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Are Polymarket and Kalshi decentralized?

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Are Polymarket and Kalshi decentralized?

Polymarket, Kalshi, and other prediction markets have taken the world by storm and in the process seen massive support from the cryptocurrency industry.

Kalshi makes claims about “democratizing finance” while Polymarket proclaims that “using decentralized blockchain technology removes the need for a central authority in trading, which fosters fairness and open participation.”

Kalshi wasn’t originally built on a blockchain at all, however, it’s expanded into tokenized positions on Solana, claiming that “tokenization is the endgame. It is non-custodial, instant, and crypto native.”

However, that’s not how it currently functions; instead, it depends on Jupiter to “handle the off-chain actions required,” including to “open positions,” “manage positions,” and “claim winnings.”

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Not exactly “non-custodial,” suggesting we’re a great distance from the “endgame.”

These prediction markets aren’t meant to be truly decentralized, unstoppable, or censorship-resistant like other crypto projects.

Instead, they maintain extraordinary control over the markets that are made available, sometimes even removing them before resolution.

Removing markets

Recently, Polymarket listed markets that resolved based on whether or not nuclear detonations occurred.

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It then removed these markets following backlash from the community.

Critics felt that markets on nuclear detonation were Polymarket finding ways to profit from the possibility of history-defining calamities and destruction.

Unlike earlier attempts at prediction markets, such as Augur, Polymarket and Kalshi don’t allow any user to make a new market, instead entrusting that responsibility to the centralized actors that operate the platforms.

This is something that Polymarket is upfront with, noting in its help center that “markets are created by the markets team” and “users cannot directly create their own markets,” though it does comfort them with the notion that “they are encouraged to suggest ideas.”

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Kalshi also tells users that it “love[s] community ideas for new markets.”

Interestingly, although both Polymarket and Kalshi maintain the ability to remove markets, that ability is much less advertised; it’s not mentioned in any of the “Markets” articles in Polymarket or Kalshi’s help centers.

Read more: Polymarket ends trading loophole for bitcoin quants

The Polymarket page for the nuclear explosion market now proclaims that market has been “archived.”

A search for “archived” in the Polymarket help center returns zero results, as does a search on X for any Polymarket posts that include the word “archived.”

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When a Polymarket event is archived, it’s also no longer possible to retrieve details about the event using the Polymarket API.

The Polymarket API is meant to return the token ID, which can be used to query the smart contract for additional details.

Users in the Polymarket Discord claim that after Polymarket removed this market, they could no longer see the bet in their portfolio, with one user asking, “What happened to my money?”

Anybody who asks questions is directed to pay attention to the “#market-updates” channel in Discord, where it eventually announced that losses would be refunded.

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Polymarket and Kalshi market resolution

Polymarket’s terms of service note that “the company is not involved in nor responsible for the resolution of any contracts displayed on the platform.”

The resolution on Polymarket relies on UMA, a blockchain oracle that allows tokenholders to resolve disputes about various outcomes.

Kalshi, however, doesn’t maintain the same claim, openly noting that when you “request to settle market,” that request will then go to the “markets team,” who “will thoroughly review all the settlement requests.”

Both Polymarket’s oracle-based resolution and Kalshi’s resolution mechanisms have provoked a great deal of controversy among users.

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In one Polymarket controversy an Ethereum user with the Ethereum Name Service name “BornTooLate.Eth” manipulated the outcome of a Ukraine-United States mineral deal-related market by becoming one of the largest holders of the UMA token. This highlighted the governance dangers centered around the market.

Polymarket was also drawn into controversy several months ago when it launched a market that was meant to resolve based on whether or not Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would wear a suit before July.

Zelenskyy arrived at the NATO meeting in a non-traditional suit, meant to emulate more militaristic aesthetics, due to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The market was originally proposed as resolving to “yes” and ended up resolving in favor of “no,” arguing that the suit he wore didn’t meet the intent of the market resolution, which read simply, “This market will resolve to “yes” if Volodymyr Zelenskyy is is photographed or videotaped wearing a suit between May 22 and June 30, 2025 ET.”

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Even the “Polymarket Intel” account on X, which has a gold check mark and the Polymarket logo, which indicates that “it’s an affiliate of @Polymarket,” posted a video with the caption “President Zelenskyy in a suit last night.”

Polymarket would subsequently try to distance itself from this account. This dispute was handled by UMA tokenholders, but that’s not always how Polymarket deals with controversial market resolutions.

The platform had listed a market that was meant to answer whether or not the so-called Department of Government Efficiency would “cut $3 billion of DEI contracts before March.”

The resolution criteria for this market was whether or not “doge-tracker.com” showed more than the $3 billion in cuts.

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However, despite the resolution criteria being met, Polymarket pulled the market and refunded losses, claiming that doge-tracker.com wasn’t reliable.

Thus, markets don’t always resolve according to their resolution criteria.

Both of these cases highlight the tension between stated resolution criteria and how users and oracles expect the market to resolve.

Kalshi has also seen its fair share of controversy around market resolution.

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In one case, X user “0xTyrael” claimed that they had lost money on Kalshi, as it ruled that Trump didn’t say “Mamdani” in an interview where he mangled the pronunciation of the New York mayor’s name.

More recently a market about whether or not Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be “out” as Iranian supreme leader resolved to “no” because the resolution criteria noted that if the leader “leaves solely because they have died, the associated market will resolve and the exchange will determine the payouts…based upon the last traded price (prior to the death).”

