John Wang - Prediction Markets As The Next Wave After Memecoins - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025

you know, it was only just a month ago that I joined Koshi um to lead the crypto initiatives and you know, really excited to be here and um appreciate all the support we've gotten from the community so far. Um if people you know don't really know about prediction markets, prediction markets are essentially a new financial instrument, a new asset class that allows you to um trade on any sort of event um or outcome and really went ma mainstream last year with the US presidential election. Um you know Kaui has been around since 2018. we uh have sort of experienced a similar um like upward trajectory to crypto where we uh you know h we're in like quite a I guess like harsh regulatory environment for for many many years um including like having to sue the CFTC in order to legalize prediction markets in the United States. Um and so you know we're really glad that you know just yesterday we had a round table with the SEC and CFTC and so um the legit legitimization of production markets has been amazing to see.

Uh but you know today's topic is about in crypto like memecoins um and sort of like the trajectory of of where the industry is heading and memecoins have obviously slowed down over the past few months. um you know the me mean memes here are the purple bar and as a percentage of decentralized exchange volume Salana it's kind of seen a drastic decrease as Salana um volume and stable coin volume has increased on the blockchain um same here with active traders like wallets have also decreased uh since the start of the year um and this is you know also due to many other factors that um have to do with like the way that launchpad games are played but ultimately the the trend is kind of clear that's momentum is slowing down. Um this slide is actually a bit outdated. So we last month we did 2.5 billion dollars of volume which is around 70 to 80% of uh the entire prediction markets volume.

Um over the last week we actually do did two times more volume at Koshi or prediction markets in general than memecoin launchpads on Salana. um which is quite an insane trajectory of growth since just a month ago where you know pretty sure market volume was a lot less than memecoins and over a monthong horizon it's probably around like 30% now. Um but over the last week it's it's you know every sort of week is is like a a very different week from the the previous one. So, you know, why have memecoins been slowing down? It's is the ultimate question.

And I think it comes down to many of factors. Primarily being that the system is just too extractive. Um, it's not been sustainable over like a longterm hor time horizon. You have your insiders, snipers, um, pro wallet tracking trading groups, these like, uh, Discord groups and family and friend groups that kind of work together. They're almost like shops that um are able to like track down uh different coins and um buy them and sell them before uh they have any chance to grow.

And so the like aspiration of memecoins originally was um a mechanism for you to bet on the verality of a specific thing. Um but this has not really turned out to be like the exact um way that it's played out just because that deploying a meme code on the blockchain permissionlessly where anyone can access it and there are all these like information asymmetries makes it such that it's it's really hard to like get a smooth um like reflection of of the verality. Um it's very hard problem to solve because ultimately like uh you know people can spin up multiple wallets. Um these coins often start at very low like price um and there are different like uh tokcon economic games that you can play um that sort of manipulate uh the like the mechanism. And so we haven't really found any foolproof anti- sniping mechanisms.

Um, you know, this has been like a large area of research, but still hasn't been cracked. There are some reasons why memecoins are better than prediction markets. Um, it's still the main way that you can bet on the verality of an idea. um doing permissionless asset creation is uh you're still like the the leading like benefit of meme coins which is great for like longtail speculation. Um and then finally you can kind of push all your energy like all your uh concentrated energy into a single shelling point for an idea um such as like Trump or Mudang and like all the other kind of meme coins that we've seen in the world.

Prediction markets present several advantages though. So you know this information based skill trading um dynamic is like a lot more accessible to people like everyone has an opinion on um topics and events as well and uh unlike meme coins like friction markets I think the user base is a much much more diverse uh user set like we have on couch we have categories ranging from politics to sports um everywhere to like culture and mention markets where you can trade what people might say. Um, and uh, also crypto markets as well. Um, I think one particular category I'm really excited about that we kind of introduced recently on the crypto side is pre-markets. And so premarkets um, are a way for you to uh, trade an outcome or event before it happens.

Um, specifically like airdrops or like uh, token price before a token is launched. And you know, we've seen projects like Pendle, which allows you to trade points um on a token on a like a project before the token is launched, find real product market fit. Um and so prediction markets provide like a vehicle for speculating on on projects before they actually have a tradable vehicle. Um prediction markets are simple. You you can like do research and trade on your own opinion.

