Prediction markets logged a striking surge in June, and the catalyst was unmistakable: the 2026 FIFA World Cup. According to DefiLlama, Kalshi processed nearly $9.4 billion in trading volume during the month, compared with about $5.3 billion in May. Polymarket International also rose to roughly $4.3 billion from approximately $3.5 billion the previous month.

The tournament began on June 11 and is the first FIFA World Cup to expand to 48 teams. Earlier coverage from CNBC reported that the competition became the biggest driver of prediction market activity in June, citing Dune Analytics data showing record notional volumes on both Kalshi and Polymarket.

Key takeaways

• Kalshi’s June trading volume nearly reached $9.4B, up from about $5.3B in May, with the World Cup serving as the primary driver.
• Polymarket International climbed to about $4.3B in June from roughly $3.5B in May, mirroring broader interest in football-related contracts.
• World Cup Round-of-16 matchups showed especially heavy participation, with some markets generating tens of millions in volume.
• The growth in trading volume is occurring alongside intensifying U.S. legal and regulatory pressure on prediction markets.

World Cup expansion meets prediction market demand

Football has long been a natural fit for markets where participants want to express views on outcomes. But this year’s tournament offers a larger menu of games and implications. With the World Cup expanding to 48 teams—up from 32 in previous editions—the number of match results, advancement scenarios, and related questions naturally multiplies, giving traders more opportunities to place event-linked bets.

CNBC’s reporting, referenced in the source, framed the World Cup as the dominant driver of June activity. It tied the surge to Dune Analytics figures indicating record notional trading volumes on both platforms, aligning with the month-over-month jump visible in DefiLlama’s protocol-level data.

Round-of-16 matchups pull in the highest volume

As the tournament moved into the knockout stage, trading activity concentrated further around high-stakes fixtures. One example highlighted in the source was Canada’s Round of 16 match against Morocco, scheduled for Saturday. At the time of writing, the match had generated over $48 million in trading volume on Kalshi and over $26.8 million on Polymarket.

Other advancement markets also attracted notable attention in the U.S. Round of 16 matchup. The source states that on Kalshi, a market on which team would advance generated more than $2.1 million in volume as of Saturday. On Polymarket, a comparable market had pulled in around $1.6 million by the same time.

For market participants, these figures underline a practical point: the World Cup doesn’t just bring overall volume—it can also concentrate liquidity into specific, time-sensitive contracts where traders rush to price developments and adjust their expectations as lineups, tactical decisions, and match conditions become clearer.

Trading growth collides with expanding legal pressure in the U.S.

Even as competition-linked volumes climb, prediction markets in the United States remain mired in a rapidly evolving legal debate. The source notes that by March, nearly a dozen U.S. states had taken action against companies including Kalshi and Polymarket. Some states aimed to halt prediction markets, while others sought to bring them under existing gambling laws and state tax frameworks.

Federal regulators have pushed back. The source points to a statement from CFTC Chair Michael Selig, referenced via a CFTC press release, who accused states of pursuing “illegal enforcement actions” against federally regulated exchanges. Selig argued that Congress gave the CFTC sole authority over commodity derivatives markets, which would include prediction markets, warning: “To any state that seeks to nullify federal law and seize authority over these markets, we will see you in court.”

The disagreement has also moved beyond agencies and into the broader legislative arena. In June, casino operators, tribal organizations, and labor groups urged Congress to carve sports-event contracts out of the CFTC’s authority through an amendment to the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act—arguing those contracts should remain governed by state gambling laws and existing gaming oversight.

Regulators overseas: product substance, not labels

While the U.S. fight has centered on regulatory jurisdiction and enforcement, Europe has emphasized how products are categorized. The source cites an ESMA reminder issued on Friday that many event contracts may already fall under existing restrictions tied to binary options.

Crucially, ESMA’s position—as presented in the source—is that whether a product is regulated depends on its characteristics rather than the presence of an “event contract” label. That means platforms and market operators face a compliance challenge that is less about terminology and more about how specific contract mechanics are structured.

