgets shows a card saying it can't be used yet. HiveTrade can't convert the token where it landed, because only Polymarket's system can operate that account. The card moves it out instead, and you start each step:
- Review recovery shows the amount, the wallet it goes to (your own) and any recovery fee, before anything moves.
- Recover to my wallet moves the token to that wallet.
- A second card, Move your deposit into your Polymarket account, converts it to USDC.e and moves it there, where it is credited. Choose Move to Polymarket account; your own wallet signs these steps and may ask you to confirm.
If the card says Polymarket doesn't allow the automatic move for that token, ask Polymarket support to move it from your Polymarket account to your own wallet. Then swap it to USDC.e and send it back to your Polymarket account.
Kalshi Hives
On Kalshi, HiveTrade holds nothing at all: no wallet, no balance, and no cash.
Where the money lives
Your money stays in your own Kalshi account. You fund it and withdraw from it in Kalshi's own app, exactly as you would without HiveTrade. HiveTrade never touches fiat or provisions a Kalshi wallet. Kalshi verifies you as its account holder. Captains selling paid subscriptions separately complete payout and identity setup.
What HiveTrade's access covers
HiveTrade places and reads orders in your Kalshi account using an API key that you create in Kalshi and paste into HiveTrade, sized to the budget you set, and only after you accept an execution consent for the Hive. The key has no withdrawal permission, and Kalshi does not allow withdrawals through it. HiveTrade stores it encrypted and shows you only a short fingerprint of it. Disconnect it in HiveTrade to remove the stored credential, and revoke the key in Kalshi to invalidate it at the venue.
When a market resolves, Kalshi credits winning contracts to your cash automatically. There is no claim or redeem step; HiveTrade's only job at resolution is bookkeeping.
Reserved vs available
While a budget is active or paused, funds up to that budget are reserved: set aside so Calls can be copied, but still yours. Stop backing the Hive and the unused part is released; open positions still need to close or settle. On a Polymarket Hive the reserve is held against your Polymarket account balance, and you can withdraw available funds at any time. On a Kalshi Hive nothing is locked inside your Kalshi account: the budget is one HiveTrade tracks, and each copied order is also capped by the cash actually in your Kalshi account.