A field guide to the venues
Polymarket, Kalshi, Manifold, PredictIt and more — who they are, what money they use, how they're run.
Kalshi — US-regulated, real money
A CFTC-regulated designated contract market (approved in 2020) that trades US-dollar event contracts on economics, elections, weather, company events and more, under federal oversight.
Polymarket — onchain, crypto
The largest onchain venue. Trades are denominated in the USDC stablecoin and settled by smart contracts, with outcomes resolved by an oracle (see “Where the truth comes from”). It gained a regulated US venue in 2025 by acquiring a CFTC-registered exchange.
Manifold — play money
Uses play-money “Mana,” not cash. Anyone can create a market and the creator resolves it. That makes it broad and fast-moving — a genuinely useful crowd forecast — but not directly comparable to the depth of a real-money market.
PredictIt, and the long tail
PredictIt is a long-running US political market that reached full CFTC compliance in 2025. Beyond these, newer onchain and international venues keep appearing. PredictionHub aggregates many of them, tags every market with its source, deep-links back to the original, and weights play-money venues differently in the consensus.
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