How Prediction Markets Could Create Crypto’s Next Billion Users

Prediction markets have been fairly the story in 2025. From being a extremely area of interest, unknown class beforehand, firms within the prediction market house are blowing up. They have now raised money at bonanza billion greenback valuations to gasoline their recognition and progress. 

The most well-known are Polymarket, which acquired a $2 billion funding from NYSE proprietor Intercontinental Exchange at a $9 billion valuation and Kalshi, which raised $300 million at a $5 billion valuation, each in October. And prediction market gamers similar to Opinion, Limitless and Myriad have additionally raised or are seeing consumer progress. 

With this predicting frenzy in thoughts, what occurs subsequent? Can these platforms, most of that are blockchain and crypto-based, assist usher in a completely new set of customers? Could they create blockchain to the following billion, the fever dream each crypto native seeks?

The Path To Predicting

Although venues like Kalshi and Polmarket appear to have come out of nowhere in 2025 to the uninitiated, prediction markets really aren’t new to the scene.

“They’ve been round in crypto for fairly some time,” famous Shresth Agrawal, CEO of Pod, a layer 1 blockchain. “We had Gnosis and Augur, which had been a number of the early ICO firms that attempted it.”

In August 2015, Augur raised $5.5 million in an ICO. In April 2017, Gnosis raised $12.5 million with their ICO that offered out in ten minutes. Augur continues to be chugging alongside, with its v2 launch supporting the DAI stablecoin and its REP token ripping the previous yr. Gnosis pivoted away from predictions to its extremely profitable Safe multisig pockets, which scored $100 million in funding in 2022.  

During the primary Trump administration, in 2020, Kalshi was capable of acquire approval from the CTFC to be a Designated Contract Market to commerce occasion contracts. And whereas Kalshi runs on a closed system as an alternative of blockchain, this approval paved the way in which for onchain prediction markets. 

Polymarket, based in 2020, makes use of USDC on Polygon, and is admittedly the primary onchain prediction market to vary the blockchain recreation.

“What we’re really witnessing is the emergence of a brand new design house for monetary and informational markets,” stated Niraj Pant, an investor in Polymarket’s seed spherical.

Growing Market Access

This emergence is being powered by a river of cash coming into into prediction market platforms. At the start of November, the whole notional quantity traded on prediction markets hit a record-high $3.3 billion based on knowledge aggregator Dune Analytics. Kalshi had round $1 billion, Polymarket roughly $1 billion, and the just-launched BNB Chain-based Opinion led the way in which with $1.4 billion.

Pant, the Polymarket seed investor, sees this rising recognition as an indication of merchants recognizing the brand-new monetary markets these venues can unlock.

“There’s a larger market entry story right here,” he advised BeInCrypto. Sportsbooks, for instance, do provide some political betting choices, however the menu is usually fairly restricted to a ebook’s low urge for food for danger. 

In distinction, prediction markets intend to financialize occasions of all kinds. Previously, Pant says, “the common particular person investor couldn’t simply guess on whether or not the Fed will minimize charges, whether or not a sure politician will win in a selected market, and even whether or not Tesla inventory will go up or down, relying on the place they dwell,” he added.

“Now they will.”

What’s Next

New classes within the prediction market house are regularly creating. One of those gaining recognition are “point out markets” the place bets are positioned on what celebrities or different public figures say. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong just lately learn by an inventory of phrases in a marketplace for him on his firm’s earnings name; crypto social media voraciously ate it up.

The subsequent frontier for prediction markets: Bringing in customers to crypto who don’t know they’re utilizing crypto. 

“I believe what’s strongest about Polymarket is that they don’t even carry apparent crypto branding,” stated Vincent Manglietto, the founding father of Pentagon Pizza Watch, an information tracker to assist inform prediction market merchants. The concept is that if Pentagon-area pizza joints get busy, it would imply some occasion is perhaps cooking up as staff there are too busy to fret about meals and simply order pizza.  

“Most customers who’re acquainted and even partaking with them don’t notice there’s blockchain infrastructure beneath the hood,” Manglietto added relating to prediction markets. “Powering merchandise that really feel intuitive, entertaining, and culturally related is precisely how the following billion customers are available.”

A Billion? Really?

The holy grail for crypto, no less than amongst fans, is to get billions of customers adopting blockchain. So an onchain prediction markets actually usher in crypto’s subsequent billion?

Right now, these blockchain-based prediction markets are solely cultivating a whole bunch of hundreds of customers on a weekly foundation – 274,000 the previous week, based on Dune. It’s clearly nonetheless early – however it’s additionally clear that this market, and the variety of venues, will develop. 

This will doubtless develop because of the variety of markets accessible, famous Pod’s Agrawal “Basically, any form of data that exists on the web, or may exist sooner or later, can grow to be the idea for a market.” More markets to foretell on may grow to be akin to new tokens constructing recent narratives that always convey customers to blockchain. 

And blockchain infrastructure is getting ok that customers might not even need to know crypto is getting used on the back-end of those prediction markets as these venues develop. As Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong stated on X in October: “In 10 years, many extra individuals will use crypto, however they might not know they’re utilizing crypto.”

The publish How Prediction Markets Could Create Crypto’s Next Billion Users appeared first on BeInCrypto.