For traders and builders, the key question now is whether the World Cup-driven volume spike will translate into sustained engagement once the tournament ends—or whether liquidity fades as the legal and regulatory backdrop remains unresolved. Readers should watch for further court activity and potential legislative movement around CLARITY, since those outcomes could materially shape what kinds of contracts are allowed, where, and under what rules.

On July 7, 3 weeks after the largest IPO in history, SPCX enters the Nasdaq-100 with billions in passive index buying behind it. The more interesting market is the one Wall Street does not run: tokenized shares on Solana, perpetual futures that priced the listing before bankers did, a $557 million subscription campaign that had to refund almost everyone, and 18,712 Bitcoin sitting on the rocket company’s balance sheet.

Index inclusions are usually the sleepiest events in finance. A committee updates a list, passive funds rebalance, and the market moves on. SpaceX joining the Nasdaq-100 before the open on Tuesday, July 7, is not sleepy, partly because the company only went public on June 12 and partly because the estimated $4.3 billion in passive buying tied to the inclusion is arriving into one of the strangest market structures any stock has ever had.

Gold’s modern market history reflects decades of price swings shaped by inflation, interest rates, central bank actions, and geopolitical events.

In open markets, gold has only been on the free market for the last 50-some years. Until the month of August 1971, its value had been pegged at $35 per ounce under the Bretton Woods monetary system. 

However, the Nixon administration gave up on dollar convertibility to gold, which put the metal into a market that it had not known in living memory. The history that ensued is one of the more instructive in the history of prices in modern finance, driven by oil shocks, conscious rate policy, concerted institutional action, and periodic crises not foreseen by most of the actors until they actually happened.

The 1970s: Gold’s first decade without a fixed price

There were no fireworks following the move to a market-determined price. However, inflation rates in the Western world rose dramatically during the 1973 Arab oil embargo, and the gold chart started to move in a decade-defining manner. The metal was up to nearly $195 per ounce by the end of 1974, a nearly fivefold increase in three years. In 1975, the U.S. government legalized private gold ownership for American citizens, which brought some profit-taking and halted the upward trend for a short while. But structural factors – weak dollar, high inflation and growing geopolitical tension – held strong.

In January 1980, gold hit $850.00 an ounce due to the Iranian Revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and a series of inflationary pressure events during the Carter administration. That would be the first time the level is not matched in real, inflation-adjusted dollars in more than 30 years, something that is often overlooked when people talk about the bull market of the 2000s just in nominal terms.

The 1980s and 1990s: Two decades of consistent decline

The period since gold peaked in 1980 has been one of the most instructive in recent gold history, not for any one event, but rather because of the persistent conditions that held gold prices down for 20 years.

The Volcker rate environment

Under Paul Volcker, the Federal Reserve hiked rates hard to squelch “embedded inflation”. This did work, but the environment, with real rates quite positive and a strengthening dollar bringing in capital to U.S. assets, was fundamentally not good for a commodity that did not yield. From 1980, gold dropped consistently and found a range of $300-$500 during most of the decade. This was not caused by any one factor but by a combination of macro factors that were unfavorable to the metal.

Institutional selling in the 1990s

Another big negative wind was the coordinated central bank selling in the 1990s. A number of European governments decided to cut their gold stocks because they were unproductive and produced no return. Known publicly in advance, the UK’s auction of 415 tonnes between 1999 and 2002 took place close to what proved to be multi-decade low prices and became a benchmark in reserve management debates, which still exist today. The larger picture of Europe’s institutional sell added to the pressures on prices.

The 1999 low and the Washington agreement

In 1999, gold was almost $252 an ounce at the bottom. The Washington Agreement on gold, negotiated by European central banks in September this year, contained annual limits on the volume of sales and assisted in stabilizing the cycle low. By this time, the sentiment on gold was universally negative, and as the next decade proved, this was a good contrarian indicator.

