The prediction market reached a brand new file for month-to-month buying and selling quantity of $28.4 billion in Might, in keeping with Artemis knowledge. This determine surpasses the earlier file excessive of $27.1 billion set in January of this yr and marks the fourth consecutive month of improve in buying and selling quantity.
The streak itself says greater than the headline numbers. The January surge consumed leftovers from the election cycle and the positioning of the brand new yr. Might, then again, did not actually have an equal catalyst, however nonetheless gained. This appears to counsel that exercise on prediction market platforms is shifting 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 file for the platform, with a 29% improve in quantity month-over-month. Much more noteworthy is the truth that roughly 61% of the entire 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 practically 90% of Might’s buying and selling quantity.
If we went again a yr, 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 US helps drive its sports activities enterprise, which accounts for almost all of its gross sales. Conversely, Polymarket bumped into plenty of regulatory hurdles all through a lot 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 file 4 months in a row?
A single file could possibly be a fluke. Sports activities calendars, viral markets, and one massive election can all spike in a month after which wane. After 4 months in a row, it is arduous to surrender. Which means 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 at the moment are 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 following step
Mr. Kalsi’s lead is in step with regulatory winds. The CFTC has indicated that clearer predictive market steerage favoring licensed exchanges is coming. Polymarket is enjoying the identical sport 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 Might 2, permitting builders to develop their very own markets on high of an alternate 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, effectively beneath 1% of the sector. But it surely does sign the following 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, hold the form easy. There are two massive venues, one among which is regulated and exiting, and there’s nothing to power it up, sitting in a sector that simply recorded its strongest month.
