According to data from Dune Analytics, weekly prediction market volume has hit a new high above $2 billion as Polymarket regains its lead over rival Kalshi.
Both Polymarket and Kalshi have experienced a massive increase in user activity and trading volume in recent months, as the prediction markets as a whole gain wider mainstream awareness and acceptance.
As the first federally regulated prediction market platform in the US, Kalshi saw a jump in user activity in August – not coincidentally at the start of the new NFL season – and overtook Polymarket in trading volume for the first time. Now ready to re-enter the US market, Polymarket started beta testing its US app just over a week ago and has regained pole position ahead of the upcoming November elections.
The fictional volume per category shows that politics has rapidly gained momentum in recent weeks. But it wasn’t enough to top the sports markets, which delivered $414.7 million in volume last week, compared to $322.6 million in political markets across the industry.
The industry as a whole came very close to surpassing $2 billion in weekly sales last November, when President Donald Trump was re-elected. But the market share among the major players looked slightly different then.
Polymarket accounted for $1.2 billion, Kalshi $749 million and Limitless $5.2 million in volume. Now Polymarket still leads with $1 billion in volume, but it is closely followed by Kalshi’s $950 million. Kalshi has outperformed Polymarket in terms of volume over the past eight weeks.
Meanwhile, Limitless has quadrupled its footprint to $21.9 million, and Myriad, a product of Declutter‘s parent company Dastan has grown to $3.8 million in weekly volume.
The prediction market industry has also recently benefited from a relaxed regulatory environment in the United States, at least at the federal level. Both Polymarket and Kalshi received CFTC no-action letters earlier this year: Kalshi in May and Polymarket in September. The letters gave the companies the green light to open their platforms to U.S. users without the looming threat of enforcement action from the federal regulator. But a growing number of state regulators have questioned their status as CFTC-regulated entities.
Neither Polymarket nor Kalshi immediately responded to a request for comment from Declutter.
Still, company valuations have risen as regulators largely relax and users flock to the prediction markets. Kalshi closed a $300 million Series D funding round earlier this month, valuing the company at $5 billion. It was led by venture capital giants a16z and Sequoia – and notably included the crypto exchange Coinbase. This appears to be the first time Coinbase has been listed as an investor in the US-based prediction market company.
Meanwhile, Polymarket recently secured a $2 billion investment from New York Stock Exchange parent company Intercontinental Exchange. That pushed the company to a $9 billion valuation.
An oft-cited Certuity report estimates that prediction markets could reach $95.5 billion by 2035, with a compound annual growth rate of 46.8%.
Numerous users still doubt that Polymarket will formally announce the launch of its token in 2025. Forecasters give it a 15% chance that Polymarket will announce its token this year. Declutter reported just over a week ago that Polymarket plans to launch a native token, but probably not before January.
But that won’t stop airdrop farmers from increasing their future allocation.
As many users expected a token launch to follow the US elections last year, farmers bought and sold large positions to artificially inflate their volume. They did this in an attempt to position themselves for a larger allocation from a future token airdrop, which is often designed to reward the most active and avid users of a crypto protocol.
Now insiders of the prediction market are telling us Declutter the airdrop farmers have become more sophisticated in an attempt to circumvent any anti-farming conditions on token allocation.
