In 2020 when we first launched, prediction markets lived on the margins. Our loyal readers were pioneers in a latent space trying to eke out a living on weekly PredictIt Presidential Approval Rating contracts. Five years later, prediction markets sit on TV tickers, in trading dashboards, and—after at least one bruising court fight—inside the U.S. regulatory perimeter. That arc is reason enough to bring Flip Incoming out of hibernation.
What happened while the lights were off
COVID upended every economic model in sight, meme-stocks taught retail to move as a crowd, and crypto’s boom-and-bust hardened an audience that shrugs at on-chain fees. Inside that churn, event contracts grew up. In November 2024 Polymarket cleared more than $2 billion in volume during a single election month, a number unthinkable when we last published.
The new regulatory map
A decisive win for Kalshi. On May 5 the CFTC dropped its appeal against a federal ruling that said Kalshi can list contracts on congressional control. The 3-0 Commission vote ends two years of back-and-forth and, crucially, stamps “legitimate” on the U.S. event-contract business.
States push back. Legitimacy isn’t uniform. New Jersey’s gaming watchdog tried to block Kalshi from operating inside state lines this spring—a reminder that federal green lights don’t always reach the street level.
Unregulated venues keep testing the edge. Offshore platforms list wildfire odds and conflict contracts that no U.S. regulator would bless. The moral discomfort is real, but so is user demand; the result is a two-tier market with very different risk profiles.
Why dwell on the rulebook? Because spreads tighten when traders believe settlement is legal, final, and free of sudden injunctions. The Kalshi decision won’t end the debate, yet it moves the Overton window far enough that mainstream desks have started to pay attention.
On-chain innovation & rising liquidity
Crypto-native venues keep shipping faster than the lawyers can read the filings. Cross-chain routing slashes settlement time, LP-style market making smooths order books, and wallets now sign sub-second transactions from a phone. The payoff shows up in depth: Polymarket’s top contracts trade seven figures before New York opens, while smaller chains quietly clear mid-six-figure markets on sports, macro data, and, yes, the occasional celebrity trial. Liquidity doesn’t solve every forecasting flaw, but it makes pricing errors far more expensive, and that disciplines the crowd.
The missing piece for retail traders
Odds live in dozens of silos: regulated CFTC venues, crypto side-chains, even chat-room spreadsheets. Fees vary, order-book depth is opaque, and switching costs eat edge. A Bloomberg-style terminal for event markets still doesn’t exist, which means even veteran traders waste time stitching data feeds and quoting screenshots on X. We feel that pain ourselves; fixing it will be a core part of Flip Incoming’s next act.
Oh—and you know that one friend who won’t shut up about Prediction Markets? Share this post with them now:
Our renewed mission
Independent newsroom. We will track the contracts that move both wallets and headlines—politics, macro, technology, culture—and call out nonsense when the crowd or the regulators lose the plot.
Trader-first data layer. Behind the scenes we are building a unified watch-list, real-time depth across venues, and an “event radar” that flags filings, legislative calendars, and other catalysts at the speed they hit the wire. More details once the code ships.
How you can shape the reboot
Tell us what keeps you guessing. Reply with the markets you follow and the frictions you hate.
Test the tools. Founding Subscribers will early and preferred access to data feeds and tooling moving forward (details TBD!) with the opportunity to shape and give feedback.
Pitch a guest angle. Have data on liquidity shocks, a thesis on election-market efficiency, or a close read of state-level legislation? Let’s put it on the record.
Prediction markets convert uncertainty into a ticker you can trade. They also surface the collective judgment of thousands of brains—sometimes smarter, sometimes tragically wrong, always worth the timestamp. Flip Incoming is back to chronicle the signal, expose the noise, and build better instruments for anyone willing to price tomorrow. Subscribe, share, and drop us a line. The odds just got interesting again.
And again, we know you know someone who won’t stop talking about Prediction Markets. Send them the link, they’ll thank you later: