Volume continues to hit new highs, the prediction market is strengthening, and Neutrl is emerging as a new generation dark horse in over-the-counter arbitrage.

On the occasion of Thanksgiving, the prediction market has seen unprecedented heat, with trading volume hitting new highs and capital inflow at an astonishing speed. New platforms are emerging rapidly, and the overall landscape is changing quickly. At the same time, the emerging protocol Neutrl has created yield products through OTC Trading arbitrage and neutral strategies, becoming one of the most notable highlights in the recent Crypto Assets sector. Even with constant market Fluctuation, investors still see structural growth and innovative opportunities worth being grateful for. This article is excerpted from Blockworks data analysis, with key points summarized and translated.

Prediction market competition upgrades, capital war fully erupts.

The prediction market has recently entered a highly competitive period, with large platforms vying for dominance, rapidly expanding the scale of financing, creating a financial contest akin to an arms race. After Kalshi announced the completion of a $1 billion financing, its valuation soared to $11 billion; the New York Stock Exchange also invested $2 billion in Polymarket at a $9 billion valuation. Market news indicates that Polymarket is in talks for a new round of financing at a valuation between $12 billion and $15 billion, showing that investors' expectations for market growth are accelerating.

The activity level has also simultaneously broken records, with the weekly market trading volume reaching 3.68 billion USD two weeks ago, which is more than 2.4 times that of the peak period during the last election. The significant surge in trading volume is primarily driven by the new platform Opinion Labs, which has received support from investors such as YZi Labs, capturing nearly one-third of the market trading volume in a short period. The industry generally believes that this growth is mainly driven by the platform's mining rewards. Its flagship market, such as the prediction market “Will Satoshi Nakamoto move Bitcoin in 2025?”, has a single market trading volume reaching 1.28 billion USD, accounting for 32% of the total volume. Such topics would naturally be difficult to generate such abnormal trading activity. More notably, despite the massive trading volume, the open contracts of Opinion Labs only account for 14% of the total market volume, indicating that participation is not entirely driven by external factors.

In contrast, Polymarket's trading structure is more balanced, with sports, Crypto Assets, and political predictions accounting for 38%, 28%, and 17% of last week's volume respectively. Kalshi, on the other hand, shows a clear concentration in categories, with as much as 85.5% of the volume coming from sports events. Overall, sports predictions are gradually becoming the main driver of growth across all platforms.

The growth of sports drives new strategies, and the Sire protocol receives attention.

The rise of sports projects has also brought higher visibility to on-chain strategy protocols focused on the sports field. Among them, the Sire protocol positions itself as an “on-chain sports betting hedge fund” to attract market attention. This protocol utilizes the AI model of Score Subnet to extract information directly from game videos, searching for systematic inefficiencies in the odds. According to the latest data, its agents completed a transaction of $267,700 in scale with a treasury fund of $500,000 within 32 days, with an average win rate of 58%, and a weekly return approaching 10%. As FanDuel is also preparing to launch its own prediction product, the market will enter a new stage with possibilities of various platforms specializing in their respective areas or a single platform dominating.

Neutrl uses NUSD to open up OTC Trading revenue channels.

Among many innovative protocols, Neutrl has recently gained widespread attention. Its launched NUSD is a synthetic dollar based on OTC Trading arbitrage, market-neutral strategies, and capturing inefficiencies in funding rates, aiming to open up sources of returns that were previously hidden in the hands of institutions or professional traders to the general users.

The fund allocation of NUSD includes approximately 20% for undertaking OTC Trading discount tokens, and then hedging the market to lock in the price difference. The discount rate depends on the lock-up period, with a maximum of over 50%. This strategy particularly benefits from an oversupply of tokens in a bearish market.

About 60% adopts a delta neutral strategy similar to Ethena, holding spot and shorting perpetual contracts to earn funding fees and basis returns. The remaining funds are kept in stable reserves such as USDC, USDT, and USDe to support redemption demands and reduce fluctuation risks.

The team behind Neutrl has a dual background in traditional finance and DeFi, and has the support of the large OTC Trading platform STIX, making it easier to acquire discount token flow. However, risks remain, including the automatic deleveraging issue of short positions and the challenges of maintaining future returns after TVL growth. Nevertheless, Blockworks analysts believe Neutrl is one of the most groundbreaking protocols of the year, and its performance during the market expansion period will become an important indicator of innovation in Crypto Assets finance.

This article discusses the volume hitting new highs and the prediction market strengthening, with Neutrl emerging as the new generation OTC Trading dark horse, first appearing in Chain News ABMedia.