Why prediction markets will be bigger than memecoins with John Wang

Transcript

particularly like volume has grown around 700% since I joined Koshi 2 and a half months ago. >> GM, good morning and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show where billiondoll ideas meet real world receipts. I'm your host LG Ducet. Today is November 6th, 2025. Predict prediction markets aren't about gambling. They're about truth. Every day they take the chaos of politics and media and boil it down to one number. What the world really believes will happen next. And this week, without a headline, without a press briefing, the odds shifted, suddenly targeting a mid- November resolution to the government shutdown. You don't have to bet to understand what's coming. You just have to watch. Today's guest is John Wang, head of crypto at Kshi, and we're going

to discuss how they are staying competitive in a crowded landscape, what is converting users, and how much they're coming on to spend, and is it worth it for you, a smart and patient crypto investor, to get into this stuff. A reminder that Kelshi is available in 140 countries. They've raised $300 million at a $5 billion valuation. They've partnered with the NHL, Jupiter, and countless others. And last month in October, they did $4.5 billion of volume right after being featured on South Park. We're going to get into it in just a second. But first, we have uh a wait list for the Milk Road AI podcast, which starts next week. It's going to be twice a week. Guests, deep dives, tickers, all that great stuff. So, sign up for the wait list for that show right below.

Click on the link. And today's episode is brought to you by Bridge. Power your business with instant stable coin payments. No friction, no banks, just global finance made simple. Gemini credit card. Turn your everyday spending into Bitcoin. Stack sats without even thinking about it. And figure markets. Earn solid returns on your cash because sitting idle isn't a strategy. John, my man, what is going on, dude? Crazy week for you guys, especially with the the New York uh mayor elections, one of the biggest volume markets. How you feeling today? Hey, how's it going guys? Um, nice to see you LG. Thanks for having me on. It's been a very hectic week with the mayoral elections team without ballrooming. Um, but we're very very pumped. It's honestly like a everyday sort of thing here at Koshi where like

uh feels kind of like a trading floor and a media room and um like a you know YC startup at the same time. >> I bet. Yeah. What is the what are the current the mayoral one was one of the highest volume uh markets for sure. What's what's currently bringing in the volume over at Kouchy these days outside of that now that that's done? >> Yeah. Well, sports is huge for us for volume. Our open interest for politics is actually larger than sports now which is also cool. Um we have growing culture markets and crypto markets and mention markets. Those are really fun. So now you can trade reality TV shows and god, you know, obviously crypto has been um a

growing category as well. >> Oh wow, man. I wish I could bet on reality TV shows 20 years ago and I watched Survivor. I would have I would have put a lot of my allowance money down on that. Uh but let's get let's get into some a bit more serious stuff, a bit more serious talk about uh Kali and um you guys your your place kind of in the landscape. John, you recently compared prediction markets to memecoins back in your 20 token 2049 presentation. Tell me about that comparison. Yeah, look, I think memecoins and prediction markets are very different vehicles um used for very different things, but they're they're the same in the sense that like it is um a consumerf facing product that retail loves and it's um

they both have some roots in crypto and I think uh yeah, I I've I've loved to trade meme coins in the past and prediction markets as well. Um, memecoins are really great if you want to like trade on the varietality of a specific subject. Um, and all of the speculative energy kind of aggregates into one shelling point um, and you just plow it up to like, you know, infinity. But with prediction markets, um, it's a lot less cyclical, I would say. And uh it's a lot more based on you know just people sort of finding out like or people putting their opinions up putting

skin skin in the game and um um having markets resolve to the truth and everyone has an opinion on everything. So it's I would say a lot more accessible than the types of games that meme coins have devolved into which is like a bit less than you know what initially was bargained for. Initially it was um kind of this promise of like you can invest in the ver verality of something and now it's a bit more like wallet tracking or sniping and um you've kind of just purely due to like the game theoretics of how meme coins are launched it's very hard to prevent a lot of these things that um muddy like the

original game so to speak >> and so prediction markets I think are a lot harder to manipulate because they are always pegged to the truth ultimately at resolution. Um and so uh it's probably a much more sustainable model in my opinion. Um although I think both will be around. Is there I've seen a lot of people mention that you know obviously insiders can be an issue on prediction markets and and I'm sure that'll that'll evolve but even something like you're saying having reality shows you know those are those were filmed in advance right? So what's to prevent uh those people from going on? I'm sure we'll figure that out. But how big of a topic uh or how big of a concern is that right now uh for you guys and the team?