The pattern that defined this era

The 1980s and 1990s form a pattern that can be seen numerous times on the longer time frame. Gold was found to underperform when the following occurred at the same time:

• Interest rates were meaningfully positive for a considerable amount of time.
• General trust in the financial system and in equity markets was largely not affected.
• The U.S. dollar was structurally strong on a trade-weighted basis
• Institutional reserve holders were net sellers

This combination is not a mechanical rule, but it did occur with uncanny uniformity during two successive decades. It also shows why the lows of gold in the latter part of the 1990s (now appearing to be extraordinary) seemed to be reasonable for the times.

The 2000s: A new bull market, then a crisis that surprised both ways

Gold’s bounce from the 1999 low was subdued initially. The metal started to rise from about $270 per ounce in 2001. The dot-com bubble burst, bringing into doubt the valuation of equities; the events of 9/11 drove up geopolitical risk premiums in all markets, and the U.S. fiscal budget increased dramatically to pay for military operations outside the country. The general trend of a falling dollar was an underlying theme.

In 2007, gold reached $800 an ounce for the first time since 1980. Then the financial crisis of 2008 had a chain reaction, surprising many observers. gold was hit hard in the last few months of 2008 as institutions began to dump assets in all asset classes to recoup losses and satisfy redemptions, and gold was no different. But with monetary easing having begun globally and with several major central banks applying near-zero rates as well as large-scale asset purchases, real interest rates went deeply negative, and gold began to rise again with a vengeance. It was at about $1,920 per ounce by September 2011, more than seven times higher than the 1999 low.

The following table outlines the general price ranges and main factors for each decade:

The 2010s: A steep correction and a gradual return

When it peaked in 2011, not many expected gold to fall so much and so far. The metal’s annual decline was its worst since 1981 after the Fed indicated it would begin to slow asset purchases, which sent real yields higher and took one of gold’s primary props out from under the market. As of December 2015, prices had dropped to approximately $1,050 per ounce. The mining industry balance sheets were seriously strained, and analysts were generally negative.

An adjustment from that trough was slow and took place due to a number of factors — partly the weaker geopolitical demand from Brexit uncertainty, the U.S.-China trade tensions, and the uncertainty surrounding some of the world’s larger economies, and partly due to a structural change in how central banks manage their reserves. Emerging market institutions also started to add gold to their holdings in amounts never again witnessed in the modern history of gold demand: gold purchases in the countries of the modern data series exceeded 1,000 tonnes per year for the first time in more than 55 years. By mid-2019, gold had made a comeback, trading well over $1,500 per ounce and reclaiming the ground lost over the years.

The 2020s: New records and more nuanced drivers

COVID-19 has changed the global monetary landscape quickly and dramatically and gold prices have reacted as such. The metal’s historical record indicated that conditions in the form of near-zero interest rates and large-scale fiscal stimulus programs and significant monetary expansion would be favorable for the metal. Gold’s intraday price in August 2020 breached the $2,000-an-ounce threshold for the first time in history, topping out at about $2,075.

The inflation surge and why gold’s response was muted

The price reaction to the surge in inflation in 2021 and its following years has been weaker than many observers expected and there’s a reason why. The link between gold and inflation is often misunderstood and misinterpreted in the media. The message of the longer history is that the metal has been a better indicator of real interest rates, that is, it tends to do best when the inflation is higher than the nominal yield and real interest rates are negative. The nominal rate environment in many markets changed when central banks responded aggressively in 2022-2023, lifting nominal rates above the rate of price increases. That offset also weighed on gold’s ability to rally despite the high levels of headline inflation, as the metal spent much of 2022 trading between $1,700 and $2,000.

