Investor Nic Carter: The prediction market is still immature and faces problems such as insider trading, market fragmentation, and a lack of natural buyers and sellers.

PANews reported on February 22 that investor and Coin Metrics founder Nic Carter published an article discussing the current state of prediction markets, arguing that while they are projected to become a cultural phenomenon by 2025/26, they still fall far short of the potential envisioned by their early proponents. He pointed out two major structural problems plaguing prediction markets.

• First, market fragmentation and the lack of natural buyers and sellers make it difficult to serve as an effective hedging tool ( the more favorable the market is to hedgers, the worse its liquidity . For the concept of "corporate hedging" to operate effectively, a large number of speculative noise traders are needed to effectively "subsidize" these short positions by shorting).
• Secondly, part of the value of market prediction lies in revealing insider information, but such behavior is usually illegal and may ultimately lead to traders losing confidence in the market.

Furthermore, he mentioned that current prediction markets primarily rely on sports betting for survival, but in non-sports sectors, insider trading scandals could raise questions about market fairness among traders, ultimately leading to user churn. While prediction markets have social value, Carter believes that realizing the vision of early proponents still faces significant challenges, and the future focus may be more on sports and cultural markets.