World, a Chainlink-powered prediction market launched in the Phantom wallet on Solana on July 1, said recently that it is moving to Robinhood Chain.
The move shifts the project from Solana’s crypto-focused users to Robinhood’s roughly 28 million customers, prompting some users to accuse it of using Solana to gain attention before leaving.
After more than two years of teasers, the concept debuted in Phantom, a well-known Solana wallet. It allowed players to wager on the price of Bitcoin and the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with rewards issued in Phantom’s CASH stablecoin and results validated by Chainlink.
The announcement gave no reason for the shutdown, mentioned no technical issues, and did not explain what would happen to open bets.
The move was unexpected, as World had recently said it planned to expand into markets for economic data, elections, and major sports leagues in the coming weeks.
Why Robinhood makes more sense
Robinhood appears to be the more likely reason for the move.
The brokerage has already launched tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs for European users and plans to move them from Arbitrum to Robinhood Chain.
Robinhood reported 27.4 million funded customer accounts in the first quarter of 2026, giving World access to a much larger base of retail investors.
Chainlink is also part of Robinhood Chain’s infrastructure, allowing World to keep its existing settlement system.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has also shown users how to move funds from Solana to Robinhood Chain by bridging USDC and swapping it for the network’s Paxos-backed USDG stablecoin.
Polymarket has applied to offer margin trading in the U.S., which would allow users to fund only part of a wager.
National Futures Association records show that PM Derivatives LLC filed applications on July 3 for futures commission merchant status, NFA membership, and swap firm registration on behalf of Polymarket-linked entity Coming Home GBA LLC.
The company would still need approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission before launching margin trading.
That would move Polymarket beyond simple yes-or-no markets and closer to a leveraged trading platform. Adding borrowed funds would increase both potential gains and losses for everyday users.
The move also intensifies competition with Kalshi, which is further ahead in the U.S.
Both platforms reported record trading volumes in June, with Kalshi reaching $33 billion and Polymarket, including its U.S. platform, nearing $14 billion. Both also launched crypto perpetual futures earlier this year.
Polymarket’s U.S. expansion has faced challenges. The company is under investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and is also facing a lawsuit over its marketing, though its margin trading application signals it plans to keep expanding.
The company is collaborating with regulators to create never-expiring futures linked to gold, foreign exchange, and energy, Chief Risk Officer Udesh Jha told Reuters.
In addition to institutional investors, retail traders account for a sizable portion of Kalshi’s user base, hence he claimed that gold is a top focus.
Kalshi would be in direct rivalry with the world’s biggest derivatives exchange, CME Group, as a result of that development.
Due to the CFTC’s decision to let Kalshi and Coinbase to offer perpetual futures, CME has already filed a lawsuit against the organization and its chairman, Michael Selig.
The decision is a “disaster waiting to happen,” according to Terry Duffy, the departing CEO of CME, who cautioned that retail traders might not fully understand the risks.
If Kalshi’s growth is permitted, it will directly compete with major exchanges such as CME, Nasdaq, Cboe, and Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange. According to reports, the corporation plans to go public between late 2027 and early 2028.
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A New York federal court has returned prediction-market access to state hands just weeks before the CFTC closes comments on national event-contract rules.
In a July 7 opinion and order, Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York denied KalshiEX LLC’s request for a preliminary injunction to block New York gaming officials from enforcing state gambling law against its sports-event contracts while the case proceeds.
The decision is preliminary. It leaves the merits open, but it rejects Kalshi’s bid for immediate relief on the argument that the Commodity Exchange Act preempts New York’s gambling laws as applied to those contracts.
The access risk now has two tracks: whether the Commodity Futures Trading Commission accepts event contracts at the federal level, and whether states can force platforms to block, limit, or redesign access before the federal framework is finished.
The order landed while the CFTC’s proposed prediction-market rules remain open for comment. The agency’s June 12 Federal Register notice gives interested parties until July 27 to comment on proposed public-interest determinations for event contracts, including contracts involving gaming or activity unlawful under federal or state law.
A related CFTC release said the framework would apply to growth in event contracts, including those referencing sporting events.
Torres’s order sharpened the access issue before that process closes. The court rejected Kalshi’s argument that CFTC-designated contract market rules requiring impartial access effectively require nationwide access to sports contracts.
It also treated the cost of geolocating users on a state-by-state basis as an ordinary regulatory compliance burden, undercutting Kalshi’s irreparable harm argument.
That part of the ruling carries the most operational weight for venues. Geofencing may be expensive, disruptive, and inconsistent with a national market, but the order leaves room for states to keep pressing their gambling-law theories while platforms litigate.
The order binds Kalshi’s New York case. The product category is already broader.
Crypto.com describes its sports-event trading as a CFTC-regulated derivatives feature. Coinbase says its prediction markets are available to U.S. residents, but not in Nevada.