From $2,500 to $3,000 and the current environment

Gold ventured into fresh nominal highs in late 2023 as rate expectations eased, geopolitical fragmentation continued, and the structural central bank buying by reserve holders wanting to unwind dollar-denominated holdings continued. It crossed $2,500 in 2024 and breached $3,000 per ounce in early 2025. Today, prices are still at historically high levels as of mid-2026. The share of gold in global foreign exchange reserves has been gradually improving in recent years and has turned the tide in the long-term structural deterioration of the precious metal’s share, as several major countries are actively diversifying their reserves away from dollar-dominated portfolios.

What the full 50-year chart actually reveals

There are 50 years of price data to provide context but not certainty. This chart doesn’t show a consistent cycle or a reliable formula to follow in the future, but it does show which conditions have been reliable indicators of a significant price move and which areas confident stories have consistently missed.

Historical factors that historically signal bull markets in gold are:

• When the real interest rate is very negative, that is when the nominal interest rate is less than the rate of meaningful inflation
• Widespread loss of trust in key financial institutions or money systems
• Structural, persistent dollar weakness (trade-weighted basis)
• Near-term crises with no immediate resolution prospects (geopolitical crises)
• A significant continuous net purchase from institutional reserve buyers
• Monetary expansion that brings up issues of long-term purchasing power of currency
• Increased uncertainty about statements of sovereign debt paths in key economies

Factors that have been a drag on the price:

• With positive real interest rates, yield-bearing assets have a clear competitive edge.
• Favorable and sustainable financial position and widespread trust in equities.
• A structurally strong dollar combined with contained and declining inflation

Important turning points in the 50-year history:

1971: Fixed pricing ends, market discovery of gold begins, $35

1980: $850 peak as a result of compounding crises and entrenched inflation

1999: Price bottoms near $252, and the bearish consensus is at its lowest ebb.

2011: $1920 – end of the second major bull run with monetary conditions returning to normal levels.

2020: the first year to cross $2,000 in a pandemic environment

2025: Gold breaks through $3,000 and heads into new nominal space on structural and macro forces.

2026: Institutional demand for safe haven reaches an all-time high of $5,600.

History also reveals the challenges that have historically befallen overarching narratives. During the first stages of the crisis in 2008, gold gave back, just as it is usually considered a safe haven, and then rose when policy took action. Despite a strong inflation period in 2022, it still underperformed for much of the year. It fell over ten years for two decades, and recovery was called for each and every one, but the calls always proved to be premature.

Being honest about reading the 50-year chart means taking into account the periods when gold acted out of the ordinary and when it did what it was supposed to do. The price is a combination of financial policy, institutional flows, currency dynamics, and investor positions — all of which are interdependent and all of which are complex and cannot be summarized by a one-size-fits-all explanatory variable that is consistent through every time period.

Prediction markets have found an unexpected new liquidity magnet: the 2026 FIFA World Cup. According to DefiLlama data cited by CNBC, trading volume surged across major US prediction platforms after the tournament began on June 11—at a time when the sector is simultaneously facing intensified regulatory pressure.

DefiLlama shows Kalshi handled nearly $9.4 billion in trading volume in June, up from about $5.3 billion in May. Polymarket International also rose to roughly $4.3 billion in June, compared with about $3.5 billion the month prior. CNBC reported that the World Cup became the biggest driver of prediction market volumes in June, with Dune Analytics highlighting record notional trading activity on both Kalshi and Polymarket.

Key takeaways

• Kalshi’s June trading volume nearly hit $9.4 billion, rising from about $5.3 billion in May, as World Cup activity accelerated.
• Polymarket climbed to about $4.3 billion in June from roughly $3.5 billion in May, also pointing to the tournament as a major catalyst.
• High-stakes World Cup knockout matchups are generating tens of millions in daily volume on both exchanges, with some fixtures surpassing $48 million on Kalshi.
• The growth is unfolding alongside escalating US legal and regulatory disputes over whether prediction markets should fall under federal derivatives authority or state gambling frameworks.

World Cup liquidity floods prediction platforms

The jump in activity aligns with the tournament’s expanded format. The 2026 World Cup is the first FIFA edition featuring 48 teams, up from 32 previously. That increase has effectively created more matches, more outcomes, and more trading opportunities—especially around qualification and match advancement markets.

