Prediction markets are now attracting real professional traders, and the rules have completely changed.

Last year, the monthly trading volume was less than $100 million, and by the end of this year, it skyrocketed to over $8 billion. Some single-day trading volumes have broken $700 million — the scale of funds is now large enough to catch Wall Street’s attention.

Leading institutions like DRW, Susquehanna, and Tyr Capital are establishing professional teams, offering annual salaries of up to $200,000 to recruit traders for prediction markets. These traders are no longer playing the simple "guess the rise or fall of an event" game.

**Their strategy: harvesting pricing discrepancies**

The same event shows a 50% recession probability on Polymarket, but only 2% in the credit market. Institutions bet on both sides simultaneously, taking a position in "recession" and "no recession," ensuring stable profits regardless of how the economy turns out. This isn’t gambling; it’s arbitrage opportunities created by market pricing inconsistencies.

**Not everyone can get an entry ticket**

Market makers enjoy benefits like low fees, high limits, and VIP channels, which retail traders don’t have. The price differences between platforms? They’re eliminated within seconds. Retail traders used to have a slight edge by leading in information for arbitrage, but now these gaps are almost gone.

**What’s next**

That group of PhDs is designing more complex products — multi-event composite contracts, time series, conditional probabilities… Prediction markets are moving toward structuring and professionalization.

History always repeats itself. Forex, futures, and cryptocurrencies have all taken this path: first ignited by retail traders, then fully taken over by institutions. Technology, capital, and trading privileges are transforming this originally "wisdom of the crowd" market into a hunting ground for professional players.

And retail traders? Maybe only those in niches with very long cycles or tiny markets that no one pays attention to still have a chance — but even those niches are rapidly being filled by algorithms and capital.