>> You mean insider trading or >> Yeah, insider trading or any you know that type anything like that. Yeah. >> Okay. Um well I think um Kashi is like unique in the sense that um we yeah we we like uh have like um identity verification for getting onto the platform. Um you know we do KYC and uh there are rules for every market public ones um that basically specify who cannot trade a market. So if you're like a politician or a member of like the US government, you cannot trade politics uh markets on Kashi.

>> Same applies if you're like part of the reality TV show team and we we do have surveillance to kind of make sure that people don't do that. Um so you know I think uh in the vast vast majority of cases this is like not an issue and we have pre preventative and enforce enforcement measures against it. Um and and we also do take care in like listing markets that we think don't have this as as much of a risk. So it's a bit of prevention and enforcement.

>> What does um what does adoption look like at Cali? because I I'm sure there's tons of new people signing up as you guys make headlines. Um, but like who who are those people and how are you onboarding them and trying to stretch outside of the crypto Twitter uh echo chamber that I feel like uh we live in, but obviously there's there's many more people who want to be using this outside of that. >> Yeah, I think that's one of the most fascinating things about markets is it really extends beyond the bubble that we're in in crypto Twitter. like normal people find it fascinating as well. And the only other types of products that we've kind of been able to get mainstream adoption with in that way has been Bitcoin and stable coins in my opinion. Um

and so yeah, I think uh the the go to market strategy for capturing that audience is um really intuitively it makes sense. it really is just like going after distribution channels that are not um just purely crypto ones. And so, you know, maybe it's like advertising on Instagram or um signing a deal with the NHL, which we did. And um um yeah, like uh implementing KI across different interfaces um that are more like accessible to mainstream consumers. Maybe it be news networks or social media channels or browsers or search sites.

>> What what kind of people are coming on, John? >> Yeah, I mean I mean I think it's it really is like a broad spectrum of people. Um, you know, I think there are people who come on to trade specific market categories, whether it be politics, sports, crypto, economics, culture. Um, they're all coming from different walks of life. And that's why I think prediction markets are so fascinating because the user base is very diverse. Um, everyone has an edge in any particular topic that they're an expert on or they have strong convictions in and um they yeah they koshi is kind of the public forum in which well it's it's more of a

public marketplace really in which they choose to express that opinion. >> Mhm. Stable coins are the biggest use case in crypto right now but let's be real using them on chain is still way too complex. That's exactly the problem Bridge is solving. Recently acquired by Stripe. Yep, that's Stripe. Bridge helps businesses send, store, accept, and launch stable coins instantly. Explore the future of global financial infrastructure at milkroad.com/bridge. Did you know you can earn Bitcoin without ever buying it? That's where the Gemini credit card comes in. Here's how it works. Earn up to 4% back in Bitcoin on gas, transit, and ride share. 3% on dining, 2% on groceries, and 1% on everything else. Use it just like any

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Do you guys see a spike in signups and in traffic when those things happen? >> Definitely. I think the um these are huge onboarding events for the company and for production markets in general. >> Um I think there's definitely like a steady grind of new users that come in every time every day. But every time there's a major event that captures their sphere of public attention and it's like a forcing function for people to be like wow okay this is this is time for me to download it check it out. Um and then you know if they find really great value in it all of them stay. In your opinion, John, um, and I mean, this is something you kind of hinted at in the preamble, and I'm assuming it's one

