In his blog, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin discusses how prediction markets like Polymarket could extend far beyond election betting, potentially transforming fields such as social media, news, science, governance, and more.
He refers to this approach as “info finance”—a system designed to gather insights by creating markets that extract valuable information from participants.
Buterin explains info finance as a process where you identify a specific fact you want to uncover and then structure a market to best retrieve that data from users. As an example, he mentions Polymarket’s recent predictions for the U.S. elections, where it accurately assessed Trump’s odds of winning at 60/40, and later showed a high probability for his success even while some media continued to project a different outcome.
For Buterin, platforms like Polymarket serve a dual purpose: people can place bets while others can analyze the predictions as an informative resource. Buterin himself relies on Polymarket data as part of his own information-gathering strategy, stating it helps him quickly become better informed.
Looking ahead, Buterin anticipates that artificial intelligence will “turbocharge” info finance in the coming decade by integrating with prediction markets, especially in decentralized organizations like DAOs. He points out that DAOs face challenges with decision-making overload, often leading to over-reliance on delegation, which risks centralization.
In Buterin’s vision, prediction markets could help DAOs predict outcomes for less critical decisions, leaving major decisions for occasional votes by DAO members, thereby improving governance and minimizing trust issues. With lower blockchain fees, he sees info finance as an emerging tool with the potential to solve significant problems in decentralized governance.
The first week of July brings several important developments in the United States that could influence both traditional markets and the cryptocurrency sector.
Ric Edelman, one of the most influential voices in personal finance, has radically revised his stance on crypto allocation. After years of cautious optimism, he now believes that digital assets deserve a far larger share in investment portfolios than ever before.
In the case involving Terraform Labs and its co-founder Do Hyeong Kwon, the defense has asked the Federal Court for the Southern District of New York to extend the deadline for pretrial filings by two weeks, pushing it beyond the original date of July 1, 2025.
Coinbase has emerged as the best-performing stock in the S&P 500 for June, climbing 43% amid a surge of bullish momentum driven by regulatory clarity, product innovation, and deeper institutional interest in crypto.