With the cryptocurrency exchange scheduled to report data on July 30, traders on predictive market platforms are betting that Coinbase’s trading volume in the second quarter fell significantly below expectations.
Part of the reason betting has attracted attention is that the platforms that handle it have expanded dramatically in the past 12 months.
In April 2026, total trade volume on Calci and Polymarket reached $24 billion, nearly five times what it was less than a year ago.
Traders at Kalshi believe that trading activity at Coinbase was affected by a roughly 12% decline in Bitcoin’s price during the second quarter.
The stock exchange is expected to announce a third consecutive quarterly decline in volume.
There is a high probability that the total will fall below $200 billion, which is the lowest amount announced by the company since the third quarter of 2024.
Calci futures prices show how cautious sentiment has become. Traders have placed a 41% probability on Coinbase’s quarterly trading volume reaching $160 billion.
According to FactSet, the probability of it exceeding $170 billion is only 25%, which is already lower than Wall Street’s forecast of $168.5 billion.
However, there is a 99% chance that the volume will remain above $150 billion Bettors do not price in the event of a complete collapse. Calci determines how these contracts are settled using information from investment research site Fiscal.ai.
Coinbase stock hasn’t done any better. Since Bitcoin peaked in October 2025, shares have fallen more than 55%.
This decline is consistent with the general pressure that has built up across cryptocurrency markets during that period.
The World Cup leads to a significant increase in the number of new users
The increasing use of prediction markets to price financial outcomes is occurring alongside a sharp period of growth for both industry-leading platforms.
According to CBS Sportstheir top picks for prediction markets for 2026 include Kalshi in first place, while Polymarket is in second place, followed by DraftKings and FanDuel Predicts.
Both have added significant numbers of users in recent months, helped in part by high-profile events that put them in front of audiences who had never used prediction markets before.
Three million new users joined Like everything during the 2026 World Cup.
The amount traded in a single contract in which the country will win the title exceeded $1.2 billion, a record for any market on the platform.
The total amount spent on Kalshi during the World Cup amounted to $12 billion. In addition to promoting Luka Modric, Jose Mourinho, Lionel Messi, Timothée Chalamet, and J Balvin, the platform has partnered with OpenAI to showcase existing contract possibilities within ChatGPT.
The strategy, according to Tarek Mansour, CEO and co-founder of Kalshi, is “where the news is.”
Now that the FIFA World Cup is over, the problem for the platform is how to retain those new users when nothing of the same magnitude is scheduled.
Political size and regulatory gap
In the world of political betting, Polymarket is still at the forefront.
The site generates approximately $507 million in weekly political bets, representing an estimated 93% of all political bets. Forecasting market transactions.
In contrast, Calci records a weekly political volume of about $16.8 million. Politics represents 32% of Polymarket’s total activity, but only 4% of Kalshi’s.
Within Polymarket, the work is split between two very different operations.
Its offshore platform achieved a volume of $9 billion during April 2026. The US-regulated version of the platform achieved $1.3 billion in the same period.
For traders who want to use prediction markets to hedge the results of established companies like Coinbase, this separation has major ramifications.
The CFTC is currently searching Polymarket for potential insider trading in contracts related to geopolitical events.
Institutional traders have a legally valid way to take positions on a company’s earnings and volume forecasts in real-time thanks to Kalshi, a licensed domestic firm.
The result could also serve as another test of whether prediction markets have become a reliable measure of corporate earnings expectations.
