Kalshi bettors can now buy and sell tokenized versions of their wagers on Solana, the company told CNBC exclusively on Monday. It’s the latest sign the prediction market company is deepening its push to win over the same cryptocurrency holders that have pumped billions of dollars of digital assets into its rival Polymarket.

Tokenization refers to creating a digital version of a real-world financial asset such as a stock, bond or treasury note. The resulting token, which can be held or traded like a normal asset, lives on a decentralized ledger called a blockchain, such as Solana or Bitcoin.

The tokenized versions of the contracts work the same way as the regular ones found previously on Kalshi’s platform. However, by trading the tokens instead of the actual contracts, users have more anonymity. This puts Kalshi on par with Polymarket, which allows users to trade directly on-chain.

Support for tokenized wagers linked to Kalshi’s event contracts is live on Solana, Kalshi told CNBC. Decentralized finance protocols DFlow and Jupiter will serve as institutional clients, bridging the exchange’s off-chain orderbook to Solana’s liquidity.

Kalshi is doubling down on its push to court crypto holders as demand for event contracts surges. Prediction markets’ combined trading volume hit nearly $28 billion through October of this year, hitting a weekly record high of $2.3 billion during the week of October 20, according to data cited by Crypto.com‘s research arm.

By tapping into the $3 trillion digital asset market, Kalshi will be able to shore up liquidity needed to scale its offerings at a time when investors’ appetites for prediction markets is growing rapidly, John Wang, the company’s head of crypto, told CNBC.  

“There’s a lot of power users in crypto,” Wang said. “This is about tapping into the billions of dollars of liquidity that crypto has, and then also enabling developers to build third party front ends that utilize Kalshi’s liquidity.” 

Founded in 2018, Kalshi was the first exchange to launch federally regulated event contracts on U.S. congressional races for American traders in late 2024, shortly after winning a years-long legal battle against the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. 

Since then, Kalshi has added more event contracts to its platform, running about 3,500 markets, according to a company representative. Last fall, it raised more than $300 million at a $5 billion valuation in a funding round backed by crypto heavyweights Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, in addition to expanding its footprint to more than 140 countries.

But, it’s first-mover advantage may not be enough to keep the platform competitive, particularly as Polymarket relaunches in the U.S. Kalshi will need to continue to grow to edge out its rivals, and it will need ample liquidity to do so – something crypto-native traders’ funds could provide, according to Wang.

Digital asset holders tend to be particularly active on prediction markets, trading at higher volumes compared to their non-crypto peers, meaning their presence on the platform is likely to meaningfully boost liquidity across Kalshi’s markets, the executive said. And by tapping into that massive liquidity, Kalshi can ensure competitive and accurate pricing across its platform, he added. 

“If you have a market with no liquidity, then you don’t really have a market,” Wang said. “People can’t really trade size or get the prices that they want.”

Shopify was hit with an outage on Cyber Monday, leaving some businesses unable to manage transactions during one of the biggest shopping days of the year.

In an update to its status page, the Canadian e-commerce company said select merchants were experiencing issues logging into Shopify, while others were unable to access point-of-sale systems, a critical portal used to manage transactions and other backend processes.

Later in the day, Shopify said its services were beginning to recover, but that some merchants may still observe some disruptions to its POS and Admins tools.

“We have found and fixed an issue with our login authentication flow, and are seeing signs of recovery for admin and POS login issues now,” the company said in an update at 2:31 p.m. EST. “We are continuing to monitor recovery.”

A Shopify spokesperson pointed CNBC to its status page when reached for comment.

The Downdetector website showed thousands of users reporting problems with Shopify around 1:15 p.m. EST, after roughly 4,000 cases were reported by users at its peak at 11:00 a.m. EST.

Shopify sells software for merchants who run online businesses as well as services such as advertising and payment processing tools.

Shopify says it handles more than 10% of all e-commerce transactions in the U.S.

The company made its name as a platform for small businesses and direct-to-consumer brands, but it increasingly hosts online storefronts for larger retailers like Reebok, Mattel, Barnes & Noble and Nestle.

The outage coincided with the Cyber Monday discount bonanza, when holiday shoppers rushed to snap up discounted products.

Adobe Analytics estimates that U.S. shoppers will spend $14.2 billion online Monday, up 6.3% from a year earlier.

American shoppers spent $11.8 billion on Black Friday, marking a 9.1% jump from last year, according to Adobe.

OpenAI on Monday announced it is taking an ownership stake in Thrive Holdings, a company that was launched by one of its major investors, Thrive Capital, in April.

The startup said it will embed engineering, research and product teams within Thrive Holdings’ companies to help accelerate their AI adoption and boost cost efficiency.

Thrive Holdings buys, owns and runs companies that it believes could benefit from technologies like artificial intelligence. It operates in sectors that are “core to the real economy,” starting with accounting and IT services, according to its website.

OpenAI, which is valued at $500 billion, did not disclose the financial terms of the agreement.

“We are excited to extend our partnership with OpenAI to embed their frontier models, products, and services into sectors we believe have tremendous potential to benefit from technological innovation and adoption,” Joshua Kushner, CEO and founder of Thrive Capital and Thrive Holdings, said in a statement.

It’s the latest example of OpenAI’s circular dealmaking.

In recent months, the company has taken stakes in infrastructure partners like Advanced Micro Devices and CoreWeave.

The partnership is structured in a way that aligns the incentives of OpenAI and Thrive Holdings long term, according to a person familiar with the deal, who asked not to be named because the details are private.

If Thrive Holdings’ companies succeed, the size of OpenAI’s stake will grow.  

It also acts as a way for OpenAI to get compensated for its services, according to another person familiar with the agreement who declined to be named because the details are confidential.

“This partnership with Thrive Holdings is about demonstrating what’s possible when frontier AI research and deployment are rapidly deployed across entire organizations to revolutionize how businesses work and engage with customers,” OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap said in a statement.

OpenAI also announced a collaboration with the consulting firm Accenture on Monday.

The startup said its business offering, ChatGPT Enterprise, will roll out to “tens of thousands” of Accenture employees.

WATCH: OpenAI taps Foxconn to build AI hardware in the U.S.