Shigeru, Cynic | CGV Research

Currently, prediction markets are gradually transforming from a "marginal financial experiment" into a foundational layer for information, capital, and decision-making systems. In 2024-2025, the market will witness the explosion of platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi; by 2026, the market may face a systematic evolution of prediction markets as a "new type of information infrastructure."

The CGV research team, based on two years of continuous research on prediction markets, AI agents, crypto finance, and compliance trends, presents 26 judgments for 2026.

I. Structural Trend Judgments

1. Prediction markets will no longer be defined as "gambling" or "derivatives" in 2026

They will be redefined as: decentralized information aggregation and pricing systems. By 2025, platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi will have a cumulative trading volume exceeding $27 billion, with mainstream media such as CNN, Bloomberg, and Google Finance widely integrating their probability data, citing it as a real-time consensus indicator rather than gambling odds; academic research (such as analyses from Vanderbilt University and the University of Chicago) shows that prediction markets outperform traditional polls in accuracy regarding political and macro events. By 2026, as traditional financial giants like ICE invest in Polymarket and distribute its data to global institutions, regulators (such as the CFTC) are expected to further view it as an information aggregation tool, promoting a paradigm shift from "gambling labels" to "decentralized pricing systems."

2. The core value of prediction markets lies not in "betting correctly," but in "signals"

What the market ultimately pays for is the ability to reflect consensus changes in advance. In 2025, Polymarket and Kalshi will lead mainstream economists and polls by 1-2 weeks in probability changes regarding Federal Reserve decisions and sports events; related reports will show their Brier scores significantly outperforming polls and expert predictions, with a Brier score of 0.0604 significantly better than the good standard of 0.125 and the excellent standard of 0.1. Moreover, as trading volume increases, predictions become more accurate, and Brier scores improve. By 2026, with institutional hedging demand surging (such as using probability signals to hedge macro risks), platform data will be more embedded in financial terminals, and the value of signals will far exceed trading returns, becoming a real-time "public opinion indicator" for institutions and media.

3. Prediction markets will shift from "event-level" to "state-level"

Not just "who will win," but "what state the world is in." By 2025, platforms will have launched continuous state markets, such as "Bitcoin price range in 2026" or "probability of economic recession," with open interest (OI) rising from low levels at the beginning of the year to over a billion dollars; Kalshi's macro indicator market share will rapidly increase. By 2026, long-cycle state markets are expected to dominate liquidity, aggregating structural consensus and providing continuous pricing of the world's state, rather than being driven by single events.

4. Prediction markets will become the "external reality verification layer" for AI systems

AI will no longer just reference data but will reference "judgments weighted by capital." In 2025, Prophet Arena benchmark tests will show that AI models achieve accuracy in predicting real events comparable to prediction markets; Kalshi will collaborate with Grok, and Polymarket will generate AI summaries, using capital-weighted probabilities as verification to reduce AI hallucinations. By 2026, as protocols like RSS3 MCP mature by the end of the year, prediction market probabilities will widely serve AI world model updates, forming a reality-market-model closed loop that enhances the credibility of AI outputs.

5. Information, capital, and judgment will close the loop in the same system for the first time

This is the fundamental distinction of prediction markets from social media and news platforms. In 2025, Polymarket data will be integrated by Bloomberg and Google Finance, forming an efficient cycle of information input → capital pricing → judgment output; unlike Twitter's unincentivized opinions, the capital mechanism ensures the authenticity of judgments. By 2026, this closed loop is expected to expand into corporate risk control and policy assessment, generating external value, distinguishing prediction markets from mere content platforms and establishing them as new decision-making infrastructure.

6. Prediction markets will no longer be a "niche track" in the crypto industry

They will be incorporated into a larger narrative of AI × finance × decision-making infrastructure. In 2025, ICE's $2 billion investment in Polymarket and Kalshi's valuation reaching $11 billion, along with traditional giants like DraftKings and Robinhood launching prediction products; total trading volume exceeding $27 billion, with data streams embedded in mainstream terminals. By 2026, as institutional adoption and AI integration accelerate, prediction markets are expected to shift from a crypto niche to the core narrative of AI × finance × decision-making, similar to Chainlink's position in the oracle space.

II. Product Form Judgments

7. Single-event prediction markets will enter maturity in 2026

The innovation space lies not in UI but in structure. By 2025, the overall trading volume of prediction markets will reach approximately $27 billion, with Polymarket contributing over $20 billion and Kalshi over $17 billion, where single-event markets (such as sports events, macro indicators, and political events) dominate, but the monthly growth rate will slow down later, with adjustments following the year-end peak. The focus of innovation will shift to underlying structures, such as the LiquidityTree model of the Azuro protocol continuously optimizing efficient liquidity management and profit-loss distribution. By 2026, such infrastructure upgrades are expected to drive single-event markets into a stable depth phase, supporting larger-scale institutional participation.