Knockout-stage matchups appear to be particularly attractive to traders. For example, Canada’s Round of 16 match against Morocco—scheduled for Saturday—had generated more than $48 million in trading volume on Kalshi and over $26.8 million on Polymarket at the time of reporting.

The pattern extends to the US Round of 16. Kalshi’s market on which team advances recorded more than $2.1 million in volume, while a comparable Polymarket market attracted around $1.6 million as of Saturday. While these figures are smaller than the Canada–Morocco matchup, they show how quickly attention can shift between fixtures as brackets lock in.

What matters for market participants is not just overall volume, but where it concentrates. World Cup-related contracts create repeatable, time-bound narratives that traders can model—often with clear deadlines and an intense news cycle. That combination helps explain why notional activity can spike even for markets that are narrower than broad political or macro event themes.

Regulatory pressure rises as trading expands

The World Cup-driven surge is occurring against a backdrop of growing controversy over prediction markets in the United States. Earlier this year, Cointelegraph noted that by March nearly a dozen US states had moved against companies including Kalshi and Polymarket. Some states sought to halt such markets, while others argued they should be brought under existing gambling laws and related tax regimes.

At the federal level, regulators have pushed back. In the following month, CFTC Chair Michael Selig accused states of pursuing what he called “illegal enforcement actions” against federally regulated exchanges. In remarks reported via a CFTC press release, Selig argued that Congress granted the agency sole authority over commodity derivatives markets, which can include prediction markets, warning that any state effort to nullify federal law could lead to court challenges.

This is not merely an abstract legal dispute. For platforms, regulatory uncertainty can influence which contracts can be offered to different users, how product structures are shaped, and what compliance costs may look like in practice. For traders, the risk is that market access could change rapidly depending on court outcomes or agency interpretations.

Congress and Europe weigh in with different approaches

The debate is also expanding beyond regulators and into Congress. In June, casino operators, tribal organizations, and labor groups urged lawmakers to amend the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act by removing sports-event contracts from the CFTC’s authority. Their argument, as described in Cointelegraph reporting, is that sports contracts should instead remain under state gambling laws and existing gaming oversight.

Europe’s approach is different. In a recent reminder, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) told firms that many event contracts may already fall under existing restrictions tied to binary options. ESMA’s stance emphasized that whether a product is regulated depends on its characteristics rather than merely the label “event contract.” For market operators contemplating cross-border expansion, that distinction is crucial: product design details, not marketing terminology, can determine regulatory treatment.

Taken together, the picture is uneven. The US environment appears to hinge on jurisdiction—whether prediction markets are treated as commodity derivatives under federal authority or as gambling under state law. In Europe, the focus shifts more toward how the contract functions under binary-options-like rules. These differences can shape where liquidity travels, which venues can scale fastest, and how quickly new market formats can be launched.

What to watch next

With the World Cup supplying an immediate, high-volume catalyst, the key question for investors and builders is whether these trading surges translate into longer-term user growth or just prove how concentrated liquidity becomes during major events. Just as importantly, readers should track how ongoing legal challenges—and potential congressional or European regulatory clarifications—affect market access, contract structures, and the durability of platform volume beyond the tournament.

Bitcoin climbed above $63,000 in U.S. morning hours Saturday, up 1.4% over 24 hours and 3.6% on the week, per CoinDesk data, its highest in two weeks and a full reversal of the losses that closed out June.

XRP led the day’s majors, up 5.3% to $1.18 and nearly 10% on the week, a move that lifted it past the USDC stablecoin to fifth place by market value at about $73 billion.

The gain came alongside onchain data showing XRP holders at their deepest average losses on record – the kind of washed-out positioning some traders buy against. Ether added 3.2% on the day to about $1,793, up 11.5% over seven days, while dogecoin rose 2.6% and solana held near $82.50 with a 13.2% weekly gain.

