Wall Street and crypto infrastructure converge to scale global prediction markets

Major financial exchanges and cryptocurrency platforms are collaborating, altering how money flows via prediction markets.

The numbers underpinning the shift are difficult to ignore.

On April 30, 2026, Intercontinental Exchange, the business that operates the New York Stock Exchange, completed what it described as its finest quarter ever.

Adjusted earnings per share increased 37% over the same period last year, while net revenues totaled $3 billion.

On a teleconference with investors, ICE CEO Jeffrey Sprecher stated that the company is closely monitoring tokenization and prediction markets, with a focus on risk management and regulated access.

The broader market has a similar story.

According to Bernstein research, combined monthly trading across the biggest prediction market platforms will reach approximately $24 billion in April 2026.

These platforms are no longer operating on the periphery of finance.

They are connected to major exchanges and financial data terminals to provide real-time probability information.

Crypto payments meet regulated markets

Mesh, a cryptocurrency payments network, announced a partnership with Kalshi, the first prediction market to get federal regulatory certification.

Kalshi has grown rapidly. It now works in over 140 countries and handles $100 billion in annual trade volume.

With the Mesh cooperation, traders can now easily transfer cryptocurrency from their Coinbase, Binance, MetaMask, and Phantom accounts to Kalshi.

The connection also contains features for preventing payments from being delivered to the wrong addresses and confirming payouts in real time.

Bam Azizi, who co-founded Mesh and serves as its CEO, put it plainly:

Wall Street gets serious

Bernstein has added prediction markets to its digital assets research coverage, alongside tokenization and stablecoins, indicating that big financial experts consider this as a long-term category rather than a passing craze.

Some analysts believe that prediction market contracts provide a simpler mechanism for huge funds to hedge against event-driven risk than tools such as foreign currency options, which are more complicated.

ICE has already gone beyond observation.

Company president Benjamin Jackson revealed that ICE has introduced a product called Polymarket Signals and Sentiment, which encodes prediction market data so that it can be used in regular institutional systems and is only available through ICE data feeds.

Sprecher also stated that Polymarket is creating useful, event-specific data, and that the two companies’ technical teams are collaborating on on-chain settlement and round-the-clock capital flow.

The sector’s institutional maturity was further signaled as more clearing and brokerage transactions began to materialize recently.

Kalshi completed its first significant block trade, which was organized through Greenlight Commodities, and entered into an agreement with Clear Street to provide hedge funds with regulated clearing access.

FalconX launched margin financing for the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, allowing traders to use positions on Binance and OKX as collateral.

Anchorage Digital, the only crypto bank with a federal charter in the United States, has started offering custody and staking for Hyperliquid’s native token, HYPE.

New competition is also emerging

Kalshi and Polymarket remain the dominant players in the space, but Hyperliquid has begun to make inroads.

Its initial Bitcoin outcome market apparently had three times the trading volume of similar markets on Polymarket and Kalshi combined.

According to Hyunsu Jung, CEO of Hyperion DeFi, a shared liquidity layer attracts consumers and fosters the development of a larger financial platform that includes round-the-clock trading in real-world assets.

Looking ahead, the 2026 FIFA World Cup promises to be a huge test for these platforms, which have traditionally witnessed the most activity surrounding major sporting events.

Mesh, for its part, just raised $75 million in a Series C fundraising round at a $1 billion valuation, and claims that its network serves more than 900 million people worldwide.

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