8. Multi-event composite markets will become the mainstream form

Prediction will no longer be a single point but a joint pricing of a set of related variables. In 2025, Kalshi's "combos" multi-leg trading feature will be widely popular, supporting combinations of sports outcomes and macro events, significantly attracting institutional hedging; conditional market experiments (such as event linkage probabilities) will further enhance pricing accuracy and depth. By 2026, with clearer regulations and accelerated institutional capital inflow, multi-event composites are expected to become the mainstream form, achieving complex risk management and diversified exposure, with overall trading depth significantly expanding.

9. "Long-horizon markets" will begin to emerge

Predicting structural outcomes 6 months, 1 year, or even 3 years ahead. In 2025, Polymarket and Kalshi will expand multiple cross-year markets, such as Bitcoin price ranges and economic indicator forecasts, with open interest (OI) rising from low levels at the beginning of the year to over a billion dollars; similar protocols will introduce position lending mechanisms to alleviate capital lock-up. By 2026, long-cycle markets are expected to dominate part of the liquidity, providing more reliable structural consensus aggregation, with open interest likely to double, attracting long-term institutional hedging.

10. Prediction markets will be embedded in more non-trading products

Research tools, risk control systems, decision-making backends, rather than front-end trading. In November 2025, Google Finance will deeply integrate Kalshi and Polymarket data, supporting Gemini AI in generating probability analyses and charts; terminals like Bloomberg will follow up to explore signal access. By 2026, this embedding trend is expected to deepen comprehensively, with prediction probabilities becoming the standard input layer for macro research, corporate risk control, and decision-making backends, shifting from front-end trading to institutional-level tools. CNN and CNBC will also sign a multi-year cooperation agreement with Kalshi in December 2025, embedding probability data into financial programs (such as "Squawk Box" and "Fast Money") and news reports.

11. The value of B2B prediction markets will exceed B2C for the first time

Businesses and institutions need "consensus pricing" more than retail investors. In 2025, internal application cases (such as supply chain and project management predictions) will consistently outperform traditional methods in accuracy; as institutional demand for hedging macro and sports events surges, the trading share of B2B scenarios will significantly increase. By 2026, B2B value is expected to surpass retail B2C for the first time, with institutions viewing prediction markets as core consensus pricing tools, driving the sector towards enterprise-level infrastructure. The supply chain analysis market will reach $9.62 billion in 2025, expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.5% until 2035. As a "consensus pricing tool," prediction markets can be embedded in AI-driven demand forecasting and risk management systems.

12. Prediction markets that "do not issue tokens and have low speculation" will go further

In 2026, the market will reward restrained design. In 2025, Kalshi, without a native token, will achieve monthly peak trading exceeding $500 million and capture over 60% market share; although Polymarket will confirm the launch of the POLY token in Q1 2026, low-speculation operations will still dominate growth throughout the year. By 2026, restrained design is expected to excel in regulatory friendliness, real liquidity, and institutional trust, with low-speculation platforms gaining advantages in long-term valuation and sustainability.

III. AI × Prediction Markets

13. AI agents will become one of the main participants in prediction markets

Not speculation, but continuous participation and automatic calibration. By the end of 2025, infrastructures like RSS3's MCP Server and Olas Predict will support AI agents to autonomously scan events, procure data, and place bets on platforms like Polymarket and Gnosis, processing speeds far exceeding human capabilities; Prophet Arena tests will show that agent participation significantly enhances market efficiency. By 2026, as the AgentFi ecosystem matures and more protocols open interfaces, AI agents are expected to contribute over 30% of trading volume, becoming major liquidity providers through continuous calibration and low-latency responses, rather than short-term speculators.

14. Human predictions will increasingly become "training data" rather than trading subjects

Prediction markets will begin to serve models rather than humans. In 2025, benchmarks from Prophet Arena and SIGMA Lab will show that market probabilities involving human participation are widely used for training and validating large models, with significant improvements in accuracy; the massive capital-weighted data generated by platforms will become high-quality training sets. By 2026, this trend is expected to deepen, with prediction markets prioritizing service to AI model optimization, and human betting becoming more of a signal input rather than a core subject, with platform design evolving around model needs.

