Spotify Confirms Fraud After Kalshi Trader Cries Foul

Kalshi’s biggest seller Caleb Davies often they talk to where journalists about how prediction markets help him make money. An IT worker in Minneapolis estimates he has made $1.2 million in various predictions, with $414,000 in winnings from. Kalshi to social markets only. They are particularly fond of betting on the music charts, as they carefully analyze Spotify’s data to pick the winners. “Every morning, I go in, download the data, and change my expectations,” he tells WIRED.

This summer, however, they are increasingly concerned about what they say is a deliberate, bot-inspired market manipulation involving Spotify. He recently began collecting and publishing evidence for his theory, and eventually confirmed that he contacted Spotify, Kalshi, and Polymarket with his concerns.

This week, situation hit the boiling point when Malcolm Todd’s song “Ring” climbed to number one on the Spotify chart. In a series of X posts, Davies described what he suspects: “botting,” or scammers who buy bots to get the numbers to leak. Davies pointed out that market traders are predicting throwing charts to influence the outcome of contracts based on events. Todd’s track was so difficult that it wasn’t even listed as a strategy on Polymarket: “Looking at the Sunday-to-Monday shift, it was an 11.24 sigma event, or a 1 in 77 octillion chance of happening by chance,” Davies wrote.

It seems he was on to something. Spotify confirmed to WIRED that it had investigated Davies’ calls, and found evidence of the search. Spokeswoman Laura Batey said: “Players are always faced with changes in the stream. (The company has not commented on the disruption, however, Davies’s view that it was directly linked to the scheme to disrupt the prediction markets remains.)

Spotify eventually adjusted its charts to account for the difference, removing 500,000 streams, which bumped Todd’s song from number one to number four. This did not happen immediately, and Kalshi had already determined the market to reward traders who chose Todd’s song.

“We are in contact with Spotify and are actively investigating this matter,” Kalshi spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana told WIRED. The discussion quickly changed: At the request of the Swedish giant, Kalshi removed the Spotify logo from its markets that are related to the company, and changed the language that initially said that Spotify confirmed the results.

When Davies first approached Kalshi with concerns, company CEO Robert DeNault told the retailer that only Spotify could confirm whether it had been suspended, and he noted that there would be reasonable grounds for an upgrade. DeNault also floated the theory that Kalshi traders could be copying what their peers are doing on Polymarket.

“No one from Polymarket benefited from the fraud, which is what undercuts Kalshi’s argument, because he didn’t have the Malcom Todd bracket,” Davies told WIRED.

Polymarket also disputes this theory. “It wouldn’t make sense because we didn’t have Malcolm Todd as a channel in the Spotify market,” spokeswoman Annabel Walsh said. The company confirmed that it is monitoring the trend, but has not identified any changes so far.

No one has spoken to the people or group of people behind the scam, so their interests are unknown. (Todd did not respond to a request for comment, but there’s no indication he’s an innocent bystander.)