The company’s findings, the subject of a report Wednesday (April 16) by CoinDesk, said this milestone will happen as the industry moves from niche bets to a larger “information market” that covers sports, cryptocurrency, politics and the economy.
Volumes reached $51 billion last year and are on track to come to around $240 billion this year, which implies approximately 80% compound annual growth through the end of the decade, the report said. Activity has already picked up in 2026, with Polymarket and Kalshi seeing combined year-to-date volumes of $60 billion.
“Increasing regulatory clarity at the federal level is expanding the addressable market, while blockchain-based tokenization and integration with crypto markets is enabling global liquidity, long-tail event creation and participation from institutions,” the analysis said.
As CoinDesk noted, prediction markets have gone from a niche corner of crypto and academic experimentation to an increasingly popular part of trading in the span of a few years.
Activity has been fueled by major news events like the 2024 presidential election, while platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi have ventured beyond politics into sports, crypto and macroeconomic events.
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Sporting events now make up around 62% of volumes, thanks to lower effective take rates compared to traditional online sportsbooks, the report said.
However, the analysts said that number would be halved by the decade’s end, as crypto-linked contracts and macro, political and economic events become more popular.
The findings come on the heels of a recent Bank of America analysis projecting that the annual volume of U.S. sports-related event contracts could grow to $1.1 trillion and that this activity could generate $10 billion in annualized revenue for prediction market platforms.
That’s up from the $100 billion in event contract volume that is forecast for this year, a trend driven by federal regulation that allows sports-related event contracts in all 50 states.
The bank also said that accessibility to customers as young as 18 and gamblers who might be blocked by sportsbooks, and an avoidance of state gaming taxes, could also give prediction markets an edge over online sportsbooks.
“At the same time, prediction markets have become a flashpoint between federal and state regulators,” PYMNTS wrote late last year. “While real-money prediction markets technically fall under the jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a growing number of states have sought to shut down the markets they view as unlicensed or illegal gambling operations.”
