Hey all, Liam here. 

Travis McGhee is betting the house that his company’s app will become ubiquitous at your next Oscar’s party. 

At least, that’s the pitch. 

After Crypto.com announced a new partnership with the entertainment news outlet Hollywood.com in November, the Singapore-headquartered crypto exchange’s global head of capital markets expects its prediction market product and big-ticket film hype to be a match made in heaven. 

“Oscar parties are massive, right?” McGhee told me. “I’ve been to a few parties where you’re constantly talking about who’s going to win Best Actor, who’s going to win Best Actress. You’re constantly trying to forecast.”

Crypto.com’s prediction markets will even be embedded directly into Hollywood.com’s articles so readers can bet on which new film George Clooney stars in while reading the latest interview with the 64-year-old actor.

Entertainment is just one niche. Crypto.com is going all in on prediction markets. 

Via a slew of recent tie-ups, including with US President Donald Trump’s social media platform, called Truth Social, Crypto.com is spinning up event-based wagering on questions around sports, pop culture, politics, and traditional financial markets. 

“I look at this expansion into another asset class that complements, in a lot of ways, crypto,” he said, highlighting the platform’s more than 152 million users who trade digital assets. “Providing them that access to crypto, while simultaneously providing them access to new opportunities, is important to our business.” 

For years, prediction markets have let users win money for accurately forecasting the outcomes of any number of events, from the US presidential election to whether a missing submarine would be found. 

Volumes and open interest on Kalshi and Polymarket, the two market leaders, dipped briefly following the election. Now, that money has come rushing back in as sports seasons pick up this autumn. 

Weekly notional volume for prediction markets in November hit roughly $2 billion, according to data collated by pseudonymous user Dash. Last week, that figure reached $3 billion and is buttressed primarily by sporting events. 

Still, growth is far from a given. 

In fact, both Crypto.com and Kalshi are mired in legal disputes with state gaming commissions over their sports-event contracts. 

Though both companies are registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, local authorities allege that these products constitute unlicensed sports betting and thus fall within their jurisdiction.

Gambling authorities in Nevada, in particular, pose a huge challenge for them. 

The Nevada Gaming Control Board issued Crypto.com a cease-and-desist letter in May, ordering the company to stop its offerings in the state. The crypto firm sued the NGCB in June, and a federal judge denied its request for a preliminary injunction in October. 

Crypto.com stopped offering sports event contracts in Nevada on November 3 while it appeals. 

Ohio and Maryland gaming authorities have issued similar orders, too. 

Shouldn’t the expensive and cumbersome litigation on a state-by-state basis pose a significant obstacle to Crypto.com’s growth ambitions? 

Not quite, says McGhee.

“I firmly believe that event contracts are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the CFTC. At the end of the day, the federal courts will rule in our favour,” he said.

He hopes to get the integrations with Hollywood.com, Truth Social, and MyPrize prediction markets up and running by January 2026.  

ICYMI

• Bittrex bankruptcy filings reveal $500m of suspicious transactions
  Bittrex’s bankruptcy filings are riddled with tens of thousands of contradictory, suspicious, and improbable transactions, potentially impacting the nearly 2 million customers who held funds on the crypto exchange before it collapsed in 2023.

• Bank of England defends ‘multi-moneyverse’ plan after Farage’s ‘dinosaur bureaucrats’ jab
  The Reform Party leader Farage labelled the Bank of England as being run by “dinosaur bureaucrats” who aim to stifle crypto innovation in Britain by capping the amount of stablecoins people are allowed to hold.

• Samourai Wallet dev gets max sentence in a case closely watched by privacy advocates
  Samourai Wallet co-founder Keonne Rodriguez has been sentenced to five years in prison, his attorney confirmed to DL News.

Latest from DL Research

Story of the week

Tornado Cash volumes hit record high as wallets associated with Richard Heart pour in $400m

The amount of money sloshing around in the privacy-enhancing tool Tornado Cash has never been higher.

“Right now, it appears a few big ‘whales’ are all dumping into Tornado Cash,” Taylor Monahan, the principal security researcher for MetaMask, told DL News.

Over the last 48 hours, nearly two dozen addresses linked to controversial crypto entrepreneur Richard Heart have been depositing millions of Ether into Tornado Cash, according to Monahan, wallet identifier Arkham Intelligence, and onchain analytics reviewed by DL News.

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Are you ready for the wallet-based economy, anon?

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