👋 Hey, welcome to Predicted, the newsletter covering the business of prediction markets.

Some headline numbers from the report:

📊 $111Bn in notional volume. More than all of 2024 + 2025 combined.

🏦 Robinhood made more money from prediction markets than from crypto or stocks.

⚽ Kalshi was 86% sports in Q2 2026.

🌍 The World Cup saw $17Bn+ in notional volume.

💸 $1.288Bn raised across 24 rounds.

🖋️ This piece was written and researched by Pet Berisha and Omar El Safy

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The Q2 2026 report is out today. It’s over 70 pages and free, so why not read?

Prediction markets traded $111 billion in notional volume between April and June 2026, per Artemis.

That is more than 2024 and 2025 combined, and roughly 2x last year on its own.

Volume hit $28.5 billion in April, $30.2 billion in May, then $52.7 billion in June, the biggest month the sector has ever had.

Which is to say June on its own was 47% of the quarter.

Open interest hit an all-time high in the same quarter.

The World Cup accounted for $17.04 billion of that, or 15.3% of the quarter.

Sports was the biggest category on every venue we track, with crypto second. Kalshi was 86% sports in Q2.

In the US, prediction market apps had more daily active users than the sportsbook apps during the tournament, per Apptopia.

And during that tournament, is when Robinhood’s Rothera went into hypergrowth mode. 98% of Rothera's Q2 volume came from the World Cup, and it only launched just before the tournament started.

Kalshi and Polymarket took 91% of notional volume between them, per Dune.

Kalshi introduced Combos in December 2025. By Q2 they were 30% of its notional volume.

They launched perps in May 2026, and that volume grew through the rest of the quarter.

Polymarket went into combos in time for the World Cup, and launched their own stablecoin in pUSD. Polymarket US rose from 3% of total Polymarket volume to 27% in six months.

Hyperliquid launched prediction markets through HIP-4 and took 0.3% market share in their first quarter.

Kalshi generated an estimated $671 million in fee revenue in Q2, per DefiLlama. It could be as high as $887.9 million.

Polymarket International brought in $99 million, and Polymarket US $51.4 million.

Then it drops off a cliff. Limitless $8.1 million, Predict.fun $1.1 million, ForecastEx an estimated $830K to $1.7 million, Opinion $400K, Myriad $44K.

(Reminder: these are fee revenues, not profit. They do not net off the revenue share agreements these venues have with brokers, so treat them as gross.)

Hedging made the news twice in June, and we covered both at the time. The Jeffrey, a bar on the Upper East Side, put roughly $10K of exposure on a free-drinks promotion and took a $5K Kalshi position that paid $8K when the Knicks won.

CA Osasuna hedged their relegation exposure the same way, via an insurance intermediary, at a much bigger size.

The other new use is pricing private companies. Before Q2 these markets could tell you whether a company would go public. In Q2 they started putting a number on what it would be worth.

Polymarket now price Anthropic at $1.74 trillion and OpenAI at $1.36 trillion, both above their last round.

Robinhood launched Rothera in June, their own CFTC-licensed exchange and clearing house, a joint venture with Susquehanna. It has cleared over 3.5 billion contracts since. We covered their Q2 earnings last week.

Coinbase doubled their prediction market revenue quarter on quarter. They also bought Deribit at $2.9 billion and Echo at $375 million.

Kraken paid $550 million for Bitnomial, which brought a DCM, a DCO and an FCM in one deal. Crypto.com's CDNA now clears for DraftKings, Fanatics and OG, rivals running on rails they own. Meta considered buying Kalshi, then told staff to build Arena instead.

DraftKings launched their own exchange after renting CDNA, and have traded over $3 billion. FanDuel filed for their own FCM in April, and Flutter began market-making on a rival platform.

Goldman Sachs banned staff from trading the markets that JPMorgan spent the quarter preparing to sell to clients.

All of this against a backdrop where listed iGaming incumbents have lost about half their market cap year on year.

We tracked 24 rounds in Q2. 17 disclosed terms, totalling $1.288 billion.

Kalshi is almost all of that on their own. Their Series F extension raised $1.2 billion across 7 and 20 May, led by Coatue and Baillie Gifford, at a $22 billion valuation.

That one round is 93% of everything disclosed in the quarter.

Take that out and the median disclosed round was $3.2 million. EDGE Markets raised a $29.2 million Series A led by CoinFund, Onyx Odds took $20 million from Payward, and Speed Labs $6.5 million from Parlay Capital. XO Market and TurboFlow each raised $6 million seeds.

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not financial, business or legal advice. These are the author's thoughts & opinions and do not represent the opinions of any other person, business, entity or sponsor. Any companies, platforms, markets or projects mentioned are for illustrative purposes unless specified.

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It's crucial to provide our readers with clear information regarding the inherent nature of services and products that might be covered in this newsletter, including those advertised by our sponsors from time to time. When you trade on prediction markets (including event contracts, opinion markets and other speculative instruments) your capital is at risk. Risks associated with prediction markets include price volatility, loss of capital (the value of your position could drop to zero), illiquidity, complexity, evolving regulation and lack of protection. Many prediction market operators do not currently operate in a fully regulated industry, and availability varies by jurisdiction. Therefore, please be aware that when you place funds on prediction markets, you may not be protected under financial compensation schemes and protections typically afforded to investors when dealing with regulated and authorised entities to operate as financial services firm. Nothing in this newsletter constitutes a recommendation to place, hold, or close any position on any market.