Prediction markets overtook onchain gambling for the first time in the opening quarter of 2026, recording $36.6 billion in volume compared with gambling’s $14 billion, according to TRM Labs.In a Wednesday report, the blockchain intelligence company said the shift followed a rapid expansion in both sectors. Onchain gambling reached $51 billion in 2025, while prediction markets climbed to $54 billion, putting the two categories at comparable scale heading into 2026. Still, onchain gambling remained near record levels. Quarterly gambling volume reached an all-time high of $15 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, then held at $14 billion in Q1 2026.Neither onchain gambling nor prediction markets retreated along with the broader crypto markets. Volumes remained elevated through the 2025-2026 market correction.Annual onchain wagering volume. Source: TRM LabsA TRM Labs spokesperson told Cointelegraph that gambling volumes have surged during the recent market pullback because of the “sticky and expanding activity of a loyal user base.”“This does not mean anything about concentration risk in itself, since there is quite a large gambling user base,” the spokesperson said. “It shows how a consistent user activity can insulate an industry from a market pullback and in fact drive growth.”Gambling and prediction markets face different risksTRM said gambling platforms and prediction markets are increasingly converging on shared stablecoin infrastructure, but their financial crime risks remain distinct. Prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi operate as peer-to-peer markets for binary outcomes, while gambling platforms such as Stake, WINk and Rollbit operate more like traditional casinos, with the platform setting odds and maintaining a house edge.Related: Chainalysis, South Korean police link up to fight crypto crimeTRM said prediction markets have attracted scrutiny over insider trading, while gambling platforms are more exposed to money laundering risks. “Gambling services and prediction markets carry distinct inherent financial crime risks, and firms should calibrate controls accordingly,” a TRM Labs spokesperson told Cointelegraph. Casual bettors drive growth alongside whalesTRM said more than 2 million personal wallets interacted with gambling platforms between January 2022 and March 2026.The firm divided those users into five behavioral groups. “Dabblers” made five or fewer transactions and disappeared within a month, while “Casual Bettors” averaged 18 transactions across eight active days. “Event Chasers” returned around major sporting events, while “Daily Grinders” gambled on at least 30% of the days in their active tenure. “High Rollers,” the highest-value cohort, averaged $13,558 per bet and $378,000 in lifetime gambling volume.The firm found that volume remains heavily concentrated among high-value users, with High Rollers representing 6.3% of personal gambling wallets but driving 91.8% of personal wallet gambling volume since 2022. Despite this, TRM said the fastest-growing user categories are not only high-stakes bettors. Casual Bettors’ monthly volume rose from $17 million in January 2022 to $188 million by March 2026, while Daily Grinders’ volume increased 12x over the same period.Magazine: Vietnam preps crypto pilot, HK pushes tokenization: Asia Express

Robinhood Securities said it had secured approval to act as an IPO underwriter, moving from a distribution role into the main underwriting group alongside Wall Street banks.Chief executive Vlad Tenev said in a Tuesday X post that Robinhood Securities is “now approved to serve as an underwriter,” without specifying which regulator granted the approval, a process that typically involves oversight from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).Framing the move as the “natural next step” after launching IPO Access in 2021, Tenev said the question in equity capital markets had shifted from “why allocate to retail at all?” to “how big can the allocation be?”Robinhood secures underwriter status. Source: Vlad TenevHis comments land as SpaceX reportedly considers making as much as 30% of its record-setting offering available to retail investors and as demand already runs at close to four times the planned size.Crypto rails race for SpaceXRobinhood’s push to sell IPO shares directly to app-based traders comes as crypto platforms race to build parallel rails around the same listings. Major exchanges have begun offering alternative access to private markets through tokenized pre-IPO products, including Bybit’s xStocks, Kraken’s pre-IPO equity tokens and Coinbase’s secondary markets.On the derivatives side, a Tuesday report from Talos and Coin Metrics argues that onchain pre-IPO perpetuals are becoming a meaningful price discovery venue in their own right.Liquidity is increasingly a hybrid of retail traders, crypto-native funds and systematic market makers, according to the report, with SpaceX contracts on Hyperliquid generating billions in volume and hundreds of millions in open interest.Related: Crypto entrepreneur Chun Wang joins SpaceX mission to MarsThe report highlights Cerebras Systems, where Hyperliquid’s pre-IPO futures tracked the stock’s eventual opening level within about 1%, while underwriters priced the IPO itself far lower.Samar Sen, vice president of international markets at Talos, told Cointelegraph that underwriters and retail platforms like Robinhood are increasingly likely to monitor these signals for high-profile listings as a supplementary input for assessing demand, though not as a replacement for traditional book-building.For an underwriter, pre-IPO perpetuals are “unlikely to determine retail versus institutional allocations on their own, but they can provide an additional signal around investor demand ahead of listing,” he said.Magazine: How to fix suspected insider trading on Polymarket and Kalshi

Cryptocurrency market outflows reflect a sentiment shock, as geopolitics, rate expectations and capital rotation into artificial intelligence weigh on digital assets, according to James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares.In a statement sent to Cointelegraph, Butterfill said that sentiment in crypto markets has “soured drastically” after billions of dollars flowed out of digital asset investment products in recent weeks.“This is a pure sentiment shock rather than a structural break,” Butterfill said.Butterfill added that the correction was being driven primarily by geopolitics, with uncertainty around the Iran conflict weighing on the outlook for interest rates. He said expected rate cuts had been pushed off the table, while markets were beginning to price in the possibility of higher rates.The comments follow a sharp reversal in US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which recorded about $1.72 billion in net outflows last week.Spot Bitcoin ETF weekly flows data. Source: SoSoValueBitcoin rebound may still be fragileOther analysts said Bitcoin’s recent rebound may not be enough to confirm a recovery. In a statement sent to Cointelegraph, Paul Howard, a senior director at liquidity firm Wincent, said last week’s outflows reflected institutional reactions to macroeconomic headlines, while pressure across tech-heavy markets showed the broader strain facing risk assets.Howard said Bitcoin’s break below a key moving average suggested markets may have entered a more cautious phase, while elevated CME Bitcoin volatility pointed to continued news-driven swings. He said he remained cautious that the rebound would prove sustainable. Related: Crypto users wary as Anthropic releases Claude Mythos with safeguardsAdam Haeems, head of asset management at crypto investment firm Tesseract Group, said that much of the market narrative had focused on Strategy’s sale of 32 BTC in late May. However, he said the sale, which raised about $2.5 million, was too small to mechanically explain the broader BTC decline. “It unsettled confidence, because Strategy had been treated as a near one-way source of corporate demand, but it was a signal shock, not the flow behind the fall,” Haeems said. Magazine: Vietnam preps crypto pilot, HK pushes tokenization: Asia Express