When the Prediction Market Transforms from "Predicting" to "Revealing the Truth": The Rhythm Officially Launches Prediction Market Coverage

2025-12-22 03:55

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For a long time, we have understood prediction markets as a very "rational" thing: people bet on the future based on public information, and market prices reflect consensus. However, over the past year, we have increasingly realized one thing: many prediction markets are not about "predicting the future," but about preemptively exposing those "results already known to a few."

When a result is already certain but not yet public, the prediction market becomes an extremely ruthless thing: it doesn't need leaks, anonymous tips, or even a single word. The direction of funds itself is a leak.

Prediction Markets are changing the way "secrets" operate:

Imagine a few scenarios:

· An extremely popular TV series has finished filming, will the main character die?

· The selection process for a game award has largely concluded, but the result has not been announced

· An AI company is about to release a critical product or merger news

· Regulatory outcomes of a Crypto protocol, listing time, governance vote direction

In the traditional world, these are called "inside information." But after the advent of prediction markets, they face a new problem: as long as someone knows and can place a bet, it's challenging for a secret not to be captured by the market. You don't need to know "who said what"; you just need to look at:

· Which options are disproportionately favored

· Which addresses consistently bet during key time periods

· Which accounts repeatedly "bet right early" in similar events

This is not a conspiracy theory; it is a natural result of probability and incentives.

From "Content Reporting" to "Result Stress Testing"

This is also why we are beginning to rethink the traditional news model. The old logic of content was: event happens → few know → reporting (publishing) → public knows

And what the prediction market brings is another path: event happens → some know → some bet → price starts to deviate → the world has already "known in advance"

There is even a more extreme path: event happens → some know → some bet → price starts to deviate → leading to a change in the event

Regarding this path, I can give a classic example: at the end of Coinbase's (NASDAQ: COIN) 2025 Q3 earnings call, CEO Brian Armstrong casually mentioned:

“I was kind of drawn to a prediction market, and I was tracking a prediction market bet on what we would say in this earnings call... So I have to get these words in before the call ends: Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain, staking, and Web3.”

These words were not random but content people bet on in a prediction market regarding whether certain words would be mentioned during this call. After Armstrong said this sentence, the relevant prediction markets settled immediately, and those who bet on the words being mentioned received profits. Reportedly, there was a betting volume of about $80,000 in these markets, settled instantly on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket.

In other words, without these bets, in an alternate parallel universe, Brian Armstrong would have just gone through the earnings call process normally without deliberately saying these words. This is the "reality distortion field" of prediction markets; the act of betting has the power to alter reality. This phenomenon is common in sports betting, where outcomes often lean towards the option with the least amount of bets due to insider manipulation. However, whether it's the words at a Coinbase earnings call or a football game, they don't have a significant impact on our world. Yet, with the growth of platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, these topics will become increasingly intertwined with our lives, and the prediction market's "reality distortion field" will indeed affect our lives.

In the future world, content will no longer be the starting point of information but a tool for verification and interpretation. In extreme cases, content can even change reality. This is what BlockBeats' prediction market reporting aims to do: not just a "prediction market navigation station" nor a simple reiteration of what occurred on Polymarket or Kalshi.

What we truly care about are three things:

· Which event's odds change, not driven by emotion or public information?

· Are there addresses consistently heavily positioned ‘before the outcome’ with an abnormally high historical hit rate?

· Do these behaviors point to some sort of ‘known but undisclosed’ fact?

We achieve this through analysis:

· Topics and options odds in prediction markets

· Bettors' on-chain addresses and their associated behaviors

· Similar betting patterns in historical events

To do one thing: use the prediction market as a ‘secret stress test,’ not just a mere opinion poll.

Areas we are currently focusing on:

· Macroeconomic policy trends and geopolitics that can impact the capital markets

· AI Industry: Product release timelines, M&A, key personnel changes

· Crypto Industry: TGEs, regulation, governance outcomes, significant protocol changes

The Future of the Content Industry:

The true challenge of the prediction market is not accuracy, but rather its erosion of the long-default order between the content industry and regulation: only information permitted to be spoken will become "public knowledge." When everything can be bet on, secrets will no longer be constrained only by institutions, professional ethics, or news censorship but will continue to contend with the price discovery mechanism.

In a mild scenario, this means that series endings, award attributions, and business decisions will be known in advance by the market; and in an extreme scenario, it may even touch on war and geopolitical conflicts: people can learn "military intelligence"-level information through bets made by soldiers on the war front lines, directly influencing the course of the war. When the outcome is already known to a few, and the market allows betting around the outcome, the price itself may become an undeniable signal of reality.

The first time I felt awe for the financial industry was when I read a story in college about Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, who had helped McDonald's with chicken futures hedging trades in his early days; in the United States, large restaurant chains will almost always hedge their core raw materials with futures synchronously, to hedge against the drastic price fluctuations and ensure that consumers can enjoy consistent quality and price-controlled McNuggets at any time. What awed me in this story was not the achievements Dalio later made, but the first time I clearly realized: the original intention behind the birth of the financial market was never for the trading itself, but to make the real world operate more stably and predictably.

The futures market helps people hedge against the price risk of commodities, and the stock market helps socially valuable enterprises finance and develop more efficiently; in this process, the participation of traders and speculators provides liquidity, farmers lock in future earnings in advance, and companies obtain a stable cost structure. Although market participants take what they need, the overall system is a long-term positively NPV one.

This also forces us to return to a more fundamental question: when Polymarket, with such massive speculative liquidity, already exists, is it possible for us to guide it towards more directions that truly generate positive NPV? If an event, once it happens, will have a significant impact on people's lives, assets, or decisions, do we have the opportunity to use the liquidity of prediction markets, and even evolve into a form of "event insurance" through the combination of multiple markets, like the "flight delay insurance" we have in our lives now, which, although cannot compensate for our flight delay losses, can provide some psychological comfort.

The prediction market is not about challenging a specific media outlet, but about asking a larger question: as the world begins to be bet on, who still has the power to determine "what can be known?" and "when can it be known?" We will continue to explore this path. In addition, the BlockBeats prediction market analysis team has been established. If you also love content and are curious about the prediction market, you are welcome to join us at any time. (Resumes can be sent to contact@theblockbeats.org or HR Telegram @Jhy10vewh0 with the subject "Prediction Market"). We also welcome prediction market and AI-related startup teams to discuss with us. BlockBeats will do its best to give excellent startup teams maximum exposure. Contact email: contact@theblockbeats.org

Finally, if you want to receive timely updates on the latest news we have discovered in the prediction market, you can subscribe on the BlockBeats app. After subscribing, you will receive real-time app push notifications for prediction market news. The specific operation path is as shown in the image below (please update to the latest version of the app).