Custody & your funds
Your money stays in your own venue account. HiveTrade is not a custodian: it never holds your balance, 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. What "your own account" means depends on the venue your hive is bound to — a Polymarket deposit wallet you own, or your own Kalshi account. See Venues: Polymarket & Kalshi for the comparison.
Polymarket hives
On Polymarket, HiveTrade is non-custodial: it never holds your balance. Your delegation authorizes supported trading actions; withdrawals require a fresh signature from you.
Where the money lives
When you fund your account, your deposit goes into a smart-contract wallet that belongs to you on Polygon. Trades settle on Polymarket. Copy-trading means HiveTrade arranges for your wallet to take the same position the captain took — your wallet, your funds, at every step.
What HiveTrade can and can't do
- Can: show you markets, size a copied call to the budget you set, and place that trade on your behalf while your allocation is active.
- Can't: withdraw your money, move it somewhere you didn't authorize, or trade outside the budgets you configured. Withdrawals require a fresh signature from you each time.
When a market resolves, Polymarket settles on-chain and a HiveTrade watcher redeems your winning position back into your deposit wallet.
Funding a Polymarket deposit wallet
The most reliable way to fund is through the in-app deposit flow, which delivers the correct token straight to your wallet. Sending the wrong token or sending to the wrong address can strand funds, so use the in-app flow rather than a manual transfer.
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, never provisions a wallet, and does no KYC — Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated exchange, verifies you as its account holder.
What HiveTrade can and can't do
- Can: place and read orders in your Kalshi account using a trade-only 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.
- Can't: withdraw money or move cash. The key you give HiveTrade has no withdrawal permission, and 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 an allocation is active or paused, funds up to your total allocation are reserved as your copy budget — set aside so calls can be copied — but still yours. Cancel the allocation and the unused budget is released; open positions still need to close or settle. On a Polymarket hive the reserve is held against your deposit-wallet balance, and you can withdraw available funds at any time. On a Kalshi hive nothing is locked inside your Kalshi account: the allocation is a budget HiveTrade tracks, and each copied order is also capped by the cash actually in your Kalshi account.