John Pederson, 33, couldn’t work. The former Outback Steakhouse line cook was recovering from a car crash and running out of money. Kalshi, the prediction market, promised a quick way to fix that. He took out a variable-interest loan and started betting. At first, it worked. Pederson turned about $2,000 into close to $8,000 by betting on daily snowfall totals in Detroit, where he lives. He parlayed that into $41,000 by trading on sports, using a strategy he developed with the help of AI, according to a Wall Street Journal review of his account records. Then he placed his most…

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