Top-tier market-making mall Fortune Securities is considering entering the prediction market! Optimistic about the hedging potential of “event contracts,” aiming for the U.S. midterm elections and geopolitical issues.

Traditional financial giants prepare to make a big push into the prediction market! The world’s top market-making firm Citadel Securities’ president recently hinted that the company is “highly likely” to enter the prediction market to provide liquidity. However, they refuse to participate in the currently dominant sports betting sector, instead focusing on hedging geopolitical risks around the November U.S. midterm elections.
(Background recap: eToro invests $70 million to acquire MPC wallet Zengo! Exploring tokenization, prediction markets, and perpetual contracts)
(Additional background: Bernstein: Prediction market to reach $1 trillion by 2030! Sports is just the entry point; macroeconomics and politics are the real endgame)

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• Refusing sports betting, targeting the November U.S. midterm elections
• Looking at over $1 trillion by 2030! Giants have already quietly laid out plans
• CFTC regulatory tug-of-war

As platforms like Polymarket explode in popularity, prediction markets are becoming the new darling of global capital, now even Wall Street’s top market makers are ready to get a piece of the action.

Citadel Securities president Jim Esposito stated on Thursday at the Semafor World Economic Forum in Washington, D.C., that this global largest stock and options market maker is “highly likely” to provide liquidity for the rapidly growing prediction market sector.

Refusing sports betting, targeting the November U.S. midterm elections

Although prediction markets are booming, Citadel is not blindly following the trend. Esposito emphasized that they have no interest in the currently dominant “sports event contracts,” which account for 62% of market trading volume; what they truly value is the hedging financial value behind them. Esposito explained:

“Event contracts are very attractive to us.”

“I think there is a reasonable industry logic; institutional clients have real reasons to use these contracts to hedge various risks in their portfolios.”

He specifically mentioned the upcoming November U.S. midterm elections, pointing out that this will be a “seismic event” that could pose huge risks to investors’ portfolios, and prediction markets are an excellent tool to hedge against these geopolitical and macroeconomic risks.

Looking at over $1 trillion by 2030! Giants have already quietly laid out plans

The growth rate of prediction markets is astonishing. According to a report this week by research broker Bernstein, the trading volume of prediction markets is about $51 billion in 2025 (a threefold increase from the previous year); so far this year, the combined trading volume of the two giants Kalshi and Polymarket has exceeded $60 billion.

Bernstein analysts are even more optimistic, estimating that by 2026, trading volume in this sector will reach $240 billion. With regulatory clarity gradually improving and mainstream partners pushing forward, they project that by 2030, the market will reach an astonishing $1 trillion scale.

In fact, Citadel is closer to prediction markets than many think. Citadel Securities is already executing trades for retail brokerages like Charles Schwab and Robinhood, and Robinhood recently integrated Kalshi’s prediction market features. Esposito revealed he is closely watching these platforms and calls Kalshi founder Tarek Mansour a “good friend”; notably, Citadel Securities CEO Peng Zhao personally participated in Kalshi’s $185 million funding round last year.

CFTC regulatory tug-of-war

Despite the promising outlook, regulation remains the biggest uncertainty. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has declared it has “exclusive jurisdiction” over prediction markets and is trying to formulate new rules as the industry expands. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig faced tough questioning at a House Agriculture Committee hearing on Thursday about how prediction markets should be regulated and whether there are enough resources to oversee them.

However, with Wall Street’s mainstream firms like Citadel preparing to inject deep capital into these illiquid markets, the trend toward prediction markets becoming fully mainstream seems unstoppable.