Morning minute: The real estate forecast markets are here

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analyzes and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s most important news:

• Crypto Majors Continue to Grind, XRP Leads; BTC at $93,800
• Polymarket launched real estate prediction markets together with PARCL
• Morgan Stanley files for a BTC ETF and a Solana Trust
• Lighter Starts Buying Back Tokens, LIT Pops 16%
• Ledger shares another customer data breach related to the Global-e platform

🏠 Polymarket launches real estate markets with Parcl

Betting on home prices in your neighborhood just became a reality.

Real estate just became liquid.

📌 What happened

Polymarket launched its first real estate prediction markets yesterday, using data feeds and price indices from Solana-based real estate protocol Parcl.

This integration allows users to bet on the price action of residential real estate in major urban hubs such as New York, London and Tokyo.

Unlike traditional real estate investments, which require enormous amounts of capital and long lead times, these markets offer immediate, fractional exposure to regional real estate trends.

By using Parcl’s real-time City Indices, Polymarket effectively turns the housing market into a fast trading asset that functions 24/7 (well, at least theoretically).

🗣️ What they say

“The Polymarket deal for real estate markets is a great use case of prediction markets. Actual hedging can happen!” – Dustin Gouker

🧠 Why it matters

This is a very cool new use case for prediction markets – and potentially a very big problem.

Real estate is a $300+ trillion global asset class that has historically been slow, opaque and inaccessible to most traders.

By abstracting housing into price-based markets, Polymarket potentially unlocks a new layer of financialization without the need for tokenized deeds or onchain mortgages.

The usage scenarios are obvious:

• Macro traders can share their views on tariffs, migration and affordability
• Builders and developers can hedge regional exposure
• Crypto-native traders gain access to homes without TradFi packaging

Do you think Mamdani will be bad for NYC real estate? Now you can go short.

Do you think Miami will be the main winner of an exodus from New York? Go long Miami.

Of course, in practice it will be more nuanced than that: the devil is always in the details.

And I think we’re still quite a ways away from individual homeowners being able to ‘foreclose’ on their homes using markets like this.

But it’s a great first step. And a very nice new use case for prediction markets…

🌎 Macrocrypto and markets

A few headlines that stood out:

In corporate bonds/ETFs

• Strategy dropped another $116 million worth of Bitcoin this afternoon, adding to its massive reserve despite a recent move to shore up its cash positions through a stock sale.
• BMNR by Tom Lee announced more ETH purchases, now holding 4.14 million ETH (3.4% of supply) along with $915 million in cash

In Memes / Onchain movers

• Meme majors keep lighting it up with Doge +3%, Shiba +7%, Bonk +5%, Pengu +7%, WIF +14% and Fartcoin +20%
• WOJAK (+30%), WHITEWHALE (+20%) and 114514 (+120%) lead onchain movers
• Virtual introduced three new agent launch models (Pegasus, Unicorn and Titan), creating a flexible framework that supports early experimentation, belief-based growth and large-scale launches

💰 Token, airdrop and protocol tracker

• Lighter started buying back of its LIT token, leading to a 16% move to $3.23
• Jupiter launched JupUSDa stablecoin primarily backed by BlackRock’s tokenized USD fund and Ethena’s USDtb
• PVP announced that the desktop terminal, Hyperdash, is now fully available
• Infinex announced changes to its ICO, removing the selling limit, changing the allocation method and extending it until Friday
• Trovea perp DEX for collectibles, RWAs, stocks and prediction markets, shared its ICO details including a $2.5 million increase at a $20 million FDV valuation from January 8
• River announced a strategic investment from Arthur Hayes’ Maelstrom Fund to support its chain-abstraction stablecoin stack
• Predict basics announced an investment from Virtuals to help realize their vision of prediction markets and AI agents

🚚 What’s happening in NFTs?

• Blue-chip NFT floors continue to rise; Punks +5% at 30.89 ETH, Pudgy flat at 5.08 ETH and BAYC +3% at 5.4 ETH; Hypurr +2% to 515 HYPE
• Infinex patrons recovered 40% to 1.23 ETH leading top gainers; Good Vibes Club +15% too
• An XCOPY 1/1 ‘NGMI’ sold for 190 WETH ($611,000)
• The CryptoPunk floor bounced back 6% to $100,000 after falling to $70,000 a few weeks ago
• NFT Paris announced it will cancel this year’s event