CryptoSlate has previously tracked how state-vs-CFTC fights can turn prediction-market compliance into refunds, blocked access, and venue-by-venue risk. New York adds a new pressure point because the court said state gambling law can complement federal commodities law, at least at this stage.
The next signal is whether the CFTC’s final rule reduces that fragmentation or leaves platforms with a national listing process and local access map. Until then, prediction markets can win federal recognition and still face state-by-state limits on who can actually trade.
The World prediction market, which launched on Solana (SOL) barely a week ago, said it will move to Robinhood Chain. The team offered no clear reason for leaving so soon after its debut.
The switch reverses a story from days earlier, when World was Solana’s homegrown answer to Polymarket and Kalshi. Now it is tying its future to a mainstream broker’s network.
The project built attention with a stealth campaign, teasing a glowing globe and the line “Trade Everything” before any product. It then went live inside Phantom on July 1, a wallet with more than 15 million monthly users.
World never holds user money. It settles bets automatically using Chainlink data and pays winners in a stablecoin called CASH.
NEW: @world_xyz, the premier prediction market on @solana, adopts Chainlink as its primary oracle infra to unlock immediate resolutions & instant payouts.
That hands-off payout set it apart from Polymarket and Kalshi, where users often have to claim their winnings themselves.
The Solana Foundation itself championed the launch. Its head of consumer, Pedro Miranda, called prediction markets a showcase for what the network can do.
The app opened with short-term Bitcoin (BTC) price bets and 2026 FIFA World Cup markets. It also pushed out Kalshi inside Phantom, which had run the wallet’s markets since December 2025.
Its debut landed as the value of open bets across prediction markets hit a record $1.48 billion in June. That figure comes from a16z crypto.
Solana Out of the Prediction Market Race?
World framed the move as a considered choice. In its announcement, the team thanked the Solana Foundation and community but did not explain its thinking.
update: after careful deliberation from the team in the last 24 hours
world has made the decision to migrate off of solana and onto @RobinhoodCrypto chain
Notably, the team pointed to no technical fault with Solana, which offered low fees, fast trades, and support for Phantom’s users. That silence is why the move looks like a business decision rather than a fix.
The clearest pull is reach. Robinhood Chain launched on July 1 as its own blockchain for tokenized stocks and on-chain finance, built on Arbitrum technology.
Its parent serves nearly 28 million customers across 38 countries, most of them mainstream investors rather than crypto users.
Robinhood also has its own stake in the category. Prediction markets have been its fastest-growing product line by revenue, the company says.
“Robinhood is seeing strong customer demand for prediction markets, and we’re excited to build on that momentum,” said JB Mackenzie, VP and General Manager of Futures and International at Robinhood. “Our investment in infrastructure will position us to deliver an even better experience and more innovative products for customers.”
In its first year, more than 1 million customers traded over 9 billion contracts. Robinhood is now building a CFTC-licensed exchange with market maker Susquehanna.
Continuity helps too. Chainlink, which powers World’s payouts, already works with Robinhood Chain, so its setup can follow along. Such moves often come with grants or funding, though World has confirmed none.
Traders Question the Motive
Not everyone bought the friendly framing. Some users accused World of using Solana for launch-week attention, then leaving once the hype paid off.
User suggests unfavorable end for World. Source: Koki on X
Those claims stay unverified, and World has framed the change as a migration, not a shutdown.
Because the protocol never holds user funds, a shutdown alone would not lock up deposits. Still, the doubts flag a real risk for anyone holding open bets.
Still, others see the move as proof of Robinhood’s growing pull, given that a project backed by the Solana Foundation would jump ship so quickly.
Guys, wait a second.
Robinhood is taking over everything.
This prediction market project launched just one month ago with direct support from the Solana Foundation.
Now it has made a crazy pivot, announcing that it will deploy on Robinhood Chain.
World Cup betting shows how much money now moves through the prediction market sector. One Polymarket trader lost $11.6 million on those markets in early July.
For now, key details stay thin, including how open bets move and when trading opens on the new chain. Whether the Robinhood bet pays off will hinge on the volume revealed in the coming weeks.
A reported Coinbase announcement about a World Cup result, likely using AI, created a problem bigger than a flawed alert. It showed how quickly exchange-run prediction markets can blur the line between tradable outcomes and unverified automated content inside the same consumer app.
The episode surfaced on July 5, when a user posting as jay_drainjr said on X that Coinbase had sent a breaking-news-style alert claiming Norway had won a World Cup game, with Erling Haaland scoring, before the match had been played.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong replied later that day, saying he was looking into it with the team.
Coinbase has not published a full public postmortem as of press time. The public record also does not yet show how many users saw the notification, whether anyone traded after seeing it, or which system generated it. Those unanswered facts are material, but they do not erase the design problem the alert surfaced.
