Prediction Markets
In January 2024, prediction markets moved $32 million a month. In January 2026, that number was $12.6 billion. That's not growth — that's a new asset class being born in real time.
Polymarket and Kalshi are racing toward a market Bernstein projects will hit $1 trillion by 2030. Is it the future of forecasting, or sports betting wearing a finance costume? Both arguments are correct — and for Malta's iGaming industry, that ambiguity is the opportunity.
The first recorded political bet was placed in 1503, wagering on who would succeed Pope Alexander VI. The mechanism — aggregating collective belief into a price — hasn't changed in 500 years. What changed is the infrastructure. Polymarket, founded in 2020 by Shayne Coplan in New York, rebuilt that 500-year-old idea on the Polygon blockchain, settled in USDC, with markets on elections, sports, crypto, geopolitics and culture.
The mechanism is simple: each market has "Yes" and "No" shares. Correct shares pay $1, wrong shares pay $0. The price — somewhere between $0 and $1 — is the market's live, tradeable estimate of probability. No fees to trade, unlike most exchanges. Polymarket makes money by selling anonymised prediction data to institutions and media.
Together, these two platforms control roughly 88% of global prediction market share. They are structurally different businesses wearing the same trade.
| Factor | Polymarket | Kalshi |
|---|---|---|
| Structure | Blockchain (Polygon, USDC) | US-regulated financial exchange |
| Regulator | CFTC (via QCX LLC) | CFTC (direct, since 2020) |
| Open interest (Apr 2026) | $448.96M | $608.29M |
| Monthly active users | 200K – 700K | 600K – 5M |
| 2025 revenue from sports | Significant, undisclosed | 89% of total revenue |
| Latest valuation | $15B (raising, Apr 2026) | $22B (Mar 2026 raise) |
| Global accessibility | Broader, crypto-native | Primarily US-focused |
As of April 2026, Kalshi has pulled ahead on open interest and is the larger company by valuation. But the picture changes by category — Polymarket retains the edge in politics and crypto-adjacent markets, where its global, less US-centric user base gives it structural reach Kalshi can't match domestically.
This distinction is the single most important thing for iGaming operators to understand before entering this category.
$32 million to $12.6 billion in 24 months. For an industry built almost entirely on Malta's gaming licence infrastructure, prediction markets are the most consequential adjacent category to emerge in years — and the operators moving first are already live.
SoftSwiss, the Malta-headquartered iGaming software giant, released a detailed report mapping the entire arc of prediction markets — from 15th-century papal betting to the platforms moving billions today — alongside a turnkey product built specifically for operators who already hold a sportsbook licence.
The product uses the fixed-odds model — compatible with existing iGaming licences, no new regulatory exposure, delivered via API or iFrame. On a single day in early 2026, the top performing wallet on Polymarket made $709,000; across Q1 2026, the top 10 wallets combined for $22 million in net profit. The category has teeth.
The report's core operator guidance: start with a limited, manageable set of event categories rather than going broad. Choose fixed-odds over peer-to-peer trading to match player expectations. Use politics, culture and economics markets to fill dead sports calendar periods — off-season cross-sell that traditional sportsbooks can't offer.
Blask Index search demand data, 2024 → 2025:
FreeMalta's view: the regulatory label is a legal fiction layered over a behavioural reality. Whether a contract is called a "derivative" or a "wager" depends on which agency happens to have jurisdiction — not on what the user is actually doing, which is speculating on an uncertain outcome with real money. That ambiguity isn't a bug. It's exactly why Malta — an island that has spent two decades building gaming licence infrastructure precisely for products that sit in regulatory grey zones — is positioned better than almost anywhere else to host this industry's next chapter.