of the reasons why you signed on to to work with Kelshi, I think a lot of people want to know who are listening, are prediction markets kind of like a flash in the pan, or are they here to stay long-term? Obviously, we're seeing great investment. I personally think that they're here for a long time, but I would love to hear from you um, where this is going. How long are these things going to stick around? I think it's it's kind of inevitable now. Um the the industry has just sewed its seeds across all these different different distribution channels with all these different stakeholders both in traditional finance and crypto that are so so like uh convicted in making this big and really integrated into the traditional financial system um that it

it really has just too much momentum to stop. Uh so we're in a hypers scaling phase right now and uh I think the puck is definitely heading towards the regulated centralized exchange model as the foundation for global liquidity for prediction markets. Um, if you look at the big players, um, you know, Koshi is leading the way with CME, um, FanDuel, Crypto.com, Poly Market themselves, they're all allocating resources towards building like a regulated centralized exchange. Um, no one's really allocating resources towards a fully onchain offshore exchange. Um, and I think that's yeah, that that that does kind of

indicate where things are going. The reason why people are allocating resources in this way is because well each broker integration um is kind of like a 10x unlock. So you know for KD we we we have invested a ton into broker infrastructure including like winning big deals such as Robin Hood and Weeble. Um, we have a dozen more in the pipeline that are um going to be released soon. And I think each of those are huge unlocks for network effects um and liquidity and uh really like an an ono like a sort of like an offshore exchange um is is not going to be able to compete

with that in liquidity. Um, and so I think the the the the where like the way that prediction markets are heading, they're going to be more and more embedded into mainstream consciousness and traditional finance financial systems. Um, I think they're going to be more and more embedded into large Fortune 500 companies um as like frontends and also into crypto the crypto ecosystem. Um, I think crypto will be able to help by a ton in terms of turning Koshi from an app into a full-fledged developer uh platform and ecosystem.

And um it's also going to be providing like a yeah a lot of like new power like power users um and um financial primitives to the Kouchy platform. Um, generally I think though that if if you want to provide the best experience to crypto users, you want to have them be able to in some way access or um benefit from the liquidity that gets aggregated in these uh regulated exchanges models.

>> So h how is John? How how is crypto part of all this? cuz I think that's what been one of my questions for prediction markets is why why do we need crypto as a backend to prediction markets when we've been using sports books offchain not even related to to to crypto for a long time with still pretty like you know pretty smooth results. >> Yeah. Well um I think like crypto is really you know pivotal for prediction markets in Koshi in a few ways. One way is um turning Kouchi from like an app into a developer platform is like a huge goal of mine in coming into 2026 and it

really isn't possible without crypto. Um, you know, the crypto ecosystem has defined like the playbook for building um like apps on top of financial rails via like their global permissionless and programmable um rails. And I think really it's like quite critical to this goal. It's not possible without crypto. Um secondly, I think there's like an insane power user uh set of people in crypto that live and breathe cutting edge financial technology every day. And this user base is like uh goes hand inhand with

building out those new financial primitives and frontends that may be more experimental and need power users to adopt them and give them feedback and help them grow. Um, so those are the two ways that I think that are really cool. The final way is like we went international recently, a few weeks ago. Um, and stable coins are key to our international growth strategy. It's the easiest way to um, send money into the United States um, or in US dollars. And uh it's it's just like the most uh frictionless way to grow our deposits

like deposits on an international basis. >> Khi did u $4.5 billion dollar of volume in October. What what does success look like for you guys, right? Like how does how do you measure what is good? Are you guys aiming for volume? Obviously, you like Cal needs to make money, but what what you know what are the pillars for success, let's say over the next 12 months for a platform like Cali?

>> Yeah, I think um volume is definitely one key metric. open liquid uh open interest via like liquidity is um also another key metric and both of these things specifically like volume has grown around 700% since I joined Khi 2 and a half months ago. So it's been quite like a meteoric growth trajectory. Um and uh I I don't see any signs of stopping really. So we're growing at a at a rapid rate rapid rate. Um and all we can do is is just not break.

