Cryptocurrency prices in the dumps, but the prediction market is going wild?

Original Title: "The Underrated Advantage of Prediction Markets: Countercyclicality, Anti-Volatility, Play Anytime"

Original Author: Asher, Odaily Planet Daily

Crypto Market Sentiment Plunges into Extreme Fear, but Prediction Markets Continue to Refresh Activity

If we only look at the market trend, there's nothing exciting happening in the current crypto market.

After experiencing a major crypto market crash last week, Bitcoin's rebound has been limited, altcoins overall continue to underperform, and there is a clear contraction in risk appetite. The change in market sentiment also confirms this: according to Alternative.me data, last month the crypto market fear and greed index was 25, but yesterday it fell to 7, even though there has been a slight recovery today, the market is still in a state of "extreme fear."

Crypto Market Fear and Greed Index

However, against this backdrop, one vertical track is showing a completely different trend—prediction markets are continuing to heat up.

From on-chain data, the nominal weekly trading volume of prediction markets has seen a significant increase in recent weeks, despite a slight fall last week, it still remains in a historically high range, showing that user demand for prediction markets has not significantly decreased with the cooling of the market trend, but instead has shown a more stable level of activity.

The core reason behind this is that the trading activity of prediction markets does not depend on cryptocurrency price fluctuations, but comes from various real-world events—ranging from major sports events like basketball, football, rugby, tennis, hockey, League of Legends, to macro policy changes, Fed rate cuts, U.S. government shutdowns, and entertainment topics. Almost every day, new trading targets are generated. It is precisely because of this that compared to traditional crypto trading relying on market cycles, the activity of prediction markets is more driven by the "event flow," with significantly lower sensitivity to market fluctuations, thus being able to maintain higher participation and trading frequency even in a market downturn.

Weekly Prediction Market Trading Volume

The shift in user attention is also clearly visible. 1confirmation founder Nick Tomaino recently stated that the monthly traffic to the Polymarket website continues to rise steadily, while the traffic to Robinhood and Coinbase shows a declining trend, indicating that some trading and speculative demand are shifting from traditional trading platforms to event-driven markets.

Meanwhile, Kalshi's growth is more tangible: its iOS app has now surged to second place on the US App Store free app download chart, second only to Coinbase, in a phase where the overall sentiment in the crypto market remains depressed, making this performance particularly rare.

Apple App Store Free App Download Ranking

More importantly, the prediction market projects are still on the eve of token issuance

Many projects in the crypto space often face a common issue: by the time most people start paying attention, the token has already been issued, and the early adopters' reward phase has essentially ended. However, the current position of the prediction market is quite the opposite—user growth has already begun, while the token cycle is just getting started.

The most notable signal comes from Polymarket. Its parent company, Blockratize, recently filed a trademark application for "POLY," covering token and related financial service scenarios. It is reported that the Polymarket management has confirmed plans to launch the native POLY token in the future and carry out an airdrop, although the specific timing has not been announced yet. This means that the significant amount of trading and interaction around the platform at this stage is likely still in the early window of a potential airdrop cycle.

Meanwhile, Opinion, the most discussed prediction market on the BNB Chain recently, has, on one hand, launched the OPN token airdrop task on the Binance Wallet Booster, widely seen by the market as a signal of an imminent TGE; on the other hand, Opinion recently announced the completion of a $20 million Series A funding round, with participation from institutions such as Hack VC, Jump Crypto, Primitive Ventures, Decasonic, and others, indirectly indicating that investment institutions are early in positioning themselves in this space.

From a market expectation perspective, the community is equally paying high attention to Opinion's TGE. According to Polymarket website data, the probability of the event "Opinion surpasses $500 million FDV on the first day of trading" currently stands at 76%, with a trading volume of nearly $4 million. In the current lackluster performance of the overall altcoin market, such predictions still maintain a high probability, reflecting the market's general expectation that the project may still receive strong price support early on.

"Opinion First-day Market Opening FDV Exceeds 500 Million US Dollars" Betting Event

Driven perhaps by the anticipation of Opinion's upcoming TGE, another top-volume prediction market on the BNB Chain, predict.fun, has recently seen a noticeable increase in community activity. It is worth noting that the project's founder, dingaling, recently stated in the official Discord community that "there are still many things in preparation" and hinted at announcing new developments to the public later this month, further increasing market attention to its future actions.

Founder dingaling's Response Screenshot in Official Discord

The Eve of the World Cup or the True Outbreak Period of Prediction Markets

The early morning kickoff of the U.S. Super Bowl has already provided a very intuitive reference point. Just on Polymarket alone, the trading volume of the "U.S. Super Bowl Champion" related prediction event has exceeded 700 million US dollars, with the trading volume brought by a single event already quite significant.

However, the Super Bowl is essentially a (U.S.) domestic (most watched) event, while the World Cup is a catalyst of an entirely different magnitude.

Compared to a single match, the World Cup has a longer duration, more matches, and global coverage of participating countries. From the group stage to the knockout stage, almost every day will generate new prediction market trading targets: probability of advancement, score ranges, knockout stage matchups, Golden Boot recipient, championship odds, etc., will continuously form new markets. This continuous weeks-long high-frequency event flow often brings more stable and longer-term trading activity, rather than just short-term traffic peaks.

Therefore, if the U.S. Super Bowl has already proven that large-scale sports events can bring massive trading volume to prediction markets in a short period, then the World Cup is more likely to become a key juncture determining whether the overall user base and trading volume of the prediction market will enter the next stage.

I believe that around the World Cup, a large number of prediction market platforms will emerge for TGE, and perhaps now is the best time to lay low. For me personally, in a bear market, it's better to "bet below" on the prediction market than to buy meme coins.

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