Exchanges are moving toward a product mix in which AI-generated alerts, sports-event contracts, and retail trading interfaces can sit within the same user journey. That means users need to see exactly what has been verified, what is automated, and what remains unresolved before market-adjacent content reaches them.
The timing made the episode sharper. Armstrong had already framed prediction markets as a breakthrough in how markets discover truth, saying in January that Coinbase users in the US could trade outcomes across sports, politics, culture, news, and more through the app’s Predict tab.
Coinbase’s own prediction markets page presents the product as focused on real-world outcomes, while its sports page shows event markets tied to World Cup, goalscorer, correct-score, and other sports outcomes.
That creates a basic tension for any exchange operating this kind of product. If a prediction market is meant to let prices reflect what participants believe will happen, the app also has to preserve the difference between an unresolved event, a live update, and a verified result.
A bad alert becomes market infrastructure when trading is one tap away
A mistaken pre-match alert would be a content failure in most consumer apps. In a trading app, it can become more serious because information and action sit side by side.
Prediction markets are contracts whose value can move as users react to new information. A notification that an event has already occurred can change a user’s understanding before the user sees the market, places a trade, exits a position, or decides to wait.
Even if no trades later show they relied on the alert, the product design has exposed the pressure point.
The reported Coinbase incident therefore belongs in a different category from a generic AI hallucination story. A wrong sentence from a model is embarrassing. A wrong sentence near a tradable event market can appear to be market-relevant information if the app does not indicate whether the event has been resolved.
The later outcome of the match does not settle that risk. If an alert reports a result before a reliable source has resolved the event, it has crossed the key boundary.
In prediction markets, the boundary is between pre- and post-resolution as much as between true and false.
That distinction will become more important as exchanges add more event markets to retail apps. Sports markets are especially sensitive because they produce constant live data, user attention is close, and the line between commentary, odds movement, and outcome confirmation can be thin.
A product can disclaim that users bear risk, but the interface still teaches users what to treat as settled.
Coinbase’s own pages already contain the legal and risk framing that makes the question of standards hard to avoid. The sports prediction market page says prediction markets are offered by Coinbase Financial Markets, a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant and National Futures Association member.
The same disclosure warns that event contracts can result in the loss of the full investment.
The product pages also state that information is provided for informational purposes and is not investment advice. They include language saying Coinbase is not responsible for third-party content errors, delays, or actions taken in reliance on that content.
That kind of disclosure may help allocate legal risk, but it cannot replace product-level clarity.
Users experience one app. If that app shows an event market, pushes a breaking alert, and presents a price that moves with new information, users will naturally treat the information environment as part of the product.
That is where provenance becomes more than a label. A trading app that uses automated alerts around event markets may need to show the source of the claim, the time it was verified, the status of the underlying event, and whether the alert was generated, summarized, or approved by a human.
A simple AI label would be too weak if it does not say whether the event itself has been resolved.
A practical standard would separate at least four states: rumor or social report, scheduled event, live event, and officially resolved result. The user should not need to infer those states from the wording of a push notification.
The app should make the state visible before the user can mistake commentary for settlement.
Latency is also a risk control. Prediction markets can move on seconds-old information. If the app’s alert pipeline is faster than its verification pipeline, the product can push users toward a claim before the market has a reliable basis to treat it as fact.
Speed is valuable only if proof travels with it.
Proof controls have to sit above the contract
The CFTC’s June 12 Federal Register proposal discusses prediction markets as registered venues offering event contracts and frames the category around public-interest determinations, market integrity, manipulation prevention, clear settlement terms, and objective information that can be publicly verified.
Those concepts are usually discussed in relation to the contract itself: what event is being traded, how the outcome is determined, and what conditions trigger settlement.
The Coinbase alert episode points to the layer above the contract. If the market’s settlement criteria are objective but the app’s surrounding content pipeline lacks the same discipline, users can still receive a misleading signal before settlement.
That is the gap exchanges will have to close as prediction markets move from specialist venues into mainstream crypto apps. The settlement rule may say one thing. The app notification may imply another.
The user experiences both as part of the same financial interface.
CryptoSlate has already covered how sportsbooks and prediction markets are converging as event contracts draw more trading interest. That trend raises the stakes for Coinbase because the company’s advantage is distribution.
If event markets live in the same app as spot crypto trading, wallets, alerts, and consumer finance tools, a content failure can travel faster and feel more authoritative than it would on a smaller market-only platform.
The regulatory context also explains why a disclaimer alone is incomplete. Prediction markets depend on clear evidence of what happened and when.
If the content layer can race ahead of that proof, the market still has a trust problem even when the contract’s final settlement criteria are objective.
For consumer exchange apps, verification has to cover both layers. The contract can have objective settlement terms while the surrounding feed still creates confusion if an alert uses final-result language too early.
