The great gamblification

We love predicting things, don't we? Be it fortune telling, astrology, statistics, or whatever else, we are generally inclined towards trying to forecast the future as accurately as possible. If you think that the traditional ways of guessing the future are too… financially secure, you’re in luck! There’s a new forecasting method on the horizon, with a bunch of new twists and hopes of having our wallets thinned in a manner that would make Ozempic blush.

Welcome to predictive markets. A predictive market is one where you make a predictive claim, put a certain amount of money behind said claim, and hope to receive a payout if the prediction you made comes true. Say I bet-predict it’s going to rain tomorrow, and put 20 euros on the line. If it does rain, I get a payout from the bookie market administrator.

There are currently two large companies spearheading this absolutely-not-gambling industry: Polymarket and Kalshi. With Polymarket, the best way of getting a feel for what it is (at least as of January 2026) is to just search “Polymarket” in your browser and go to the news section of the results. Polymarket is a delightful place that lets you place wagers on predictions related to pressing topics such as the outcomes of elections, whether Trump will say “tampon” during a rally, when Israel will strike Gaza, and a whole host of other topics that inspire pride in humanity. 

Polymarket itself doesn’t set the prediction odds of any market. Instead, the rates for a given prediction are decided by how much money is tied to it. You’re not against the house; you’re against each other, with the house taking a cut from every market, no matter what happens. It’s being touted as the next generation of news, as people with additional information on a given subject can leverage that information to buy shares accordingly. I wonder if there’s a name for engaging in market trading with publicly unavailable information. 

Speaking of news, Kalshi, which operates on practically the same business model as Polymarket, has gotten into bed with the American media news giant CNN as its “official prediction market partner." This influence can be seen in how CNN has started to use less polling data for local government office races; instead, the news organisation quotes prediction market rates. The idea is that whenever a piece of news is being released, you will be fed Kalshi data, which will serve as the gold standard for whether that set of news is credible. The truth value of a given prediction will be determined by the amount of money placed on a prediction. The rich people call dibs on truth.

Kalshi is particularly fun because its CEO has made quite a few interesting remarks about their vision for this whole prediction market thing. Here are a few zingers:

“The long-term vision is to financialise everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion.”

“The unfortunate reality is like, you know, people don't really want the truth. You know, I don't know if it's... Like, I mean, we've really seen it. Maybe it's not a learning, but, like, it's just not what people are interested in.”

“And I think, from a lot of the users, what we learned is it's the first time they have a way to monetise what before were hobbies for them.”

What a terrible day to have language processing skills. Assetising disagreement, monetising hobbies. Why merely enjoy your hobby when you could load it with financial anxiety instead? Or why not pair the anticipation of the plot of your favourite TV show with a commercial break that allows you to make a capital-backed guess on how it will end? Did your favourite artist make it to number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100? Well, too bad, you put money on them being in the top 3. Sucks to lose.  

Unfortunately, it looks like this trend is spreading to many parts of our everyday life; you can even bet (oops, I tried my best) on your own debt. Worst of all, the biggest cheerleaders behind this movement aren’t even the technicians behind the apps, but rather the venture capitalists who fund them, or in other words, the most prolific gamblers of the stock market. Aren’t we lucky that US trends never materialise on the other side of the Atlantic pond?