The prediction market reached a brand new report for month-to-month buying and selling quantity of $28.4 billion in Could, in response to Artemis information. This determine surpasses the earlier report excessive of $27.1 billion set in January of this 12 months and marks the fourth consecutive month of enhance in buying and selling quantity.
The streak itself says greater than the headline numbers. The January surge ate up leftovers from the election cycle and the positioning of the brand new 12 months. Could, however, did not actually have an equal catalyst, however nonetheless received. This appears to recommend that exercise on prediction market platforms is transferring away from sudden event-based spikes in direction of a steady trough. The concept that these markets are locations of occasional curiosity is steadily transitioning into everlasting areas.
Kalsi recorded a buying and selling quantity of $17.3 billion final month. That is itself a month-to-month report for the platform, with a 29% enhance in quantity month-over-month. Much more noteworthy is the truth that roughly 61% of the overall buying and selling quantity got here from Kalsi, which processed nearly double the buying and selling quantity of Polymarket, which recorded $8.4 billion. However collectively, a duopoly nonetheless exists, as each of those platforms accounted for almost 90% of Could’s buying and selling quantity.
If we went again a 12 months, this cut up between the 2 largest platforms would have been reversed. Polymarket constructed this class and maintained market dominance from 2024 all the best way to September 2025 when Kalsi tipped the scales. We tracked an identical reversal inside crypto-themed contracts earlier this month, with Kalsi shares rising since February.
The rationale for this reversal is definitely fairly comprehensible. Kalsi’s regulated standing in the USA helps drive its sports activities enterprise, which accounts for almost all of its gross sales. Conversely, Polymarket bumped into quite a lot of regulatory hurdles all through many of the final quarter. This doesn’t imply that Polymarket’s buying and selling quantity is falling off a cliff from month to month; it merely has stopped rising.
Why break one report 4 months in a row?
A single report could possibly be a fluke. Sports activities calendars, viral markets, and one huge election can all spike in a month after which wane. After 4 months in a row, it is laborious to surrender. Which means that the ground beneath the sector continues to rise even when the catalyst stops rotating.
That baseline is the maturity sign. Prediction markets are not ready for elections to grow to be necessary. Newsrooms quote odds, hedge funds monitor odds, and market makers like Wintermute are actually quoting two-sided costs throughout the most important venues. This plumbing is beginning to look extra like a real derivatives market than a brand new gamble.
Regulation and development firms take the subsequent step
Mr. Kalsi’s lead is in keeping with regulatory winds. The CFTC has indicated that clearer predictive market steering favoring licensed exchanges is coming. Polymarket is taking part in the identical recreation from the opposite facet, shopping for a CFTC-licensed venue to re-enter the US market from which it had been largely shut out.
The builder tier is a wildcard. Hyperliquid launched the HIP-4 Outcomes Settlement on Mainnet on Could 2, permitting builders to develop their very own markets on prime of an change that already settles tons of of billions of {dollars} in month-to-month buying and selling quantity. The preliminary share is modest at about $87.7 million, nicely under 1% of the sector. But it surely does sign the subsequent step. It’s a market that anybody can launch and settle on-chain, constructing on a base of 1.4 million present merchants.
For now, maintain the form easy. There are two giant venues, certainly one of which is regulated and exiting, and there may be nothing to drive it up, sitting in a sector that simply recorded its strongest month.
