I've stacked silver for years and bought a lot of it on eBay. So when Kalshi listed gold and silver perps on Sept. 10, my first question wasn't "how much leverage can I get?" It was "what does this do for someone who already owns the metal?"
Short answer: it's not a replacement for a stack. It might be the best hedge a small stacker or reseller has ever had access to.
What are you actually trading with a Kalshi gold perp?
A perp is a leveraged long or short on the price, with no expiry and nothing delivered. You never touch a coin or a bar. It's cash in, cash out, marked to Kalshi's reference price. Kalshi uses Pyth's always-on gold and silver indices for these, which is how they keep trading on Saturday and Sunday when the futures pit is dark.
Here's how the three ways to own gold stack up:
| Physical (coins, bars) | Gold ETF | Kalshi gold perp | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you pay up front | Spot + dealer premium | Share price | Margin (1/leverage of the position) |
| Ongoing cost | Storage, insurance | Expense ratio | Funding, once a day |
| Leverage | None | None | Up to ~15x |
| Can it be taken from you? | Only by a burglar | No | Yes: liquidation |
| Trades on weekends | Local shop hours | No | Yes, 24/7 |
| Counterparty | You | Fund custodian | Kalshi's clearinghouse |
How much leverage do Kalshi gold and silver perps allow?
At 10x, Kalshi's own order ticket showed a gold long from $4,283.90 liquidating at $4,070.10 on Sept. 26, 2026: a 5.0% drop. By our estimate a 15x gold long sits about 1% from liquidation, a 5x about 15% and a 3x about 29%; silver at 5x is about 11% away. Those estimates are calibrated against Kalshi's app so they err toward liquidating sooner. They're all far tighter than the "100 divided by leverage" rule because Kalshi liquidates at the maintenance margin, not at zero (here's why).
Put a real number on the calculator before you pick a leverage: the gold perps page has the live table.
What does funding cost on Kalshi metals perps?
Metals fund at 10 a.m. ET, once a day. In their first 15 prints, gold funding was zero 60% of the time and charged longs in a third of windows; silver was zero two-thirds of the time. That's too little history to project a yearly cost, so watch the gold and silver pages as it fills in. Remember that funding is charged on the full position, not your margin, so it scales with leverage.
How can a stacker hedge physical silver with a perp?
This is where it gets interesting for people like me.
Say you buy 500 ounces of silver over a week of eBay lots, intending to flip it. You're exposed to the price the whole time you hold it. Short 500 ounces of silver perp at 1x and the price risk is gone: if silver drops $3, the perp gains roughly what the metal lost. When you sell the metal, close the short.
Or say silver runs hard into a Friday and you'd like to lock it in without selling the stack. A 1x short holds the value over the weekend, when the futures market is closed but Kalshi isn't. Close it Monday if you were wrong.
Three things to know before you do it:
- At 1x your liquidation is a long way off. It would take roughly an 80% rally to liquidate a 1x silver short. Low leverage is what makes a hedge a hedge.
- It isn't free. You pay fees on the full position going in and out, starting at 0.120% each way as a taker at the entry tier (less if you rest limit orders). And if funding runs against shorts, you pay that daily.
- Your physical price and the index aren't the same number. Your eBay cost includes premiums, shipping and fees, and those don't move with the index. The perp hedges the spot price, not your premium.
Where do the gold and silver edge tools fit?
If you want a view on direction instead of a hedge, our Gold Edge 15-Min and Silver Edge 15-Min tools read which way the metal is moving every 15 minutes, and Gold Edge and Silver Edge compare Kalshi's daily contracts to where the options market prices them. The same Pyth indexes sit under all of it. We measured Pyth against Kalshi's 15-minute settlements here.
Kalshi also lists monthly and weekly gold and silver ladders ("gold above $X at the close"). Those settle on a closing price, not a touch, so as insurance for a leveraged perp they're partial: they pay only if the price is still past the strike at the close. The perps calculator matches one to your position and says so.
Perps carry leverage and can lose your entire margin quickly. This is not tax or investment advice; hedging physical metal with a futures position can have tax consequences, so check with a tax professional. Trade responsibly.