Prediction Markets Now Behave Like Stock Trading Platforms

Prediction markets have processed more than $154 billion in total volume, with daily trading on Polymarket alone often exceeding $300 million. That scale forces a more important question. These platforms no longer look like niche betting venues. They increasingly resemble something closer to retail trading. This analysis uses on-chain data, primarily from Polymarket—the largest platform by users and transactions in a market dominated by a Polymarket–Kalshi duopoly—to test that shift directly. Current Notional Volume Spread: Dune $10 Trades Are Defining the Market Across four dimensions, who participates, how they behave, how capital moves, and at what scale, the volume growth pattern tells a consistent story. And the category mix reinforces the framing: crypto and politics (excluding sports) now lead weekly volume on Polymarket, with the economy and earnings categories growing alongside them. These are not traditional gambling categories. They are finance-adjacent verticals. Notably, sports event contracts are already being offered as CFTC-regulated financial products by Kalshi and distributed through Robinhood’s Predictions Hub, placing them alongside stocks, options, and crypto within the same brokerage interface. Prediction Markets’ Growing Categories: Dune The most revealing signal is not how much money flows through prediction markets. It is who is placing the trades. On Polymarket, the median bet size is $10, according to BeInCrypto’s exclusive dashboard. The average sits at $89, but that figure is pulled upward by a thin tail of large participants. The underlying distribution paints a clearer picture: roughly 20% of all wallets trade in the $0 to $10 range, another 27% fall between $10 and $50, and about 11% sit in the $50 to $100 bracket. In total, over 57% of users trade for less than $100, and more than 80% trade for less than $500. Polymarket User Distribution by Average Bet Size: Dune This is not a market shaped by whales. It is a market built on smal...