Kalshi is no stranger to gimmicks when hiring. Last Christmas, it was hiring for a marketing executive with a salary range of $50k to $8m. It’s back again this year with a role so unusual that it had to preface the listing with the fact that it’s a “real job”: the prediction markets firm is offering up to $10k a month for one person to play GTA VI.
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Kalshi wants a ‘GTA VI Researcher’ with over three years of video game streaming experience, preferably with a finance or economics degree. They will be streaming the game from its launch at midnight next Thursday, focusing specifically on the in-game economy of its fictional US state, Leonida. The role is on a contract basis and pays equivalent to a salary of $100k to $120k.
The researcher will release weekly reports on this while also studying the real-world economic effects of the GTA VI launch. There has been fearmongering from some analysts that the launch could cost the US economy $1bn due to the volume of people taking days off to play it at launch.
In addition to the $10k monthly pay, the researcher will get a $15k “streaming bonus,” a 100-inch TV and $75 daily for food deliveries. While it says you’re expected to take the overall project at your own pace, you will be expected to have an “eagerness to play 10+ hours per day during the launch push,” not including the additional work on the reports.
This might seem like overspending (and it might be), but open GTA VI-related markets have a total volume of over $12m on Kalshi. Kalshi relies on highly liquid markets like these and sports to help fund the ‘truth machine’ markets it uses to distance itself from traditional gambling companies. Kalshi enlists ‘designated market makers,’ including major trading firms, which receive incentives like lower transaction fees in their usual trading activity in exchange for making markets in smaller, illiquid areas. The firm has had an ongoing legal battle with several state governments in the US to exempt prediction markets from state gambling laws (and the associated fees and taxes).
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