Um, and I think memecoins just turned out to be a much more complex game than initially bargained for. Um, you don't have pump and dump manipulation in prediction markets because ultimately it resolves to the truth and it's a lot more social actually, which is surprising to me. You go down like the comment section of Koshi um, which is like actually one of the largest sort of category growers of our app. there's like the the social activity in the comment section and people creating profiles and following each other and stuff. It's a heated like Reddit like debate on every single market um where people are disputing resolutions and um sort of finding sources for for like alpha um and just generally like it's like a a battle between the yeses and the nos.

it's a lot more sustainable um a lot less reflexive and hype driven and then you can launch multiple markets recurrently you know with live streaming for example I think memecoins have tried to push live streaming as as like this new way for um meme coins to find adoption but I think one problem is that once you launch a coin once it usually pumps and dumps and kind of it's like a one-time event whereas where with prediction markets you we're definitely like uh going much much deeper into live streaming over the coming year. And live streamers will be able to launch prediction markets recurrently and provides like a much more sustainable uh uh revenue stream for them um or just like a way to engage their audience. And so uh yeah, ultimately I think it just has a broader appeal because everyone has an opinion about events and not not everyone is chronically online like tracking um sort of new viral events. uh as they come. Yeah, as you can see like with this chart last last year you know Koshik was granted um legalization a week or two before the election and so um you know we had to sue the CFTC and kind of just got in there right last minute and ever since we've been building a product um and slowly like uh improving improving our like uh product offering and um recently like the resurgence in production market has been largely driven by Kouchi volume um and yeah here here's another chart sort of demonstrating um Kawoshi's progress.

Uh the tren the metrics are kind of up only and we don't really see any signs of stopping anytime soon. open interest, DEX volume, monthly transactions are all parabolic. And I I genuinely think we're still at the start of the JC curve. Like, you know, Koshi and Poly Market, both their user interfaces feel kind of like OpenC. And I think the next level of like 10x unlocks for um this like category is um to see sort of like a more like development of an ecosystem of financial apps or financial primitives building on top of um both of these markets.

So if we compare like uh like the landscape leaders for per and prediction markets um you know hyperlas has kind of been in a similar situation where um you know they're like the the main perpetual exchange that has organic volume um they don't have any wash trading or airdrop plumbers anymore compared to like neuro newer participants. Um Khi also doesn't have that. Uh we charge fees. So we jet we're the only prediction market that generates revenue. Um we are the most liquid uh prediction market have the highest open interest have the largest most amount of markets by a large margin.

You know great mobile user experience and now we're pushing pursuing this infrastructure and ecosystem strategy as well like similar to you know hyper liquid or pump fun. um where we want uh to expand the kaleidoscope of um things that can be built on on Koshi as a developer platform. So our yeah our our uh mobile app has also been you know quite successful recently. Um I think right now we're like maybe seventh on the app store. Um you know Robin Hood and Coinbase are 16th and 19th and um we've kind of been pursuing like a dual strategy here.

So our direct to consumer app um is growing very fast and very quickly and that's where we have a lot of our social features and um sort of all our markets available. Um but also I think similar to hyperlquid um we've been pursuing an infrastructure strategy and this has been something like we've been investing a ton of resources into um the and sort of been pursuing very meaningfully. For example, we have Robin Hood and Weeble as major broker integrations. Um, and we kind of have a pipeline of like over a dozen companies that are as large as Robin Hood um that we expect to integrate and onboard uh that are already integrating and expect to go live within the next few months. Um I I think it wouldn't be an overstatement for me to say that um within a year from now I expect Koshi to be in every large financial uh fintech social media um and use app in the world.

And so you know I think a lot of people here are maybe wondering like why are we here at token? What what are we doing at a crypto event? I my my personal opinion is that every wave of crypto adoption um comes with new entrance. Um and you first we got like Bitcoin and Bitcoin maxis will refuse to accept Ethereum and they kind of missed out on Ethereum. Um Ethereum maxis refused to accept Salana and they missed out on all the innovation that happened on Salana.

And now we're at this point where we're breaking out into mainstream adoption. the largest um sort of developments in crypto this cycle have been coming from um mainstream entrance like Stripe, Robin Hood and Black Rockck coming into the scene and um I think they've done like a lot for onchain adoption in this cycle so far and so going forward I really don't think there should be a distinction of a crypto company or a non-crypto company. I think it's fair to say that of at this decade every like generational financial technology company will be powered by crypto and for Kawhi crypto is core to our strategy and um our mission going forward. I think building an ecosystem of financial apps and treating Kosi as a developer platform is is our next 10x unlock and it simply wouldn't be possible without crypto because crypto is the most cutting edge global financial program programmable rails of the internet. Um and so I'm really excited to share more plans about Kashi coming on chain soon.

Thank you.