>> Okay. So the measure for success is just survive the uh the ultimate the volume that's coming. Do you guys plan many other uh like what what kind of features are coming in Cali like social features, mobile app? What are you guys doing to kind of really push the envelope and and make the experience a lot smoother? >> Yeah. Well, our mobile app is um yeah really great. I think it's like quite smooth and um it's hovers around seventh on the app store uh for the past few months >> in in terms of the finance category. So >> um >> yeah well well well into like the the growth phase for direct to consumer as well. Um we are definitely working on

improving our social features. Um improving um even like our API is already quite robust but we want to make it more um even more like featureful um in in data and um the types of data that you can pull. Um, you for crypto markets, we would love to roll out new crypto markets. Um, I'm really really excited about like the price markets on majors. So, I think they're almost like a Trojan horse crypto options. Um, prediction markets are kind of like making that finally accessible to people. you don't have to

think about all the Greeks um or like all these kind of like fancy um option strategies and you really can just like look at this prediction market and say like I think Bitcoin's going to be over this price by this date and um you can execute that. Um, so I think there's um a high chance that these types of markets could get more and more liquid and usable um and really be seen as like a like a new financial instrument in crypto.

>> What is like a category that maybe doesn't exist yet or isn't very popular right now on Khi that you could see dominating volume in like five years from now? I think what I just mentioned is um something that could be dominating volume um which is like these crypto price markets. But beyond that um I really love mentions markets. I think they're really fun and I think if you sort of project out like the growth of live streaming and um live entertainment and stuff uh I think there could be more and more instances of mentions markets uh

becoming like a repeatable consumer pattern. >> How do you feel about the Brian Armstrong uh earnings report the other day? And for those that don't know, and I I mean, sorry to bring up your competitor, but um Brian Armstrong, CEO and founder of Coinbase, at the end of his earnings call for Q3 the other day, wrapped it up by saying, "I see that we have a mentions prediction market." Uh so I'm just going to say the words that are in here and then he just rattled them off. How does that how does that make you guys feel? I don't even know if that's like insider trading. That's just somewhat uh kind of hitting the the nail on the head and uh I guess trying to make some some uh some prediction market participants happy.

>> Yeah. Well, I I didn't think unless Brian had a position on it himself. I didn't think that counts as like insider trading. >> I don't think he needs to have a position on stuff like that. I think he's he's doing okay. But you never know. Some people do it. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think uh that honestly that's like the I I didn't follow that one too closely. That's like the extent of my knowledge on that. Uh yeah, why do people invest in real estate? Because it spits off cash flow. But I'm not here to manage rental properties. That's why I'm looking at Figure Markets. Their new democratized prime product backs your money with real cash flowing assets and returns up to 9% APY. It's the first real world asset borrow lend pool built for everyone, not just institutions.

Ready to lend like a bank and get more than the 5% A is offering you? Download the Figure Markets app today and get 9% on your idol funds. Go to milkroad.com/figurearkets. How do you get how for somebody who is maybe looking to make their first trade? What's some advice for them uh to kind of sign up and to, you know, look for something that they're comfortable with? How do you make them feel like kind of safe and make it feel easy and make it make it a good experience for a new user?

>> Yeah. Well, I think one one thing that we do is we give a interest on all open positions and cash balances. That's uh I think nice and friendly. Um, we give them deposit bonuses sometimes if they're referred by someone. Um, which allows them to, you know, onboard and play around with the app. I think the fact that there's like a bustling social community on Koshi also makes it easier for people to on board because they see a lot of other people, you know, doing actions and um, you can kind of learn a bit from that. Um, but really, yeah, we just we've been redesigning the app and

we've been pushing new new updates out that make everything a lot, you know, more intuitive to navigate. >> Is there anything that users are asking for right now that you guys keep saying no to? It's a hard question, but there is there there must be a feature or something that people are begging for uh that maybe for regulatory or something you guys can't do or vice versa, John, as well if there's something that you guys have uh rolled out recently due to community feedback. Would love to hear about that as well. >> Right. Well, yeah. I think uh a lot of people have been like wanting to access prediction markets on Salana and um we well Jupiter launched something really cool that um utilizes couch liquidity um

