During a live broadcast, I casually said a word, and the market trend fluctuated by three hundred thousand USD. To be honest, I was a bit surprised.

Rather than saying this was an expected conversation, it’s more like a misprinted stamp—appearing unexpectedly and becoming the focus. I originally just wanted to have a relaxed chat, but I didn’t expect every word to be magnified and interpreted.

The most direct feeling from this is: the narrative ecosystem of the entire industry is quietly changing.

I remember in the past, a phrase from a leading exchange founder was often taken as a new angle for storytelling, spawning a bunch of meme coins and clone projects. If someone said a coin would rise, follow-up traders would jump in. Now, the gameplay is completely reversed—the same phrase can directly evolve into a trading target in prediction markets. People bet whether he will mention a certain coin, with odds and curves fluctuating in real-time, turning the entire market into a big gambling game.

Behind this shift, there are two completely different prediction market approaches competing.

One is the straightforward and crude type. Set keywords, yes or no, each with odds. Users bet based on their judgment, and the odds represent market consensus. This model is clear and easy to understand; predictdotfun is based on this approach—guess which words will be mentioned, with each word corresponding to a binary choice.

The other approach is entirely different. I initially didn’t understand how 42space works until I was on stage and verified it live with community members—what they do is not traditional win/lose settlement. Instead, they redefine the essence of prediction markets as a market cap game. Consensus around an event is directly reflected as a rise or fall in a market cap curve. The moment I spoke, this curve immediately multiplied by eighty, turning a 1,000 USD investment into a market cap space of 80,000 USD. The key point is, there are no winners or losers here—only the movement of market value itself. This is the biggest difference from traditional prediction markets.

Besides these two, a certain DEX is also working on prediction markets, and opinion is currently the absolute leader—its trading volume, liquidity, and active users are the highest.

From the effect of this live broadcast, the organizers successfully turned a technical demo into a real market experiment. Everyone’s attention was naturally drawn in, and this kind of live validation is more convincing than any carefully prepared roadshow. The product is tested in a real context, and that’s the best form of marketing.

Prediction markets are still a young track, and the diverse exploration paths precisely indicate that there is still great potential for imagination in this direction.