Controls around content, data vendors, and push timing therefore become part of the same trust system that supports the market.
The next standard is operational
The core Coinbase question is operational. Did the alert come from a model-generated summary, a data vendor, a third-party feed, a human-entered story card, or a mix of those systems?
What source marked the event as resolved? What check should have stopped a pre-match result from being pushed? Could users distinguish a generated alert from an official result?
Those details remain unresolved without a Coinbase postmortem, but the most likely conclusion is clear: exchange-run prediction markets will need visible proof standards before AI-generated alerts can scale alongside tradable outcomes.
Those standards should be measurable. A market operator can log the data source for every event alert, the timestamp when a result becomes eligible to be described as final, separate the generated commentary from the official settlement language, and retain an audit trail for any push notification tied to a tradable market.
It can also prevent content systems from using final-result language until a verified source has crossed a predefined threshold.
The hard part is that these controls may slow down the very alerts that make consumer apps feel timely. That is the tradeoff.
If an exchange chooses speed over provenance, it risks turning the alert layer into an unpriced part of the market structure.
The Coinbase incident is therefore a preview of a larger fight over the credibility of prediction markets. Market prices can serve as useful signals only when users can distinguish among a forecast, a report, and a resolved fact.
As exchanges add AI summaries and real-time alerts, the next competitive standard may shift from who lists the most markets first to who can show the fastest proof without asking users to trust a black box.
Until Coinbase explains the alert pipeline, the unanswered facts remain important. How many users saw the notification, whether anyone traded because of it, and what system generated it are all material details.
The broader lesson is already visible: prediction markets sold as truth-seeking tools need proof infrastructure before automated content becomes part of the trading experience.
FIFA cleared United States striker Folarin Balogun to face Belgium in the World Cup Round of 16, suspending his automatic one-match ban. On Polymarket, odds that he would play jumped to about 97%.
The FIFA Disciplinary Committee invoked Article 27 of its code, placing the ban on a one-year probation instead of enforcing it. The move reversed a red card that many US fans called unfair.
Odds Balogun Will Play Against Belgium. Source: Polymarket
Why FIFA’s Article 27 Call on Balogun Was Rare
Balogun was sent off in the 64th minute of the USA’s 2-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina on July 1. A VAR review flagged him for stepping on defender Tarik Muharemović’s ankle, ruling it serious foul play.
US Soccer had no way to appeal the automatic ban. Red cards at the World Cup almost never get reversed.
Article 27 gave the committee another route. It lets FIFA suspend a punishment on probation, so the ban applies only if Balogun reoffends within a year. FIFA set out the terms in its ruling.
“By operation of Article 27 FDC, the implementation of the automatic match suspension for USA player Folarin Balogun is suspended for a probationary period of one (1) year.”
FIFA used the same power weeks earlier on Cristiano Ronaldo. He was sent off in a World Cup qualifier, his first red card in 226 internationals. FIFA deferred two games of his three-match ban on probation, keeping him available for 2026.
The reprieve also moved crypto-based prediction markets, which have tracked lucrative World Cup trades all tournament.
Polymarket Jumps as Trump Hails the Balogun Ruling
Traders have priced everything from match outcomes to FIFA’s mystery halftime act. The World Cup has been a windfall for the sector. It pushed Polymarket to a record $10.8 billion in monthly volume in June, CNBC reported.
On Polymarket, Yes shares on Balogun playing Belgium sat near zero for days. They jumped to about 97% within hours of the ruling, on roughly $19,000 in volume.
Most contracts never get that busy. Roughly 70% of the platform’s closed prediction markets have traded under $10,000, and Balogun’s stayed dormant until the news gave traders something to price.
“Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!” President Donald Trump wrote, welcoming the outcome on Truth Social.
Several sports outlets reported that the White House called FIFA and asked President Gianni Infantino to review the card.
🚨 Exclusive: The White House made a direct call to FIFA to ask Gianni Infantino to review Folarin Balogun’s red card.
FIFA approached for comment and referred to the findings of its independent committee.
BeInCrypto could not verify whether this appeal happened.
However, FIFA pointed to its independent committee and said Article 27 gave the panel full authority, denying outside influence.
Balogun is the United States’ leading scorer with three goals. He is now free to face Belgium on Monday in Seattle, the side that ended the US run in 2014. The winner reaches a quarterfinal the Americans last saw in 2002.
The most profitable World Cup trade this month was not a Polymarket bet on Spain or France. It was a Tinder boom that helped lift Match Group (MTCH) stock.
The stock had slumped about 12% before the tournament began on June 11. It has since climbed roughly 13%, erasing those losses and pushing back near its highs for the year.
Match Group (MTCH) Stock Performance. Source: TradingView
Prediction Markets Grabbed the Headlines
Sports betting drove most of the World Cup money story. On Polymarket, the tournament winner market has drawn hundreds of millions of dollars in wagers, with Spain and France the narrow favorites.