15. Multi-agent prediction games will become a new source of Alpha

The prediction market itself has transformed into a multi-agent gaming arena. By 2025, projects like Talus Network's Idol.fun and Olas have viewed prediction markets as a collective intelligence battlefield for agents, where multiple agents generate predictions that exceed the accuracy of a single model through competitive gameplay; Gnosis conditional tokens support complex interactions. By 2026, multi-agent games are expected to become the primary Alpha generation mechanism, with the market evolving into an adaptive multi-agent environment, attracting developers to build dedicated agent strategies.

16. Prediction markets will constrain AI's hallucination issues in reverse

"Judgments that cannot be bet on" will be regarded as low-confidence outputs. In 2025, collaborations between Kalshi and Grok, along with Prophet Arena tests, will use capital-weighted market probabilities as external anchors to effectively correct AI biases; related models will perform poorly on outputs without market validation. By 2026, this constraint mechanism is expected to standardize, with "judgments that cannot be bet on in prediction markets" automatically down-weighted by AI systems, enhancing overall output reliability and resistance to hallucinations.

17. AI will drive prediction markets from "probabilities" to "distributions"

Not just a single number, but an entire result curve. In 2025, platforms like Opinion and Presagio will introduce AI-driven oracles that output complete probability distributions rather than a single number; Prophet Arena will show that distribution predictions are more accurate in complex events. By 2026, the distribution outputs of AI models will be deeply integrated with market depth, providing fine-grained result curves, significantly improving pricing accuracy for long-tail events, and platform UIs and APIs will default to support distribution views.

18. Prediction markets will become the external interface for world models

Real-world changes → market pricing → model updates, forming a closed loop. By the end of 2025, protocols like RSS3 MCP Server will have achieved real-time contextual streams, supporting agents in updating world models from market probabilities; Prophet Arena will form an initial feedback loop. By 2026, this closed loop is expected to mature, with prediction markets becoming the standard external interface for AI world models, rapidly reflecting real events in pricing, driving model iteration in reverse, and accelerating AI's understanding and adaptation to the dynamic world.

IV. Financial and Business Model Judgments

19. Trading fees are not the ultimate model for prediction markets

The real value lies in data, signals, and influence. In 2025, Kalshi will achieve significant revenue through trading fees, but Polymarket will maintain a low/zero fee strategy while capturing a dominant position through data distribution and influence—its cumulative trading volume will exceed $20 billion, attracting investments from traditional giants like ICE. As mainstream platforms like Google Finance and CNN integrate prediction data in 2025, by 2026, data licensing and signal subscriptions are expected to become the primary revenue sources, contributing over 50% of platform income; institutions will pay to use real-time probability signals for macro hedging and risk modeling, shifting platform valuation from trading volume to data asset weight, driving sustainable business evolution.

20. Prediction signal APIs will become core commercial products

Especially in finance, risk control, policy, and macro fields. In 2025, unified APIs like FinFeedAPI and Dome will begin serving institutions, providing real-time OHLCV and order book data from Polymarket and Kalshi; Google Finance will officially integrate both probability signals in November, allowing users to directly query event predictions. By 2026, as institutional adoption accelerates (with regulatory clarity emphasized in outlooks from Grayscale and Coinbase), prediction signal APIs will evolve into standard products, similar to Bloomberg terminals—institutions will pay for subscriptions to automate risk control, policy simulations, and hedge against Federal Reserve decisions, with the market size expected to expand from the current tens of billions to the hundreds of billions level, with leading platforms dominating through exclusive licensing.

21. Content capability will become an important moat for prediction markets

Explaining prediction results is more important than the predictions themselves. In December 2025, CNN will sign a data collaboration with Kalshi, embedding probabilities into reports and relying on the platform to explain market fluctuations; mainstream media will frequently cite consensus changes from Polymarket and Kalshi as "real-time public opinion indicators." By 2026, pure probability providers will be marginalized, and content-based explanations (such as in-depth analyses of the consensus dynamics behind the market, long-tail insights, and visual narratives) will become key moats—platforms with strong explanatory capabilities will be prioritized by AI systems, think tanks, and institutions, forming network effects; monetization of influence will surpass trading, similar to how traditional media builds authority through data interpretation.

22. Prediction markets will become foundational tools for new research institutions

Prediction markets are not media but research engines. In 2025, prediction market data will be used for benchmarking by institutions like the University of Chicago's SIGMA Lab, with accuracy surpassing traditional polls driving its entry into macro research; after integration with Google Finance, users will generate probability charts and analyses through Gemini AI. By 2026, as institutional adoption deepens (with funding-weighted consensus emphasized in outlooks from firms like Vanguard and Morgan Stanley), prediction markets will be embedded in new research frameworks, serving as real-time decision engines—supporting corporate risk assessments, government policy warnings, and AI model validations, evolving into "research infrastructure," similar to the role of data terminals in finance, driving a comprehensive shift from front-end trading to back-end tools.