The surge extended a week built on a friendlier macro turn. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s comment that inflation risks have come down, a soft June jobs report and a squeeze on bearish traders carried bitcoin from below $60,000 to above $63,000 in five sessions.

Trading was thin on Saturday with U.S. markets shut for the Independence Day holiday, the kind of liquidity that exaggerates moves in both directions.

Bitcoin entered the third quarter at 21-month lows and has now recovered the ground lost in June’s final slide. Whether the momentum holds turns on the coming U.S. inflation print and on whether buying continues once U.S. desks return from the holiday.

He authored Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 361 (BIP-361), which outlines a phased migration to quantum-resistant cryptography.

“The goal is to create incentives and deadlines so users, exchanges, custodians, wallets and institutions actually migrate in a timely fashion,” saidLopp, who in April said it would be better to freeze Satoshi’s hoard and millions of other dormant bitcoins than to let hackers steal them.

Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise, rejected both letting the coins be stolen and freezing them outright.

Instead, he pointed to a proposal by Castle Island Ventures partner Nic Carter that would place Satoshi’s bitcoin into a legal trust until ownership could be proven through historical electronic records.

Avoiding philosophical challenges

“I actually like Nic Carter’s proposal,” Hougan said via email. “It avoids the philosophical challenges of both CZ’s suggestion and the ‘let whatever happens’ perspective.”

Hougan said the market already treats Satoshi’s holdings as effectively unavailable, meaning almost any change would create more risk than opportunity.

“I don’t think there is any way that developments around Satoshi’s coins are positive for the ecosystem,” he said. “The market already accounts for them as frozen forever.”

For now, the debate remains largely theoretical. Researchers are still working on practical post-quantum cryptography for Bitcoin, and no consensus has been reached on how the network should respond if its encryption does become vulnerable.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said AI has changed how engineers work inside the crypto exchange. He described the shift as the rise of the “super builder,” where one engineer can deliver far more output. According to Armstrong, Coinbase now ships twice as much code overall. He said some engineers act as ten-times contributors who share effective AI practices.

Armstrong said Coinbase has become one of the most AI-enabled companies in the world. The Coinbase AI engineering strategy focuses on productivity, cost control, and wider adoption. A user reacting to his remarks said former Coinbase employees at other crypto firms describe the company as ahead in AI integration. That reaction added context to Armstrong’s claim about Coinbase’s engineering culture.

Coinbase Cuts Ai Costs As Usage Rises

The update covered how Coinbase reduced AI spending while usage continued to rise. Armstrong said the company nearly halved AI costs even as token usage grew sharply across systems. “How to keep AI spend flat while token usage grows exponentially: not with friction and spend alerts. With better defaults, routing, and caching,” Armstrong said.

Source:

The Coinbase AI engineering approach uses smarter model routing to match tasks with suitable models. This method sends simple work to cheaper tools and reserves stronger models for harder tasks. The company also uses caching to avoid paying for repeated answers when teams ask similar queries. Coinbase uses cheaper open-weight models for routine work where advanced models add little value.

Armstrong Links Ai Growth To Infrastructure

Armstrong framed the savings as a scaling decision rather than a limit on AI use. He said the goal does not involve cutting access or slowing engineers through controls. Instead, Coinbase wants infrastructure that allows AI usage to grow without future budget pressure. That view places cost efficiency at the center of Coinbase AI engineering operations.

The comments connect with Armstrong’s earlier view on AI bottlenecks. In June, he argued that access to energy and compute matters more than model quality for AI growth. His latest comments extend that position into company operations through routing, caching, and model selection. As a result, Coinbase AI engineering reflects productivity gains and infrastructure discipline.

For Coinbase, the message points to AI as an operating layer for software teams. Engineers use AI to write, review, and ship code faster, while management tracks costs. The company’s approach suggests that AI adoption depends on workflow design, not only model access. Coinbase AI engineering shows how a crypto firm can scale AI while watching spend.