#预测市场正在影响BTC走势？ #创作者冲榜 Prediction Markets Reference Crypto Industry for 10x Growth Potential?

Since the crypto market entered a bear market, many retail investors have gone all-in on AI, overlooking an important emerging industry—the prediction market track, which, like the crypto sector, faces compliance risks and financial speculation criticisms.

Currently, the upstream, midstream, and downstream of prediction markets are filled with investment and entrepreneurial opportunities. Some analysts even suggest that prediction markets will become another trillion-dollar scale industry track independent of the cryptocurrency market, making it worthy of attention!

Many beginners still don't understand: What exactly is a prediction market?
A Prediction Market is a decentralized trading mechanism based on blockchain that allows participants to place bets and trade on the results of uncertain future events, with market prices reflecting collective consensus on the probability of event occurrence through group judgment.

Prediction markets can be broadly categorized into four types:
1. High-frequency gaming events: Pure transaction-driven, high turnover, strong stimulation, primarily satisfying users' speculation and gaming needs, serving as the basic foundation for platform trading volume and liquidity.
Typical examples: Crypto price movements in 5/15-minute intervals, sports competitions.
2. Cultural entertainment events: Focused on hot topics, fun, and conversational value, emphasizing entertainment, participation, and social virality, used to acquire new users and engage general audiences.
Typical examples: Public opinion events, U.S. elections, and Spring Festival event marketing I previously tried on Probable.
3. Risk hedging events: Leaning toward practical, rational, real-world risk mitigation scenarios, primarily satisfying professional needs for hedging and risk offsetting, determining the platform's long-term value and compliance potential.
Typical examples: Macro economic data, pre-TGE events, U.S. stocks, Hong Kong stocks, gold, and silver. Further, it can integrate more tightly with reality to create real-world insurance: weather insurance (agriculture), earthquake/typhoon insurance, CPI inflation insurance (purchasing power insurance).
4. Other events such as political events: Death of Khamenei, etc.

Among these, Kalshi (compliant) and Polymarket (high market share) are the dual leaders of prediction markets. Their month-over-month growing transaction data represent their rapid growth.

In November 2025, prediction markets experienced an explosive moment: Kalshi's trading volume surged to $5.8 billion, Polymarket reached $3.74 billion, both setting new records with combined trading volume approaching $10 billion. Recently, Kalshi completed a $1 billion Series E financing with a post-investment valuation rising to $11 billion, with investment backing from top-tier capital including Paradigm, Sequoia, a16z, Meritech, IVP, ARK Invest, CapitalG, and Y Combinator.

Track leader Polymarket, valued at $9 billion, received strategic investment from ICE, and then completed a $150 million Series funding round led by Founders Fund at a $12 billion valuation. Currently, it continues fundraising at a $15 billion valuation.

Is it gambling?
Admittedly, in sectors like sports that are easily comparable, prediction markets and gambling platforms do share similar surface-level mechanics. However, at a more fundamental and broader level, the two differ structurally in their operational logic.

Prediction markets are about information, while gambling is about emotion.
Prediction market users include data model researchers, macro traders, media and policy researchers, information arbitrageurs, high-frequency traders, and institutional investors. Prediction markets have high information density with participants being "proactive and information-driven," motivated by arbitrage, price discovery, and information advantages.
Gambling primarily targets general users who tend to make emotional bets based on emotion or entertainment rather than serious prediction.

As prediction market industry trading volume continues to grow, it gradually transitions from the margins to the mainstream. Data analysis platforms targeting prediction markets have emerged like mushrooms after rain, including Parity, Predictefy, and KalshiData. Additionally, on-chain trading tools and AI agent trading tools for Polymarket are numerous and endless. Beyond ecosystem expansion and improvement, what's more attractive is that the market increment—on-chain liquidity in crypto markets is more efficient and tempting compared to traditional financial markets, as on-chain liquidity faces no geographic boundaries, no lengthy SWIFT transfer chains, and no strict controls.

For the prediction market with a current overall user base of only tens of millions, the crypto market's 600 million users undoubtedly represents potential 10x or greater market growth for prediction markets. If the industry can become more popularized, allowing more ordinary users to participate in trending events, and even enabling ordinary people to initiate their own prediction events, this indirectly achieves crypto's mass adoption.

On the other hand, if it can become more professionalized, serving as a professional risk hedging tool or even a hedging instrument for any event, truly solving needs and problems in the real world, that would be the ceiling of prediction markets.

The development path for prediction markets is clear. Let's see how far it can go together!