Key Takeaways:
- According to Vitalik Buterin, prediction markets are being exploited towards short-term bets, bringing restricted value for society.
- He proposes converting these markets into large-size hedging tools, minimizing financial risks in practice.
- His vision includes AI-based personalized hedging portfolios that are able to threaten fiat-based price stability price models.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is doubting the future of onchain prediction markets. Although volumes remain robust, he claims that the product concentration is shifting to the short run speculation, rather than the long run utility.
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Prediction Markets Chasing Dopamine
Buterin admits that prediction websites have achieved actual advancement. Traders are now able to place large bets and there are even those who make a life out of the market activity. The traditional news sources can easily be complemented by these markets, as they are expected to mirror the crowd anticipations on-the-fly. However, he believes they are converging toward what he calls an “unhealthy” product focus.
Recently I have been starting to worry about the state of prediction markets, in their current form. They have achieved a certain level of success: market volume is high enough to make meaningful bets and have a full-time job as a trader, and they often prove useful as a…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) February 14, 2026
A variety of platforms are no longer focused on information discovery or on economic coordination; these platforms revolve around price movements, sports betting, and speculation around events. These markets make money particularly in bear markets when the users need volatility. However, they do not provide much informational value in the long run.
Buterin indicates that the over dependence on uninformed trading can create distorted momentum. Platforms can prioritize the maximum interactive level rather than actual value, supporting emotional trading instead of informed and analyzed decisions.
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Three Types of Market Participants
Breaking prediction markets into two main functions Buterin divides that market into informed traders that get money and counterparties that lose money.
He describes three categories which fill the losing end:
- Naive traders – participants with poor assumptions or weak information.
- Information buyers – organizations that are ready to lose money in order to derive market signals.
- Hedgers – users who accept negative expected value in exchange for reducing risk.
He argues that today’s ecosystem depends too heavily on the first category. While not inherently unethical, building platforms around uninformed losses risks long-term credibility.
The second category faces scale limits. If one party funds a market to gain insight, others benefit from the information without paying. That reduces incentive to maintain high-volume systems. This leaves hedging as the strongest long-term path.
From Betting to Risk Reduction
Hedging as the Core Use Case
Buterin suggests prediction markets should function as insurance mechanisms. He provides a simple example; an investor who owns stocks of biotech may lose money should a particular political party based on hatred towards biotech assume power. The investor mitigates the downside by purchasing prediction shares that are dependent on that event. Even if the bet has negative expected return, it smooths volatility.
In this framework, prediction markets are not gambling venues. They are structured tools for risk management.