Yet the smarter equity trade ran through dating apps. Match Group, the parent of Tinder and Hinge, watched its shares rebound as fresh engagement data reached investors.
Inside Tinder’s World Cup jump
Tinder logged its gains in the tournament’s first six days, from June 11 to 16. Compared with June 2025, US matches jumped almost 60%, while total users rose 15%.
JUST IN: The World Cup is causing a massive surge in Tinder activity, with matches up nearly 60% in the U.S.
Across the 16 host cities in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, activity from international fans climbed 47%, according to data reported by Fast Company. The figures track the influx of traveling supporters.
That timing mattered. The data circulated in late June, just as Match Group shares closed at $37.17 on June 26 after a 6.4% jump.
Match Group (MTCH) Stock Performance. Source: Google Finance
The Quieter World Cup Trade
The rebound lands on a longer turnaround story. Tinder had shed users for nearly two years, drawing activist investors Elliott Investment Management and Starboard Value, who pushed for change and a new chief executive.
In March, Tinder registrations returned to year-over-year growth for the first time in almost two years, while Hinge revenue grew 28%. New CEO Spencer Rascoff framed the shift in the company’s first-quarter results.
Tinder works better today than it did before. Our product changes are resonating with Gen Z and driving improvements in leading indicators.
A World Cup engagement bump fits that narrative, which is why investors rewarded it. While bettors split their money between Polymarket and Kalshi, Match Group offered a calmer way to trade the same event.
Even so, the average analyst target sits near $40, a consensus Moderate Buy that leaves limited room above current levels.
The caution is in Match Group’s own numbers. Tinder paying users still fell 5% in the first quarter, so engagement has not yet become revenue.
With the final set for July 19, the test is whether the swiping outlasts the tournament. A few traders banked millions on Polymarket, but the cleaner bet was the stock.
The FIFA World Cup is always one of the hottest events for betting, but prediction markets are making this scene more explosive this year.
Who wins tonight? Who survives the group? Which favorite looks shaky? Which underdog has a real chance? While these are casual arguments for most football fans, crypto exchanges are turning them into monetizable user behavior.
That is why the 2026 World Cup has become a month-long attention engine, filled with live results, emotional swings, and daily predictions. Zoomex is one of the exchanges trying to plug into that rhythm through match predictions, trading tasks, rewards, and World Cup ticket access.
The campaign is less interesting as a one-off promotion and more useful as a sign of where exchange marketing is heading. Crypto firms are moving closer to live sport because sport already does what platforms want users to do: return daily, take a side, react quickly, and argue about the next outcome.
Prediction markets exceeds 2B in volume just for this World Cup. From people who knew one thing — a team, a trend, a trade — and backed themselves. You know something too. That is all it takes.
The 2026 World Cup gives platforms a bigger stage than usual. It is the largest edition in tournament history, with 48 teams, three host countries, and 104 matches. That means more fixtures, more upsets, and more reasons for fans to check back every day.
Pew Research found that combined monthly trading volume on Kalshi and Polymarket rose from less than $5 billion in September 2025 to about $24 billion in April 2026.
Sports already drive much of that activity. Pew said sports accounted for 80% of Kalshi trading volume and 39% of Polymarket volume since July 2024.
So, football gives exchanges a simpler entry point than politics, macro data, or token prices. A match result is easy to understand. The uncertainty is the product.
Zoomex’s World Cup Prediction Campaign follows that logic. Users can predict match outcomes, group-stage results, knockout progress, finalists, and the eventual champion. The exchange is using football as a familiar doorway into prediction-style products.
Zoomex has also added a trading campaign built around volume-based tasks and rewards. Users can compete for USDT, vouchers, bonuses, and World Cup ticket packages. Some prizes include access to group-stage matches, semi-finals, and the final, depending on eligibility and campaign rules.
The ticket rewards give the campaign its sharper hook. World Cup access has become expensive this year. Reuters reported that face-value tickets for the 2026 final range from $2,030 to $6,370, a sharp jump from the 2022 final in Qatar.
That makes match access more powerful than a routine bonus. For a trader who also follows football, a World Cup ticket carries emotional weight. It turns a platform campaign into a possible real-world memory.
These campaigns usually come with KYC checks, trading-volume targets, reward caps, eligibility rules, risk-control reviews, and “up to” prize pools. Those details decide whether users see the campaign as useful or as another glossy exchange promotion.
Crypto Wants the Group Chat
The social layer is part of the strategy. Zoomex plans X Spaces with former footballers including Djibril Cissé, Didi Hamann, David James, Javier Mascherano, and Fernando Llorente. The goal is to keep the campaign inside football conversation, not just within the trading dashboards.
