Weekly prediction market volume hit a new high of more than $2 billion as Polymarket regained the lead over rival Calci, according to data from Dune Analytics.
Both Polymarket and Kalshi have seen significant increases in user activity and trading volumes over the past few months as prediction markets as a whole have gained widespread mainstream recognition and adoption.
Calci, the first federally regulated prediction market platform in the United States, saw a dramatic increase in user activity in August (which, not coincidentally, coincided with the start of the new NFL season). It overtook Polymarket for the first time in trading volume. Now poised to re-enter the US market, Polymarket began beta testing its US app just over a week ago, regaining pole position ahead of the upcoming November election.
The conceptual volume by category shows that politics has rapidly gained momentum in recent weeks. But it wasn’t enough to outperform the sports market, which brought in $414.7 million worth of trading volume last week, compared to $322.6 million worth for the sector-wide political market.
By November of last year, when President Donald Trump was re-elected, the entire industry was on the verge of exceeding $2 billion in weekly trading volume. However, market share among the major companies looked a little different at the time.
Polymarket accounted for $1.2 billion worth of trading volume, Kalshi $749 million, and Limitless $5.2 million worth of trading volume. Currently, Polymarket still leads with $1 billion worth of trading volume, closely followed by Kalshi with $950 million. Kalsi has outperformed Polymarket in volume for the past eight weeks.
Meanwhile, Limitless quadrupled its footprint to $21.9 million. decryption‘s parent company, Dastan, grew weekly trading volume to the tune of $3.8 million.
The prediction markets industry has also recently benefited from a loosening of the regulatory environment in the United States, at least at the federal level. Both Polymarket and Calci received CFTC no-action letters earlier this year (Calci in May and Polymarket in September). The letter gave the companies permission to open their platforms to U.S. users without the imminent threat of enforcement action from federal regulators. However, a growing number of state regulators are challenging its status as a CFTC-regulated entity.
Neither Polymarket nor Calci immediately responded to requests for comment. decryption.
Nevertheless, company valuations have risen as regulators have eased significantly and users have flooded prediction markets. Earlier this month, Kalsi completed a $300 million Series D round that valued the company at $5 billion. This was led by venture capital giants a16z and Sequoia and included crypto exchange Coinbase, among others. This appears to be the first time Coinbase has been listed as an investor in a US-based prediction market company.
Meanwhile, Polymarket recently secured a $2 billion investment from Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. This brings the company’s valuation to $9 billion.
A frequently cited Certuity report estimates that the prediction market will reach $95.5 billion by 2035, with a compound annual growth rate of 46.8%.
Countless users still doubt that Polymarket will officially announce the token launch in 2025. Forecasters put a 15% chance that Polymarket will announce a token this year. decryption We reported a little over a week ago that Polymarket was planning to launch a native token, but it probably won’t launch until January.
But that hasn’t stopped airdrop farmers from trying to inflate future allocations.
Last year, as many users predicted that a token launch would take place after the US election, farmers bought and sold large amounts of positions to artificially inflate them. They did this in an effort to position themselves for a larger allocation of future token airdrops, which are often designed to reward the most active and engaged users of a crypto protocol.
Well, prediction market people talk about it. decryption Airdrop farmers have become more sophisticated to circumvent anti-farming conditions in token allocation.
