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Author: On-Chain Revelation
Introduction: A Game of Power about Probability
Imagine a place where you can bet on anything: Who will be the next President of the United States? Will the Federal Reserve cut interest rates next month? Even, can your favorite actor win this year's Academy Award?
In 2025, the prediction market experienced a genuine “explosive growth.” In the third week of October, just passed, the weekly trading volume broke through the $2 billion mark for the first time, setting an all-time high for the platform. The entire market is heating up. This is not a slow evolution; it is a sudden gold rush.
Behind this outbreak are three powerful forces that cannot be ignored; when political leaders, Wall Street, and the core crypto circle simultaneously focus their attention and money on the same place, we must ask a question: what exactly have they seen?
The answer split into two completely different yet equally enticing stories.
Chapter One: The Big Players Enter, The Rules of the Game Begin to Change
Character One: Trump's “Truth Prediction” - Social Media Meets Financial Betting
This week, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), under Trump, announced its entry into the prediction market through the Truth Social platform, officially launching the “Truth Predict” service.
An evolution of political marketing: a carefully designed “social + financial” hybrid.
Imagine this scenario: you see a post about the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision on Truth Social, and with just a few clicks, you can convert the “Truth gems” rewarded by the platform into CRO tokens for betting. This is no longer the traditional “have an opinion first, then place a bet” approach, but a brand new model of “betting while socializing”.
The ambition of Truth Predict goes far beyond this:
User-oriented: The goal is to achieve “democratize information” for its 6.3 million users.
Betting range: from political elections to sports events, from commodities to Federal Reserve decisions.
Virus transmission: Every bet may become social content, creating a self-reinforcing transmission loop.
More crucially, this platform adopts the CFTC-regulated binary contract form, cleverly circumventing the legal definition of “gambling.” In the regulatory gray area, the Trump team's instincts remain as sharp as ever.
*The Beta test of Truth Predict will soon start on Truth Social, targeting US users, supporting betting on events such as elections, economic indicators, sports, and commodity prices.
Role Two: CZ's Decentralized Layout: From Behind the Scenes to the Forefront
Compared to Trump's high profile, the layout of crypto figure CZ is more discreet yet equally precise.
Through YZi Labs, ( was formerly known as Binance Labs, established in 2018. CZ invested in two key projects: Opinion Labs and APRO Oracle. The former builds a decentralized “truth oracle,” while the latter is a “decentralized oracle network specifically serving the Bitcoin ecosystem.”
CZ's statement on Twitter is thought-provoking: “The prediction market urgently needs specialized oracles,” and “Although it's just a few investors, we will do our best to help increase strategic value.”
This sentence reveals an important signal: CZ is not only focused on the prediction market itself but also on the data infrastructure behind the prediction market. In other words, when prediction markets become mainstream applications, the verification of data authenticity undoubtedly carries significant weight. Whoever controls the verification of data authenticity indirectly holds the discourse power of the new ecosystem.
*The mainnet of Opinion Labs was launched on the BNB Chain on October 16, 2025, currently in an invitation-only Beta phase, with a cumulative trading volume exceeding 300 million USD (testnet + mainnet Beta); the Beta test of APRO Oracle was launched on October 28, targeting BNB Chain and Bitcoin Layer2 developers, with AI verification node registration now open.
Role Three: Wall Street's Expectations: ICE's $2 Billion Bet
The most shocking thing is the $2 billion investment by ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, in Polymarket. This is not just an investment; it is the “official endorsement” of prediction markets by traditional finance.
$2 billion is not a small amount for Wall Street, especially for an institution known for its conservatism. ICE has always favored “hardcore finance”—in 2013, it spent about $11 billion to acquire the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Euronext; in 2018, it established the cryptocurrency asset platform Bakkt, with an initial investment of only $180 million. These figures together are enough to illustrate the point: ICE is betting on a completely different future.
Why? Because what prediction markets aggregate is not capital, but decentralized judgments. In an era dominated by algorithms, data has long been saturated; what is truly scarce is human signal. When traders, programmers, professors, and gamblers all place bets on the same platform, they inadvertently produce an extraordinarily valuable indicator - collective expectation.
This investment may mark a shift: when mainstream financial institutions begin to treat prediction markets as sources of information rather than toys, the coordinates of the financial world will shift slightly. Algorithmic trading, risk models, investment strategies—all may be recalibrated because of these “market-driven prophecies.”
*CNBC, as a leading global financial media outlet, reported this event primarily due to its significant financial and market impact.
Chapter Two: The Motivations of Billionaires - Two Completely Different Stories
Cryptographic Perspective: The “Accidental Holy Grail” of DeFi?
This first story perfectly addresses a long-standing awkward question in the crypto world: How can DeFi (Decentralized Finance) be made accessible to the general public?
For years, the promise of “DeFi democratization” has been seen as the holy grail of the crypto world. But the reality is that complex wallets, difficult private key management, and abstract yield logic have kept 99% of ordinary people at bay like a high wall. DeFi has always been an insider game for “crypto-native users.”
However, prediction markets may become that “unexpected breakthrough.” It may be the first DeFi product to achieve large-scale adoption because it completely revolutionizes the user experience:
Interesting and Intuitive: The way to participate is similar to a “betting game,” wagering on your judgment of the real world, rather than requiring you to understand “liquidity pools” or “impermanent loss.” Predicting whether the “next Marvel movie will surpass $1 billion at the box office” is much more intuitive than calculating complex DeFi yields.