FIFA said the 2022 tournament generated 93.6 million social posts, with a cumulative reach of 262 billion and 5.95 billion engagements.
Crypto brands want a place inside that stream. They want the reply, the prediction, the share, and the return visit. During a World Cup, each match gives them a new reason to ask for one.
This is part of a longer sports push. Crypto companies spent heavily on sports sponsorships during the last bull cycle, using football, racing, and combat sports to reach people who did not spend their days on crypto Twitter.
The difference now is that campaigns are becoming more interactive. The brand no longer only wants visibility. It wants action.
The Hype Has Rules
The risk is that sports-themed campaigns can blur into aggressive user acquisition if the rules are unclear. Regulators are already watching crypto and trading links in sport more closely. The UK FCA recently warned football clubs about legal, money laundering, and reputational risks tied to unauthorised crypto and trading sponsors.
That does not make every campaign suspicious. It does mean execution is more critical than ever.
Zoomex has a timely idea because football predictions feel natural during the World Cup. The campaign will stand or fall on simpler questions. Are the rules clear? Are rewards distributed fairly? Does the prediction product work well? Does the football content feel real?
Overall, the bigger shift in the integration of crypto and sports events is already visible. The World Cup has become a live testing ground for crypto exchanges that want users to behave less like passive account holders and more like daily participants.
ADI Predictstreet, FIFA World Cup 2026’s official prediction market partner, has adopted Chainlink as its exclusive oracle infrastructure. FIFA already lists ADI Predictstreet as the official prediction market partner for the tournament.
The partnership places Chainlink at the center of an estimated $2.37 billion in US prediction market trading volume projected for the tournament, and splits the market with Polymarket and Kalshi already drawing billions in World Cup bets.
The Problem Polymarket and Kalshi Couldn’t Solve
While both Polymarket and Kalshi hold federal CFTC approval, state-level regulators have moved aggressively against both platforms.
Officials in at least 11 states have issued cease-and-desist orders targeting their sports event contracts.
Nevada secured a court ruling blocking both platforms from operating in the state. Massachusetts won a preliminary injunction against Kalshi.
Tennessee demanded that both platforms void open contracts and refund deposits. Arizona filed 20 criminal counts against Kalshi for illegal gambling.
What Chainlink Actually Does Here
Chainlink provides the oracle layer, writing real-world FIFA match results onto the blockchain, then triggering automated market creation, settlement, and payouts through the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE).
NEW: The Official Prediction Market Partner of the @FIFAWorldCup is now powered by Chainlink.@Predictstreet has adopted Chainlink as its exclusive oracle infra to enable accurate market resolutions & unlock instant payouts for the world’s largest sporting event with 6B+ fans. https://t.co/quyZIMBmzspic.twitter.com/hIbnFeECiV
This solves the manual resolution issue, which requires a human to confirm outcomes and settle positions, is slow and prone to disputes. By wiring official FIFA data directly into the settlement process, ADI Predictstreet removes that human bottleneck.
Dimitrios Psarrakis, CEO of ADI Predictstreet, pointed directly to this when explaining the choice. “Chainlink’s proven track record supporting large-scale markets made it a natural choice,” he said. “Through this integration, ADI Predictstreet can now provide transparent outcome resolution, efficient settlement, and fast payouts, establishing a new standard for how users engage with live sports prediction markets.”
A $2.37 Billion Moment for Chainlink
US prediction market volume alone is projected at $2.37 billion, according to research from Bookies.com. Kalshi is running 424 separate World Cup markets. Polymarket’s World Cup winner market crossed $1.9 billion in volume before the tournament even kicked off.
Polymarket World Cup winner prediction market cumulative trading volume exceeds $1.80 billion
As the 2026 FIFA World Cup group stage kicks off, Polymarket’s World Cup champion prediction market has surpassed $1.8 billion in cumulative trading volume, with over $66 million
It remains to be seen what volume the official partner can bring in, but ADI Predictstreet’s official status puts it in a different category from other platforms for the duration of the tournament.
It uses FIFA’s data and branding, and a settlement layer that cannot be disputed after the final whistle.
Today, June 10, 2026, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) introduced its first proposed framework for prediction markets to determine which event contracts are in the public interest and those that violate federal law.
This move comes after President Donald Trump recently stated that it’s “critically important” that the CFTC holds exclusive oversight of the industry, thus creating a significant legal standoff with several state attorneys general who are working to protect their own authority over gambling regulations.
The chairman of the CFTC, Michael Selig, who is also the agency’s only sitting commissioner on what should be a five-member panel, said the proposal offers “a durable, transparent framework to identify the contracts Congress directed us to scrutinize while letting legitimate markets move forward,” according to the commission’s press release.
Which contracts are legal under the CFTC’s new rules
The CFTC’s proposed regulation focuses on Section 5c(c)(5)(C) of the Commodity Exchange Act. It is supposed to draw clear lines between categories of event contracts that the CFTC is authorized to ban.
