Latif Nasser

Both real wagers you could make in 2026.

The two biggest prediction market sites, which everyone seems to be talking about these days... Kaoshi and Polymarket.

Kaoshi and Polymarket.

Combined, they've seen more than $60 billion in trades since the beginning of this year.

Their creators say you should think of prediction markets like another version of the stock market, where investors make trades...

just on current events instead of a company's stock price.

But some of the trades you can make on prediction market sites feel a lot less buttoned up than Wall Street, even a little icky.

Because you have the option to bet on bombs being dropped, on people dying, events that will have huge impacts on real people's lives.

And in several cases, there's evidence suggesting that the anonymous people who made these bets may have had insider information.

And in that last case, the alleged trader turned out to be a U.S.

Special Forces soldier who was involved in planning the military operation to capture Maduro.

The soldier has since been indicted by the Justice Department.

In the wake of all this, the White House sent an email warning to its staffers name-checking prediction markets.

We got a similar email from the standards team at NPR.

And on Capitol Hill, the Senate has approved a bipartisan resolution saying its members and staff can't trade on prediction markets either.

That's how big these markets have gotten in the last few months.

Even the president is paying attention to them.

One of President Trump's sons, by the way, is an advisor to both Polymarket and Kalshi, and an investor in Polymarket.

Some analysts think prediction markets are on their way to becoming a trillion-dollar industry.

And like President Trump said, these markets have turned the world into a casino, where anyone, anywhere, can log on and bet on the outcome of almost anything that'll happen in the future.