Good morning - Mads from Priced In.
The only newsletter you have to read if you’re being held at gunpoint asked about prediction market insights
How do you fund your Polymarket account?
It’s Tuesday.
And I’m excited to share another edition of Priced In with you (yes, still early… enjoy it before this thing gets crowded).
The next few weeks are shaping up to be… eventful.
The Iran–US/Israel situation is heating up again, which means one thing for markets:
more volatility, more narratives, more trades
Oil, rates, political signals - a lot of it now runs through what’s happening in the Strait of Hormuz.
On the industry side, things are moving just as fast.
Kalshi is reportedly in talks to raise $1B at a $22B valuation.
For a platform that’s only a few years old, that’s… aggressive.
In this edition, I break down the founding story and how a team of sub-30 founders managed to build one of the most valuable platforms in the space in record time.
In other news
Still a lot of other exciting prediction market news rolling in from all over the world.
We’ve tried to capture the most relevant here:
→ India moves to block Polymarket via VPN rules and tighter internet controls
→ framing it as “illegal betting”… but really about control over capital flows + unregulated markets
Btw: Ohh, Polymarket was wrong on the Indian election…
→ One of the largest markets has been the Indian regional election. May also explain why the Indian authorities had an eye on Polymarket. Here’s the interesting thing:
→ Polymarket had DMK at 88%… and still got it wrong
→ that’s not a small miss - that’s a “the market was very confident and still wrong” moment
→ this is the uncomfortable truth:
prediction markets don’t eliminate bad data they just price it
If everyone is looking at the same flawed signals…
the market just becomes a more confident version of the same mistake
→ takeaway isn’t “markets don’t work”
it’s that:
markets are only as good as the information feeding them
This is exactly where real edge lives - not in following the price, but questioning it
→ New deals with NBA and La Liga (Spanish football… with the feet…)
→this isn’t “partnerships” - it’s prediction market infrastructure getting legitimised
→ once logos + official data come in, prediction markets stop being niche
→ also, Spanish football being bullish on PMs might indicate that Europe’s hesitation is coming to an end.
We’re the least worst of all bad investors….
→ everywhere you look, most people lose - stocks, options, sportsbooks… prediction markets are just slightly less brutal, not some hidden cheat code
→ the edge isn’t “being in the right market” - it’s not being the person making the same dumb mistakes everyone else is making
📈💰📊 The markets I’ll be watching this week
With MetGala over, thank god, we can now look at some of the other markets:
🇮🇷 Iran - the live nerve centre of the whole market
Obviously - and for unfortunate reasons - Iran is now back at the centre of all prediction markets.
→ the market is getting whipsawed by headlines
Iran signals progress → prices tick up 🚀
talks maybe didn’t happen → prices snap back 📉
classic case of uncertain information getting priced in real time
→ but zoom out and the signal is clear:
diplomacy headlines say “progress”
actual events say “escalation”
missile strikes, drones shot down, and now strikes hitting the UAE
The market is trying to reconcile two completely different realities.
→ this is where things get interesting
people trade the headlines…
but the edge is in asking:
which reality actually matters?
If escalation keeps showing up on the ground,
the “peace” narrative starts to look like noise
→ takeaway
prediction markets don’t lag news
they fight over which version of reality is true
And right now…
there are two very different stories being priced at the same time
🤖 Best AI model - Anthropic/Claude leading
→ this is one of the cleanest markets out there
you’re not betting on opinions
you’re betting on a public leaderboard
That’s rare. Most markets are messy. This one has a scoreboard.
→ right now it’s Anthropic vs Google
OpenAI sitting behind
which is interesting… because the narrative still feels like OpenAI leads
but the data says otherwise
That gap between narrative and reality?
that’s the trade
→ bigger picture
this is basically a real-money scoreboard for AI progress
Every model release, every benchmark update…
gets instantly priced
→ takeaway
this isn’t just a “who wins AI” bet
it’s a market tracking who’s actually shipping better models, in real time
And right now…
the crowd is saying it’s not OpenAI
The Kalshi Story
The sub-30 year old billionaires and the contrarian bet that built Kalshi
FanDuel has been around for 15 years.
It controls ~35% of the US sports betting market.
Kalshi is barely 4 years old…
…and it’s now raising at a higher valuation.
That shouldn’t happen.
So what did Tarek Mansour see that everyone else missed?
🚀 The origin story
Tarek Mansour isn’t your typical startup founder chasing hype cycles.
MIT background. Economics-heavy thinking.
The kind of person who looks at regulation and sees structure, not friction.
Back in 2020, he started building something that most people dismissed immediately:
—> a fully regulated exchange where you can trade real-world events
Not sports. Not crypto.
Elections. Inflation. Interest rates.
At the time, the default reaction was:
“this will never get approved”
⚔️ The bet
Most founders stayed away.
Too political.
Too complex.
Too many ways for regulators to shut it down.
Tarek went the other way.
Instead of avoiding regulation - like most crypto platforms did - he leaned directly into it.
He spent years working through the CFTC.
Built the infrastructure to meet their standards.
And eventually secured approval to operate as a regulated exchange.
That was the real product.
Not the interface. Not the markets.
The permission to exist.
🧩 The insight
The core insight wasn’t that prediction markets are interesting.
It was that:
event-driven trading will exist - the only question is where
Offshore, unregulated, opaque…
or onshore, regulated, and scalable.
Tarek bet that if you could get it regulated early:
you wouldn’t just participate in the market
you’d define it
💰 Fast forward
Kalshi now sits in a very different position:
→ One of the only CFTC-regulated event exchanges
→ Growing volume and increasing public attention
At the same time, incumbents like FanDuel - with massive distribution and brand - are now trying to move into prediction markets themselves as we reported on a couple of days ago…
Which tells you something important:
the category is no longer theoretical
👀 The execution layer
Kalshi’s growth isn’t just about regulatory positioning.
It’s also been about turning something complex into something usable.
A big part of that has come from the operating side of the business - including leadership like Luana Lopes Lara (COO), the youngest self-made billionaire female, who has been focused on scaling partnerships, building out the platform, and making sure the system actually works in practice.
It’s not particularly loud or flashy work.
but it’s what turns an idea into a market
🧠 What’s really going on
This isn’t just a fast-growing startup.
It’s a company positioning itself at the centre of a new category:
trading real-world events as financial assets
And it’s doing it with a very different playbook from crypto exchanges or sportsbooks.
Where others moved fast and stayed outside the system…
Kalshi moved slower, went inside it, and built from there
You can STILL get your hands on the very free Priced In beginners guide to Prediction Markets here
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