Prediction markets are gaining a lot of attention in 2025. From a category that was previously very niche and unknown, companies in the predictive market space are experiencing explosive growth. They are currently raising cash at a massive $1 billion valuation to fuel their popularity and growth.
The best-known are Polymarket, which received a $2 billion investment from NYSE owner Intercontinental Exchange at a $9 billion valuation, and Calci, which raised $300 million at a $5 billion valuation, both in October. Prediction market players such as Opinion, Limitless, and Myriad are also increasing or experiencing an increase in their user numbers.
With this prediction frenzy in mind, what happens next? Will these platforms, most of them blockchain and crypto-based, help bring in a whole new set of users? Will they be able to bring blockchain to the next billion people, the fever dream every crypto native seeks?
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The road to prediction
Venues like Karshi and Polmarket seem to the uninitiated to have come out of nowhere in 2025, but prediction markets are actually nothing new.
“It has been around in cryptocurrencies for quite some time,” said Shreth Agrawal, CEO of Pod, a layer-1 blockchain. “Gnosis and Augur were some of the early companies that tried ICOs.”
In August 2015, Augur raised $5.5 million in an ICO. In April 2017, Gnosis raised $12.5 million in an ICO that sold out in 10 minutes. Augur is still going strong, releasing v2 with support for the DAI stablecoin and ripping last year’s REP token. Gnosis pivoted from predictions to the highly profitable Safe multisig wallet, achieving $100 million in funding in 2022.
In 2020, during the first Trump administration, Kalsi was able to receive approval from the CTFC to become a designated contract market for trading event contracts. Additionally, although Kalshi runs on a closed system rather than a blockchain, this approval paves the way for on-chain prediction markets.
Founded in 2020, Polymarket uses USDC on Polygon and is the first on-chain prediction market to change the blockchain game.
“What we are really seeing is the emergence of a new design space for financial and information markets,” said Niraj Pant, an investor in Polymarket’s seed round.
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Expanding market access
This rise is being fueled by rivers of capital flowing into prediction market platforms. The total notional amount traded in prediction markets reached a record $3.3 billion in early November, according to data collection firm Dune Analytics. Karshi held about $1 billion, Polymarket held about $1 billion, and the just-launched BNB Chainbase Opinion led the way with $1.4 billion.
Pant, a seed investor in Polymarket, sees this growing popularity as a sign that traders are recognizing the brand new financial markets these venues are unlocking.
“There is an even bigger market access story here,” he told BeInCrypto. For example, sportsbooks offer some political betting options, but the menu is often very limited to those with a lower risk appetite on the books.
In contrast, prediction markets aim to financialize all kinds of events. Previously, Pant added, “The average individual investor, depending on where they live, could not easily bet on whether the Fed would cut interest rates, whether certain politicians would win in certain markets, or even whether Tesla stock would go up or down.”
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“Now it’s possible.”
what’s next
New categories are continually being developed in the prediction market space. One that is gaining popularity is the “mention market,” where you bet on what celebrities and other public figures say. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong recently ran through a list of market quotes during his company’s earnings call. Cryptocurrency social media greedily devoured it.
The next frontier in prediction markets: Attracting unsuspecting users to cryptocurrencies.
“I think the strongest thing about Polymarket is that it doesn’t even feature obvious crypto brands,” said Vincent Manliet, founder of Pentagon Pizza Watch, a data tracker that helps inform prediction market traders. The idea is that if a pizza shop in the Pentagon District gets busy, it means some event might be arranged because the employees there are too busy to worry about food and just order pizza.
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“Most users who are familiar with or involved are not aware that there is blockchain infrastructure inside,” Manriet added about prediction markets. “Powering products that are intuitive, interesting, and culturally relevant is exactly how we will reach the next billion users.”
1 billion? Really?
The holy grail of cryptocurrencies, at least among enthusiasts, is getting billions of users to adopt blockchain. So will on-chain prediction markets really bring crypto the next billion dollars?
At the moment, these blockchain-based prediction markets are only nurturing hundreds of thousands of users on a weekly basis, up from 274,000 last week, according to Dune. It is also clear that this market and number of venues will grow, although obviously it is still too early.
Pod’s Agrawal says this trend is likely to grow further due to the number of markets available: “Essentially any type of information that exists or may exist on the internet can be the basis for a market.” With more markets to predict, it could become something akin to a new token building a new narrative that brings users to the blockchain.
And blockchain infrastructure is rich enough that as these prediction markets grow, users may not even need to know that cryptocurrencies are being used on the backend of these prediction markets. As Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong told X in October, “In 10 years, more people will be using cryptocurrencies, but they may not even realize they’re using them.”