so that people can trade prediction markets in a very liquid way um on Salana um from their like non-custodial wallet. And so this is like a this is something that people have been asking for a lot and um I think it's really cool and um I hope for it to grow more. >> How do you guys view competition at Kelshi? Obviously Poly Market you guys are neck andneck with um volume and probably user adoption. Um you're I I would say you know Kelsey probably dominating a little bit more mind share especially after a lot of big media events. Um, do you guys see them as a competitor or is it more of a, you know, a rising tide lifts all ships? You don't have to speak to that, John. Maybe you

can't talk about it. >> I No, I I think like these types of comparative competitive dynamics are really um honestly really fun to be a part of. You kind of push each other. Um, they they have like a great marketing team. I think um you know Koshi is still uh I would say by far leading the industry in terms of you know fundamentals, metrics, product velocity um you know caliber of team but um you know Poly Market is is great as well. I I think uh as a crypto native you know I've been I've watched them I've watched both companies for many many years. Um, so I'm just really excited to be a part of this journey and uh I think you know for whatever like you know if it makes it more exciting

for people to like watch from the sidelines um that that's awesome, >> dude. Absolutely, man. I think we're really interested in that. I mean it's it's it's to me it's really the only two names but um we'll we'll continue to watch and I feel like you guys really push each other. One thing that you guys have done really well is bring on uh a lot of influencers and I feel like John, you've been a huge part of that. What is the appetite there to sign them on? What what what maybe not what do those deals look like, but what does that what does that process look like to bring them on? Um and has that been successful so far?

>> Well, uh I think this strategy is kind of like a way for us to um show the value of Koshi in the crypto sphere. Um I think previously even before I joined uh cow shoes like didn't have a great footprint in the crypto community and I think um having folks who um ultimately like we're like the the goal really with this wasn't to just pay people to kind of I don't know shill koshi or something. um like it it that's like obviously it's kind of like the first assumption that you'd have, but um you many of these people that are kind of like uh affiliates of Kosis,

they're not they're just like they're all so rich that like you can't pay them enough money to show like a product and really like um any any like sort of quote unquote affiliate that you see um Mercy has had like the choice of choosing between different prediction markets. as their partners and they chose us and so I think that's a testament to like >> there's a reason why they chose Koshi as a cryptonative. Um there's there's a reason why they believe that Koshi's going to succeed in the prediction markets industry and keep on leading.

Um, and I think that um, really like our our our strategy here is is kind of like proddding people to um, you know, give us a look and see what it's all about. And then if they really do believe and um, are excited to be part of the journey, uh, bringing them on to tell the story is a no-brainer for us. >> What else do you have planned as head of crypto? Yeah, I think we're going to be deepening the onchain um ecosystem strategy. I think we're going to be inc increasing the liquidity and usage of the crypto markets on Koshi. Um improving improving our like payment deposit flow like crypto deposit flows

amongst various other things. I think those those are are my biggest priorities. >> Awesome. John, before we wrap out, are there any final sneak peeks you can give us of what is come to what is to come to Koshi this year or in 2026? >> I think uh having your eyes peeled for Solana and Koshi is something that you should look out for. >> Oh, tell me more. Or maybe you can't tell me more. Anything any anything else you can say about that? >> I'm good.

>> Okay, John Wang, thank you for coming on, man. Uh, best of luck to you and the team at Kelshi. Uh, and folks, if you want to check it out, I think it's just kshi.com. Go place your or you know what, just go peruse. Just go look at the markets. I know a lot of you guys are curious about this kind of stuff. So, if you haven't done it yet, go and check out Kelshi. John, thank you so much, man. Best of luck to you and the team. And make sure you guys tune back in here on the Milk Road Show, the Daily Crypto Show, where we have a lot of fun and we chat about a lot of these emerging primitives. We will see you guys next time. Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're trading each event? Subscribe to our

channel and join the Milkro Daily and Pro Newsletters and start investing like the top 1%. This show is for educational purposes only. Nothing we say is financial advice. Investing is risky. Never invest more than you can afford to lose.