V. Regulatory and Landscape Judgments

23. Regulatory focus in 2026 will shift from "can it be done" to "how to use it"

The emphasis will no longer be on prohibition but on usage and boundaries. In 2025, the U.S. CFTC will have approved Kalshi and Polymarket to operate legally under specific categories (such as sports and macroeconomic events), with election-related markets still restricted, but non-financial events receiving a clear green light; multiple prediction platforms will enter regulatory sandbox testing under the EU MiCA framework. By 2026, as institutional capital inflows accelerate and mainstream media widely cite probabilities (with CNN and Bloomberg using them as standard indicators), regulatory focus is expected to shift to usage norms—such as anti-manipulation rules, information disclosure requirements, and cross-jurisdictional delineation, rather than existence prohibitions; this shift will resemble the maturation path of the derivatives market, promoting the scaling of globally compliant platforms.

24. Compliant prediction markets are more likely to enter through "non-financial uses"

Such as policy evaluation, supply chain, and risk warnings. In 2025, Kalshi will successfully avoid restrictions on political events, shifting to economic indicators and sports markets, achieving a cumulative trading volume exceeding $17 billion; internal applications (such as supply chain risk predictions) have proven higher accuracy in companies like Google and Microsoft. By 2026, compliant platforms are expected to prioritize expansion from non-financial uses—policy evaluations (such as probabilities of climate events), corporate risk warnings, and public events (like Olympic medal distributions), which face minimal regulatory resistance but can attract institutional and government clients; trends from the CFTC and EU regulation indicate that this entry point will open mainstream doors, avoiding gambling labels.

25. Leading prediction markets will not win on traffic but on "being cited"

Whoever is called upon by AI, institutions, and research systems will be the winner. In 2025, the probabilities from Polymarket and Kalshi will be widely integrated and cited by Google Finance, Bloomberg terminals, and mainstream media (like Forbes and CNBC), serving as real-time consensus indicators superior to traditional polls; academic benchmark tests from SIGMA Lab will further enhance their authority. By 2026, as demand from AI agents and research institutions surges, competition among leading platforms will shift to the frequency of being called upon—being used as external verification sources by models like Gemini and Claude, or being embedded in risk control systems by institutions like Vanguard and Morgan Stanley; while traffic is important, the citation network effect will determine the winner, establishing a foundational infrastructure position similar to Chainlink oracles.

26. The ultimate competition for prediction markets will not be between markets but in whether they become infrastructure

After 2026, prediction markets will either become "utilities" or be marginalized. In 2025, traditional financial giants like ICE will invest in Polymarket, with TVL exceeding billions of dollars, and data streams beginning to embed in mainstream terminals; AgentFi and MCP protocols will lay the foundation for the AI closed loop by the end of the year. By 2026, the essence of competition will shift to infrastructure attributes—whether they become real-time interfaces for AI world models, standard signal layers for financial terminals, and underlying consensus engines for decision systems; successful players will be indispensable like Bloomberg or Chainlink, while pure trading platforms may be marginalized; this watershed will determine whether the sector transitions from a crypto narrative to a global information infrastructure.

Conclusion

Prediction markets no longer need to prove "whether they are feasible"; the real watershed lies in whether they begin to be regarded as decision signals rather than just trading tools. When prices are repeatedly cited by researchers, institutions, and systematic models, the role of prediction markets has already changed.

By 2026, the competitive focus of prediction markets will no longer be on popularity and traffic but on the stability, credibility, and frequency of signals being called upon. Whether they can become long-term utilized information infrastructure will determine whether they move to the next stage or remain in a cyclical narrative.

Note: This article is a CGV research report and does not constitute any investment advice, for reference only.

CGV:

CGV (Cryptogram Venture) is a crypto investment institution headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Since 2017, its funds and predecessor funds have cumulatively participated in investments in over 200 projects. Since 2022, CGV has invested in and incubated the licensed yen stablecoin JPYW, positioning itself early in the crypto stablecoin field. Starting in 2024, CGV will focus on the coin-stock and RWA markets, participating in projects like Nabite (NA) and Victory Securities (8540.HK) for private placements. Currently, CGV also has branches in Hong Kong, Silicon Valley, and other locations.

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