In March alone, Polymarket crossed $10 billion in monthly volume for the first time in its history. Kalshi, which is CFTC regulated, posted $13 billion, a 25x jump year over year and an almost 1000x jump in two years. That's over $23 billion of real capital in a single month.
Through these two platforms, we can see the entire macroeconomic picture for this year: inflation, unemployment, probability of a recession, interest rates, you name it they have it.
You ask: what about the probability of a soft landing?
The most probable, but stagflation is a fear.
What about the probability of a recession?
Side by side comparison:
Probability of an interest rate cut at the next Fed meeting?
No change, what about the target rate of the Fed at the end of the year?
Current rates are 3.5–3.75%, no change—meaning no boost for stocks.
Now let's go back 7 years, to 2019 and think about a typical Wall Street merger. Say Netflix wanted to buy Warner Bros in that year, and traders everywhere were making their predictions on whether or not they thought the deal would go through—by buying and selling shares of the underlying stock.
Before prediction markets, where would you go to find out the odds of a merger between Netflix and WBD? What about competing offers, like Paramount?
There was nowhere.
Enter Polymarket:
Now, for the first time ever, you can go on Polymarket and very quickly find out the odds that a merger between Netflix and WBD would actually go through. You can find out competing offers—Paramount. What about finding out before it's even announced? Enter the best market of all:
10 of the companies that are on that list are either public, or a subsidiary of another public company. The odds of a stock price boost for the company getting bought out are significantly high—often times over 100%.
And it doesn't stop at acquisitions:
Take IPOs:
Before a company goes public, analysts guess at valuation. Investment banks set a price. But what does the market think the stock will actually open at? Prediction markets have that too:
A picture speaks a thousand words, this one speaks almost $2 Trillion.
Market participants are also anticipating a June IPO for SpaceX. This isn't just speculation, but real money reaching a consensus on the valuation and IPO date of private companies, so people everywhere can have the opportunity of doing some due diligence on deciding whether or not they want to invest, 1 year before the company goes public.
Blockchain
Thanks to blockchain technology, we're able to see trades made via prediction markets in real time, unlike company insiders at various public corporations that release them in a delayed fashion. When you make a trade on the blockchain, it comes with a digital stamp and it's immediate, so everybody sees it. And they don't just see the trade, they see the timestamp, the volume and the username of the person making the trade. You can track these users over time and get notified at the exact time they make the trade. If they are trading the same markets with no losses, there's a good chance they are an insider.
The markets settle automatically through smart contracts. No middleman deciding who gets paid. When the outcome is confirmed, winners get paid instantly.
Prediction markets aren't replacing Wall Street, they're just filling the gap it never could. The odds of a recession, acquisition or 2 trillion dollar IPO are now accessible with the push of a button.
Polymarket and Kalshi give you the odds. Exchange Alpha gives you their true value.
