The prediction market in 2025 is truly exploding.

In the first half of the year, global trading volume soared directly to $27.9 billion, a year-on-year surge of 210%—with weekly peaks breaking $2.3 billion. Just three years ago, these numbers were unimaginable. Now, Kalshi and Polymarket together take up 90% of the market share, and the landscape is basically set.

There's a recent move worth mentioning: a leading high-performance public chain just announced an integration with Kalshi, allowing US users to trade directly with native tokens and stablecoins, and it's said that global access is coming soon. For on-chain settlement, speed is definitely the core competitive edge.

**I've tried these platforms myself, so here are my quick impressions:**

**Kalshi** — Compliant but charges fees
Monthly trading volume is $2.86 billion, the kind of platform whose data is quoted in real time by CNN and Google. It has many institutional users, but there are fees and it's only open to the US. The upside is the recent integration with a public chain for instant settlement—funds arrive super fast.

**Polymarket** — King of liquidity
Monthly active volume is $1.44 billion, with zero fees that crush a bunch of competitors. You can bet on politics, sports, culture—anything. In 2025, they're preparing to re-enter the US market, with rumored valuations aiming for $15 billion. Great for players looking to profit from informational edge.

**PredictIt** — Old guard but falling behind
An old political platform, but now trading volume is under $100 million. Liquidity is abysmal—fine for beginners to practice, but don’t expect to make money.

**Manifold** — Just for show
A points-based simulation platform, zero cost and play as you like, but data accuracy is the lowest—after all, there's no real money involved, so people bet randomly.

**Which to choose?**
Want real-money betting → Polymarket
Need compliance + fast on-chain settlement → Kalshi
Just for fun/practice → Manifold is okay

Prediction markets aren't some niche toy anymore. They're replacing traditional polling—after all, the accuracy of real-money betting beats phone surveys by a mile. What do you think?