Anything tied to terrorism, assassination, war, gaming, or unlawful conduct is on the no-fly list.
The agency proposed a three-step test to determine if a contract should be prohibited.
Does the contract reference a real or potential event?
Does it fall into any of its restricted categories?
Is the contract contrary to the public interest?
Instead of setting strict rules, the CFTC is proposing a flexible “balancing test” for prediction market contracts. The test involves weighing various factors like how useful the contract is for hedging risks, its ability to help discover market prices, and whether it might encourage illegal activity.
After the proposal is finalized, the CFTC will allow a 45-day window for public feedback when the rule is passed, and the rule will become official 60 days after its final adoption.
The CFTC also applied real-life scenarios of how it differentiates restricted and acceptable terms. For example, a contract based on crude oil transport through the Strait of Hormuz would not be filed under the “war” or “terrorism” categories because it does not violate the agency’s restrictions. That contract’s settlement is strictly tied to commercial activity rather than the conflict itself.
What does the government say?
The new framework is part of a larger ongoing conflict between federal and state authorities. Since April 2026, the CFTC has actively sued states like Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, and Wisconsin to block their attempts to use local gambling laws to shut down prediction market platforms, according to Cryptopolitan. The tension got worse last month when Minnesota became the first state to criminalize these markets outright, as Governor Tim Walz officially imposed felony penalties on operators.
A coalition of 39 attorneys general, led by Nevada’s Aaron Ford and Ohio’s Dave Yost, filed an “amicus brief” supporting Massachusetts in its ongoing legal battle against Kalshi’s sports contracts.
According to Cryptopolitan, the coalition argued that these platforms were effectively unregulated gambling operations, stating that over $1 billion was wagered across 3.4 million sports-related bets between January and June 2025, with approximately 90% of that volume directly linked to sports outcomes.
In a May 27th Truth Social post, President Donald Trump identified several state officials, including Chris Christie, Letitia James, Tim Walz, and JB Pritzker, as primary obstacles to federal oversight of prediction markets. “Other Countries are after this new form of Financial Market, and we want to remain at the top,” he wrote.
Why the new proposal is causing disagreement
The new proposal is sparking debates over whether the agency’s actions are driven by genuine policy objectives or political influence. According to Cryptopolitan, Senator Elizabeth Warren issued a formal request to the CFTC on Monday for internal records, communications with industry firms, and details regarding recent personnel departures. Apparently, her inquiry was sparked by a 25% workforce reduction since January 2025 and a drop in enforcement actions from 58 in the 2024 fiscal year to 11 under the current administration.
Warren further intensified her scrutiny by flagging possible problems concerning conflicts of interest, specifically pointing out financial ties between the Trump family and firms regulated by the CFTC. According to a New York Times investigation cited in a Cryptopolitan report, these connections include a business partnership between Trump Media and Crypto.com, investments by Donald Trump Jr.’s firm (1789 Capital) into Polymarket, and the Winklevoss brothers’ financial support for American Bitcoin Corp, which was co-founded by Eric Trump.
According to Reuters, concerns regarding insider trading are further complicating the prediction market landscape as high-profile cases have surged in recent months. Notable examples include a U.S. Special Forces soldier betting on the capture of Nicolás Maduro, George Santos wagering on his own attendance at the State of the Union, and a Google engineer accused of leveraging non-public search trend data for profit. Kalshi responded this week by implementing stricter oversight through requiring employment disclosures for traders in sensitive markets and reporting over 20 internal referrals to regulators during the first quarter of 2026, per Cryptopolitan.
The prediction market sector has grown from roughly $30.63 million in monthly trading volume in January 2025 to close to $479.5 billion in January 2026, according to DefiLlama. As of this week, the total value locked across prediction market protocols grew to roughly $500 million, with Kalshi and Polymarket accounting for the bulk of activity.
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Hyperliquid launched a prediction market this week tied directly to the May US CPI year-over-year reading.
Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, announced a partnership with OKX to roll out oil futures contracts that never expire, putting ICE’s Brent and WTI benchmarks in a crypto product with 24/7 trading.
Polymarket, whose prediction markets have recorded nearly $39 billion in US volume so far in 2026, launched a suite of private-company contracts tied to valuation milestones at OpenAI, SpaceX, Anthropic, and Anduril.
Collectively, these represent something much more systematic than just individual product launches: crypto exchanges are moving into tradfi. These three launches (and there’s bound to be more soon) are turning the macro calendar into a live retail trading product collateralized in stablecoins and available for trading around the clock.
Macro data as a consumer product
Prediction markets turn binary questions into prices: a contract might ask whether CPI lands above a specific threshold, or whether a private company reaches a set valuation by year-end. When a contract trades at 43 cents, the market’s expressing roughly a 43% probability for that outcome, with the usual caveats around liquidity, participant mix, and settlement rules.