Reality Coupling: The underlying assets of prediction markets are all verifiable events in reality: presidential elections, sports events, policy regulations. This directly links the abstract value of blockchain to real life, giving it an unprecedented sense of “reality.”
Easy to use: Major platforms are working hard to allow users to participate directly with credit cards and email, completely hiding the complex blockchain technology behind the scenes. You don't even need to know what a wallet is to place a bet on the next Super Bowl.
Industry experts' predictions on the forecasting market
In Thursday's X article, Rychko, a researcher from a prediction market infrastructure provider, pointed out that prediction markets are moving beyond cryptocurrency into the real world, and their accessibility could make them the first decentralized finance (DeFi) product to achieve mass adoption.
“Most people will never use a derivatives exchange,” he wrote. “But 'Mamdani has an 87% chance of winning' - that's something everyone will say.”
“Humans are inherently lazy,” craving “clean and easily understandable signals,” and indicating that prediction markets meet this demand by transforming complex predictions into simple data points.
“It is precisely this simplicity that allows prediction markets to achieve mass adoption more quickly than most DeFi experiments, as they align with the rhythm of human cognition.”
Beyond speculation: the ecological value of prediction markets
The rise of prediction markets has also brought more possibilities to the DeFi ecosystem. Below are some of the implemented cases:
Risk Hedging: By using prediction market contracts (YES/NO stocks), users can hedge against price fluctuations of DeFi assets. For example, some platforms have begun to explore how to use prediction markets to cope with the severe volatility of cryptocurrency prices.
Liquidity Staking: Prediction market share tokens can participate as liquidity providers (LP) in decentralized exchanges (such as Uniswap) to earn transaction fees. This mechanism not only enhances market liquidity but also allows users to gain additional revenue.
Synthetic asset generation: Predictive market outcomes can be used to mint tradable synthetic assets. These assets can serve as financial instruments and further drive innovation in the DeFi ecosystem.
Information Aggregation and Transparency: Data from prediction markets can serve as reference signals, providing more accurate information for other DeFi protocols. For example, by integrating data aggregation tools like The Graph, prediction market data is being used to optimize financial decisions and resource allocation.
In this story, prediction markets are the “Trojan Horse” for DeFi to enter the mainstream. It uses the most human-centric “betting” and “gossip” as a disguise, quietly bringing blockchain technology to the fingertips of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of users. This is not just a growth, but it could be a decisive step for the Web3 world from “on-chain economy” to “real-world participation.”
Political Perspective: The “Secret Weapon” of Democracy
However, the other side of the coin is a story about power and public opinion.
What is the core of politics? It's not just about winning votes, but also about shaping voters' “expectations”. And prediction markets are precisely a perfect “expectation-making machine”.
Imagine that, on the eve of an election, a candidate's probability of winning is boosted to 78% in the prediction market. This number itself is a highly impactful piece of news. The media will quote it (“Market predicts XX will win overwhelmingly”), social networks will spread it, and voters will see it. This money-backed aura of “certainty of victory” will spread like a virus, shaking the centrists, demoralizing opponents, and even creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of “when the wall falls, everyone pushes.”
What’s even scarier is that this provides a new and hard-to-hold-accountable tool of influence for power. In the past, politicians needed to influence public opinion through media or direct speech; now, you may need a large enough amount of funds and a “suitable” platform.
By making large bets in the market, politicians can “buy” a favorable probability for themselves in the short term, and then let the media and the public amplify this signal. When questioned, the parties involved can completely shrug their shoulders and innocently state, “I didn't lie, I was just making a legitimate investment.”
When we see Trump's son Donald Jr. become an advisor to Polymarket, and the capital associated with him pouring tens of millions of dollars into the platform, we should be wary: is this really just a simple investment?
In this story, the prediction market is no longer just a “crystal ball” that gathers wisdom, but rather a “secret weapon” that can be used to shape public opinion." - During the 2024 election period, the trading volume of Polymarket's single contract for Trump's victory has exceeded $2.7 billion, and its probability fluctuations have been cited by mainstream media such as CNN, “predicting” the “choices” of tens of millions of voters in advance.
Conclusion: Power Restructuring in Probability Games
So, is the prediction market really the “unexpected holy grail” of DeFi, or the “secret weapon” of democracy?
The answer may be: both.
It has the potential to become an unprecedented information aggregation tool, allowing the “wisdom of the crowd” to shine with unparalleled efficiency; but it could also be reduced to a battleground for public opinion captured by massive capital and political power, allowing the “largest wallet” to define what is “truth.”
Currently, the two major platforms, Kalshi and Polymarket, hold the vast majority of market share, with the former having about 60-66% and the latter accounting for 34%. When platforms like Robinhood open event contract trading to their 20 million+ users, the influence of this market will grow exponentially.
The next 12-24 months will be a critical period. Can the market achieve mass adoption while maintaining the ideals of decentralization? Can it maintain innovation while accepting regulation? Can it uphold the public interest while achieving commercial success?
The answers to these questions will determine whether prediction markets become tools for advancing social progress or weapons that exacerbate inequality and manipulation.
And each of us will be a participant and witness in this game of chance.
“Be strong and keep playing your cards!”
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