Morning Minute: CME & Fanduel Bring Prediction Markets to the Masses

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner*. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute* on Substack*.*

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors mixed, ETH and SOL lead; BTC back to $113k
• BNB hits fresh ATH at $880 overnight before retracing
• Kanye tweets out YZY coin, briefly runs to $3B before falling
• CME announces partnership with Fanduel to launch events contracts
• Heaven notches first $1M revenue day, burns another $1M of its LIGHT token

🎲 CME + FanDuel Bring Event Contracts to the Masses

Wall Street is meeting Main Street in the betting arena.

And the prediction market boom is about to begin…

📌 What Happened

The CME Group and FanDuel are teaming up to launch a new event contracts platform, making it easier for everyday users to bet on markets like the S&P 500, oil, gold, and even crypto.

The two will create a joint venture that will offer fully funded, event-based contracts as a part of the initiative.

These simple yes/no markets will let FanDuel’s millions of customers trade on major benchmarks and economic indicators for as little as $1.

Expected to go live later this year (pending CFTC review), the platform will cover:

• Indices: S&P 500, Nasdaq-100
• Commodities: oil, gas, gold
• Crypto: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and more
• Macro data: GDP, CPI, and other key releases

The contracts will run through a new non-clearing futures commission merchant (FCM) jointly operated by CME and FanDuel, and listed on CME’s regulated exchanges.

🗣️ What They’re Saying

• Terry Duffy, CME Group CEO: “Together, our event-based products will appeal to the growing public interest in markets, and we will provide education to attract a new generation of potential traders not active in derivatives today.”
• Amy Howe, FanDuel CEO: “Partnering with CME Group will unlock our ability to bring even more new and engaging products to FanDuel’s fast-growing customer base… combining innovation with best-in-class regulatory compliance and consumer protections.”

🧠 Why It Matters

This is a huge moment for prediction markets and retail access:

Story Continues* Mainstream on-ramp: Millions of FanDuel bettors will soon have a direct line into regulated financial products, essentially turning prediction rading into a mass-market consumer activity

• Legitimacy & compliance: With CME as the partner, these contracts have instant credibility and regulatory cover, something platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have struggled with
• Bridging speculation & investing: By blending sports betting UX with financial markets, CME and FanDuel are creating a product that sits squarely between gambling and trading
• Crypto crossover: Including Bitcoin and Ethereum in the initial product set cements crypto’s role as a tradable benchmark alongside equities, commodities, and macro data

Assuming this is approved, this could be the biggest step yet toward mass adoption of event-based markets in the U.S. seen to date.

There were questions (and rightfully so) if prediction markets would make it post-2024 election.

Volumes boomed into the most hotly debated election ever, but then (to the surprise of many), volumes sustained.

Prediction markets have sustained well post-election (data from )[/caption]

Thanks to new styles of pop culture markets, leaning more into news and geopolitics and of course sports betting markets, prediction markets have kept volumes at ~50%+ levels of peak 2024.

That’s a huge win.

And the more progress made in 2025-2026 will lead for an even bigger 2028 election cycle.

Let the prediction market boom begin…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes

A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors were mostly green on the day**;** BTC even at $113,300, ETH +3% at $4,285, XRP +1% at $2.90, SOL +3% at $184
• OKB (+60%), MORPHO (+12%) and LINK (+6%) led top movers
• BNB briefly broke to a new ATH of $880 last night
• OKB popped another 60% to $206 after its massive token burn
• A judge unfroze $57.6M in funds tied to the Libra meme coin case (tied to Argentina President Javier Milei) after signs of compliance
• Xapo sees a $200B Bitcoin inflow coming from the wealth transfer from boomers to their children over the coming decade
• Ark Invest backed Bullish and Robinhood, with Cathie Wood’s firm buying $21.2M of Bullish and $16.2M of Robinhood shares in their market debuts
• The Winklevoss twins funded a pro-Trump crypto PAC to the tune of $21M (188 BTC as it looks to launch the Digital Freedom Fund aimed at blocking CBDCs and supporting crypto-friendly policy
• The New York lawmaker’s push for 0.2% crypto tax will also include stablecoin transfers

In Corporate Treasuries

• Empery Digital holds $450M in BTC but its market cap sits at just $340M, trading well below mNAV
• Windtree Therapeutics, a BNB treasury company, has been removed from Nasdaq for listing compliance issues

In Memes

• Memecoin leaders are red on the day; DOGE -3%, Shiba -3%, PEPE -4%, PENGU -8%, BONK -4%, TRUMP -3%, SPX -3%, and FARTCOIN -4%
• Kanye West tweeted out a memecoin YZY which briefly ran to $3B FDV before falling back to $1B
• Heaven reached $1M in daily revenue on Wednesday (75% of Pump’s revenue) while also unlocking a new “golden twap” to account for some missed revenue that hadn’t gone to LIGHT buybacks

Kanye West Launches Token on Solana in Frenzied Debut

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:

• Rekt Drinks set a new record with a 1-minute sellout in yesterday’s Base collab drink drop
• Kraken acquired Capitalise.ai for its trading automation capabilities, adding natural-language strategy automation tools to strengthen its AI-driven offerings
• Tron added Nvidia and Tesla tokenized stocks as its xStocks platform expands synthetic equity trading
• Plasma announced a parntership with Binance with 1% of the supply going to early depositors (already filled)
• Wormhole is looking to outbid LayerZero to acquire Stargate
• Proof of Play announced a new Marketplace API, allowing game devs to build an in-game marketplace and take a fee

🤖 AI x Crypto

Section dedicated to headlines in the AI sector of crypto:

• Overall market cap down 2% to $12.2B, leaders were mixed
• FARTCOIN (+1%), VIRTUAL (+1%), TIBBIR (-3%), ai16z (-1%) & VVV (-17%)
• fxn (+24%), Simmi (+22%) and IRIS (+15%) led top movers

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• ETH NFT leaders were mostly green**;** Punks -2% at 46.5 ETH, Pudgy +1% at 12.6, BAYC +2% at 11.6 ETH
• Moonbirds (+15%) and Mooncats (+17%) were notable top movers
• Bitcoin NFTs were mostly red or even; Bitcoin Puppets +6%
• Abstract NFTs were mixed, led by BUUMEE (+20%)

View Comments