Perpetual futures let traders maintain ongoing synthetic exposure to an asset or benchmark without a fixed expiry date, using funding payments to keep the contract price anchored near the underlying reference. In crypto, perps became the default instrument for leveraged Bitcoin exposure, and we’re now seeing that same design applied to macro assets long confined to institutional terminals and regulated commodity exchanges.
The OKX and ICE partnership shows just how far that application has traveled. ICE’s Brent and WTI benchmark prices will underpin these never-expiring contracts available across territories where OKX is already licensed to offer perpetual futures, giving OKX’s 120 million retail traders access to energy benchmark products that previously required a commodity brokerage account.
The announcement came as Hyperliquid’s oil perps were already generating roughly $1.6 billion in daily trading volume, a figure large enough to push CME and ICE to press US regulators to pay closer attention to these offshore exchanges.
Hyperliquid’s CPI market takes these even further. Inflation prints already move Bitcoin: traders watch the number, compare it with consensus expectations, then reprice the Fed path, the dollar, yields, equities, gold, and crypto in rapid sequence.
Hyperliquid launched the May CPI year-over-year market with contracts pricing roughly a 43% probability for a reading below 4.3%, settling against the BLS release on June 10. Trading volume at launch was modest, around $3,274.
However, the most interesting data point here is the design itself: crypto exchanges are testing whether official data releases can become reusable market templates, the same way Bitcoin perps became the default for nearly every other crypto derivative.
Polymarket’s private-company expansion addresses a different market gap: most of the world’s most valuable companies can’t be traded by retail investors.
The platform launched 23 markets in its first batch, covering contracts on whether OpenAI surpasses a $1 trillion valuation by year-end, whether Anthropic exceeds $500 billion, and whether SpaceX completes an IPO before 2027, all resolved against Nasdaq Private Market data. Traders have priced Anthropic at roughly 90% probability of hitting $1 trillion by December 31, 2026, and OpenAI at 76% odds of reaching $900 billion by the same date.
These are event-based contracts structured around whether an outcome occurs, with Nasdaq Private Market making the underlying valuation data publicly available for free as part of the deal, creating a real-time probability layer on companies that have raised tens of billions without a single public filing.
When the regulatory framework hasn’t caught up with crypto
We’re now seeing product development running laps around the legal architecture, and it’s creating friction across multiple jurisdictions. The CFTC sued Minnesota this month after the state passed the first explicit statutory ban on prediction markets, criminalizing their operation as a felony under state law.
The CFTC called it the most aggressive state-level incursion into federally regulated markets in the agency’s history. CFTC Chair Michael Selig said the law would turn lawful crypto operators into felons overnight, while Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison countered that prediction markets prey on young people and low-income communities.
The question everyone is trying to answer is whether these markets are derivative products governed by federal law or consumer-facing gambling products subject to state regulation, and courts are working through it across at least six states simultaneously.
Europe also found itself facing the same question, but it seems to have gotten there by a different route. Spain’s Consumer Rights Ministry temporarily banned Polymarket and Kalshi this week, citing the absence of mandatory gambling licenses and opening a formal investigation expected to run three to four months. The regulator said that identity-verification systems were missing and there were insufficient controls for minors.
Spain, like most European jurisdictions, treats placing bets on uncertain future outcomes as gambling, making the financial-market and gambling-law frameworks equally plausible classification tools, depending on which ministry is looking. The same crypto product is a regulated derivatives instrument in one country and an unlicensed gambling service in the next.
Market integrity is a separate concern that only compounds as these markets get larger. CPI and Fed decisions have fixed release times and official sources, which keep settlement nice and clean, but private-company valuations, geopolitical events, and corporate milestones are considerably harder to adjudicate.
The more markets depend on external data sources, the more consequential it becomes to know who holds the relevant information first.
Bubblemaps analysts identified a cluster of 80 bets on Polymarket tied to US military actions against Iran with a 98% win rate, a figure they called statistically impossible to explain through luck, raising the possibility that prediction markets could become the venue where sensitive information finds a price before it finds itself in a headline.
The weekend-pricing issue is also pretty underappreciated by observers focused on the legal battles.
Crypto exchanges are already the de facto weekend reference price for macro assets, a role they’ve accumulated through circumstance well before any regulator designated them to do it. The same product that offers a faster way to express a view on inflation or oil can look, depending on who’s using it and where, like a retail speculation engine with macro branding.
Crypto turned tokens into 24/7 global assets, and the version forming now is attempting the same for events, data releases, benchmarks, and private-company valuations. Whether the result is better forecasting, a new hedging layer, or a faster route to consumer harm is a question regulators in at least five countries are actively trying to answer, and the products are scaling faster than the answers.
