Venues: Polymarket & Kalshi
HiveTrade does not run a market of its own. Every call is placed on a real market at a third-party venue, and HiveTrade supports two of them: Polymarket and Kalshi. A hive is bound to one venue when the captain creates it, and that choice can't change once a member has backed the hive. To follow a hive you need your own account at its venue — that's where your money sits and where every order executes.
The two venues do the same job — a YES/NO market that pays out when the question resolves — but they are built very differently, and the difference is mostly about where your money lives and who holds the keys.
At a glance
| Polymarket | Kalshi | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A crypto prediction market on the Polygon blockchain. Shown as Polymarket in the app. | A CFTC-regulated US exchange (a designated contract market). |
| Currency | USDC.e, a dollar stablecoin on Polygon (wrapped to pUSD when orders are placed). | US dollars. |
| Where your money sits | In your own Polymarket deposit wallet — a smart-contract wallet that belongs to you. | In your own Kalshi account. |
| How you connect | The app helps you set up your deposit wallet and grant HiveTrade a bounded signing authority that can place orders but can never withdraw. | You create a trade-only API key in your own Kalshi account and paste it into HiveTrade. You can revoke it at any time. |
| Who checks identity | Polymarket's own eligibility rules apply (it restricts some regions, including the US). HiveTrade does no KYC. | Kalshi verifies you as its account holder. HiveTrade does no KYC. |
| How settlement works | Polymarket resolves and settles on-chain; a HiveTrade watcher redeems your winning position into your deposit wallet. | Kalshi resolves the market and credits winning contracts to your cash automatically — nothing to claim. |
| Fees | Polymarket's own fees apply, plus a HiveTrade trading fee on each order, collected through Polymarket's builder programme. The rate is stated once, in the Terms; it is charged on the order amount, never on your profit. | Kalshi's own trading fee applies. There is no HiveTrade fee on Kalshi orders; Kalshi hives earn HiveTrade subscription revenue only. |
| Order shape | Dollar-sized stakes. | Whole contracts, priced in cents. |
On either venue, HiveTrade earns from monthly hive subscriptions; on Polymarket only, it also earns the trading fee above. Neither HiveTrade nor a captain takes a share of your trading profits on either venue.
Polymarket hives
Your deposit goes into a smart-contract wallet on Polygon that you own. HiveTrade holds a bounded, delegated signing authority over that wallet: it can place orders on Polymarket while your allocation is live, and nothing else. Withdrawals need a fresh signature from you every time. When a market resolves, Polymarket settles on-chain and a HiveTrade watcher redeems the winning position back into your wallet.
Polymarket applies its own region restrictions, and HiveTrade honours that list — the app checks your region before a Polymarket hive can be backed.
Kalshi hives
Your money never leaves your own Kalshi account. You connect it by creating a trade-only API key in Kalshi and pasting it into HiveTrade. HiveTrade stores the key encrypted, shows you only a short fingerprint of it, and uses it to place orders in your account. The key can trade and read, but it cannot withdraw or move cash. Revoke it in HiveTrade or in Kalshi at any time and the stored copy is destroyed.
Before HiveTrade places any order in your Kalshi account, you accept an explicit execution consent for that hive. Until you do, a Kalshi connection is read-only and never fires.
Orders are placed in your account as immediate-or-cancel orders for whole contracts, at the real filled price. When Kalshi resolves a market it credits winning contracts to your cash itself — there is no claim step, no wallet, and no on-chain transaction. Funding and withdrawing happen in Kalshi's own app; HiveTrade never touches your cash and never handles fiat.
One hive, one venue
A captain who wants to publish calls on both venues runs two hives, one per venue, and each has its own members, tiers, and calls. As a member, you back each hive separately with the account at that hive's venue. The venue is shown on every hive before you back it.
See Custody & your funds for the full picture of what HiveTrade can and can't do with your money on each venue.