NBA star Giannis enters the prediction market: How will the hundred-billion-dollar new track reshape crypto investment logic?

During the same week that the Super Bowl prediction contract trading volume exceeded $160 million, Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo officially became a shareholder of the United States’ largest prediction market, Kalshi. This two-time NBA MVP is bringing his on-court intuition for wins and losses into the forefront of the financial world.

“The internet is full of all kinds of opinions, and I decided it’s time to express some of my own,” Giannis Antetokounmpo wrote when announcing this partnership on social media. The star player of the Milwaukee Bucks has become the first active NBA player to directly invest in a prediction market platform, with his company Ante Inc. acquiring less than 1% equity in Kalshi.

Just days before the announcement, the market on Kalshi regarding “Will Giannis be traded before the trade deadline” attracted over $23 million in trading volume, with probabilities fluctuating from about 30% in December.

Cross-Industry Investment

On February 6, 2026, Giannis officially announced his stake in the prediction market platform Kalshi. This transaction makes him the first active NBA player to directly invest in such a platform, pioneering a new model of athlete participation in prediction market investments. The timing of this investment is particularly delicate—the deal was signed on February 5, exactly on the NBA trade deadline day. Meanwhile, in the week leading up to the deadline, the Kalshi platform saw over $23 million in bets on Giannis’s trade destination, with market probabilities experiencing intense fluctuations.

According to the NBA collective bargaining agreement, players can hold a maximum of 1% passive equity in sports betting companies. A Kalshi spokesperson confirmed to the media that Giannis’s stake “is below the 1% threshold.” Based on Kalshi’s latest valuation of $11 billion, a 1% stake would be worth approximately $110 million.

Prediction Markets: From Marginal Experiment to Mainstream Finance

Prediction markets are transforming from a “marginal financial experiment” into a foundational layer for information, capital, and decision-making systems. The core of this shift lies in its redefinition: moving away from traditional “gambling” or “derivatives” toward decentralized information aggregation and pricing systems. The primary value of prediction markets is no longer just “winning bets,” but their ability to reflect consensus changes in advance and provide high-timeliness market signals.

By 2025, platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi had accumulated over $27 billion in trading volume. Mainstream media outlets such as CNN, Bloomberg, and Google Finance have widely integrated these platforms’ probability data, citing them as real-time consensus indicators rather than gambling odds. Academic research shows that prediction markets outperform traditional polls in accuracy for political and macroeconomic events. The Brier score (a metric for the accuracy of probability forecasts) for prediction markets reached 0.0604, significantly better than the good standard of 0.125 and the excellent standard of 0.1.

New Ecosystem of Markets

The product forms of prediction markets are undergoing fundamental changes, evolving from single-event types to more complex, long-term structures. Multi-event combination markets are becoming mainstream, allowing users to combine sports outcomes with macroeconomic events through “combos” features, enabling more sophisticated risk management and hedging strategies.

Long-term markets are also emerging, covering cross-year structural predictions such as Bitcoin price ranges and recession probabilities. In 2025, the open interest in these markets rose from early-year lows to over tens of billions of dollars.

AI technology is deeply integrating into prediction markets. By the end of 2025, infrastructure like RSS3’s MCP Server and Olas Predict supported AI agents to autonomously scan events, gather data, and place bets on prediction platforms. It is predicted that by 2026, AI agents will contribute over 30% of prediction market trading volume, becoming major liquidity providers.

Regulatory and Compliance Challenges

Prediction markets face complex regulatory environments, especially concerning sports-related contracts. On the same day Giannis announced his investment, a judge in Massachusetts rejected Kalshi’s request for a preliminary injunction to halt the platform’s offering of sports contracts in that state. Kalshi has faced regulatory challenges in multiple states, including Tennessee, Nevada, New Jersey, and Connecticut, with cease and desist orders issued by regulators. To address these challenges and ensure market integrity, Kalshi recently announced the expansion of its monitoring and enforcement framework, establishing an independent oversight advisory committee.

This committee will collaborate with Daniel Taylor, director of the Wharton Forensic Analysis Laboratory, and market monitoring firm Solidus Labs. The company also appointed lawyer Robert DeNault as head of enforcement, responsible for coordinating efforts to prevent and detect insider trading and market manipulation. Kalshi has made it clear that, as a shareholder, Giannis will be prohibited from trading any NBA-related markets or markets involving himself. These restrictions existed before his shareholder agreement and will continue to be enforced after he becomes an investor.

Market Landscape and Competitive Dynamics

Currently, prediction markets are dominated by two giants: the US-regulated exchange Kalshi, which was valued at $11 billion at the end of 2025; and the decentralized platform Polymarket, which, after receiving strategic investment from Intercontinental Exchange, is valued close to $15 billion.

Traditional finance and tech companies are accelerating their entry into this space. Robinhood’s event trading has become its fastest-growing product line in early 2026. Interactive Brokers has also expanded its “ForecastEx” platform globally. The driving force behind this expansion is “distribution unlocking”—integrating prediction markets into mainstream financial and betting apps. As more users engage in event trading through daily applications, the growth prospects for the industry become even broader.

Analysts forecast that the prediction market industry could reach a total addressable market of $100 billion over the next decade, with an annual growth rate of up to 47%. By 2026, these platforms are expected to facilitate over 445 billion contracts, with a nominal trading volume of approximately $222.5 billion.

Intersection of Cryptocurrency and Prediction Markets

In the cryptocurrency space, prediction markets are forming interesting interactions with traditional digital assets. For example, according to data from Gate.io, as of February 9, 2026, Bitcoin’s price is $70,727, with a market cap of $1.41 trillion and a market share of 56.14%. Ethereum’s price is $2,086.84, with a market cap of $252.82 billion and a market share of 10.04%. The price fluctuations and market cap changes of these mainstream cryptocurrencies have become important trading targets for prediction markets.

Meanwhile, crypto wallets are beginning to integrate prediction market functions. For instance, Phantom, a leading crypto wallet with over 20 million users, has partnered with Kalshi to launch prediction market features. Users can now discover markets directly within the wallet and view odds changes in real time, with opening positions as simple as swapping tokens. This integration further blurs the line between traditional crypto trading and event contract trading.

Prediction market platforms themselves are also exploring tokenization paths. Polymarket has confirmed it will launch the POLY token in Q1 2026, while Kalshi has chosen a “no token issuance, low speculation” design approach. Data shows that despite lacking native tokens, Kalshi still achieved peak monthly trading of over $500 million in 2025, capturing more than 60% of the market share.

As Super Bowl Sunday approaches, trading volume of prediction contracts related to the game on Kalshi has surpassed $160 million. The prediction market platform has also signed a multi-year partnership with CNN, embedding its probability data into financial programs and news reports. Once considered a marginal financial experiment, this field has now become a “event trading” asset class redefined by Wall Street. When sports stars meet fintech innovation, what we see is not only individual investment choices but also a $100 billion emerging market rewriting traditional investment logic.