Read more: Odds swing wildly as Polymarket bets on Iran’s successor collapse

Despite this being included in the resolution criteria, many users felt cheated, again highlighting the tension between the resolution criteria as written and as understood.

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All of these various issues highlight the difficulty of creating a way to consistently resolve markets, especially in cases where resolution criteria are poorly written.

Donald Trump Jr.

Both Polymarket and Kalshi are intimately tied to the Trump regime, as both platforms have added Donald Trump Jr. as an advisor.

Additionally, Trump Jr. invested in Polymarket via the venture capital firm where he is a partner, 1789 Capital.

Additionally, Trump Media, where Trump Jr. is a director, has announced that it will launch prediction markets in cooperation with Crypto.com.

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All these prediction markets have benefitted from the Commodity and Futures Trading Commission being permissive in its regulatory oversight of prediction markets under the Trump administration, and some portion of those benefits financially accrue to the Trump family.

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Crypto World

Perplexity AI Predicts the Price of XRP, Solana and Shiba Inu by The End of 2026

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Perplexity AI Predicts the Price of XRP, Solana and Shiba Inu by The End of 2026

Global headlines may be dominated by reports of conflict, but crypto is holding steady. According to projections generated by Perplexity, holders of XRP, SOL, and SHIB could still see significant gains this year.

Many say that geopolitical risk may already have been priced into markets after Donald Trump’s previous warnings about possible U.S. military escalation involving Greenland and Iran earlier this year.

With uncertainty still lingering, we examine how realistic Perplexity’s projections are.

XRP ($XRP): Perplexity Projects a Potential 7x Surge by Year-End

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In a recent update, Ripple reaffirmed that XRP ($XRP) plays a central role in the XRP Ledger’s (XRPL) growth into a global payments infrastructure designed for enterprise use.

Perplexity AI Predicts the Price of XRP, Solana and Shiba Inu by The End of 2026
Source: Perplexity

XRP enables near-instant settlement and extremely low transaction fees, positioning the network to capture two rapidly expanding sectors in crypto: stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets.

With XRP currently trading close to $1.36, Perplexity AI predicts the asset could potentially climb to around $10 in 2026, representing a little over sevenfold return for current HODLers.

XRP’s relative strength index (RSI) currently sits near 42, while price movement has begun stabilized around its 30-day moving average, suggesting perhaps the extended consolidation period is nearing its end.

Several catalysts could further strengthen XRP’s outlook, including rising institutional demand following the launch of U.S.-listed XRP exchange-traded funds, Ripple’s expanding network of international partnerships, and comprehensive crypto legislation (the CLARITY Act) in the United States.

Solana (SOL): Could Solana Soon Hit $700?

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Solana ($SOL) currently secures around $6.7 billion in total value locked and has a market capitalization of $48 billion.

Institutional interest increased after the introduction of Solana-based exchange-traded funds by prominent asset managers such as Bitwise and Grayscale.

However, SOL crashed toward the end of 2025 and spent much of February trading below the $100 mark.

Perplexity sees Solana rising from $84 today to approximately $700 by Christmas. That would give 8x returns and price Solana more than double it’s January 2025 ATH of $293 recorded.

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Moreover, major asset managers like Franklin Templeton and BlackRock have begun issuing tokenized assets on Solana.

Shiba Inu (SHIB): Perplexity Forecasts a Potential 2,000% Rally

Originally launched in 2020 as a tongue-in-cheek Dogecoin challenger, Shiba Inu ($SHIB) has since developed into a broader ecosystem with a market capitalization of $3.2 billion.

Currently around $0.000005359, Perplexity’s analysis suggests that a decisive breakout above the $0.000025–$0.00003 resistance range could trigger strong upward momentum. Under that scenario, SHIB could potentially climb toward $0.00008 before the end of the year.

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Such a move would represent gains of roughly 15x, or around 1,400%, bringing it a hair’s breadth beneath its October 2021 ATH of $0.00008616.

Beyond its meme coin reputation, the project has introduced practical utility through Shibarium, its Ethereum Layer-2 scaling solution. Shibarium delivers faster transactions, lower fees, enhanced privacy features, and improved developer tools for building decentralized applications.

Maxi Doge: Emerging Meme Coin Aims for Rapid Growth

Perplexity’s projection of a potential 14x surge for Shiba Inu reflects expectations that a new meme coin cycle could accompany the next crypto bull market. However, projects at earlier stages often present even greater growth potential.

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One project gaining attention is Maxi Doge ($MAXI), which has already raised $4.7 million through its ongoing presale as early investors accumulate what some believe could become the next Shiba Inu.

Maxi Doge is the loud, louche and degenerate distant cousin to Dogecoin, embracing a comic marketing approach inspired by the chaotic enthusiasm of the 2021 meme coin boom.

MAXI is an ERC-20 asset on Ethereum’s proof-of-stake network, giving it a significantly smaller environmental footprint compared with Dogecoin’s proof-of-work system.

Early participants in the presale can currently stake MAXI for yields reaching up to 67% APY. These rewards gradually decrease as more tokens enter the staking pool.

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The token is currently priced at $0.0002807 during the latest presale phase, with automatic price increases scheduled at each new funding milestone. Investors can purchase the token using supported wallets such as MetaMask and Best Wallet.

Stay updated through Maxi Doge’s official X and Telegram pages.

Visit the Official Maxi Doge Website Here

The post Perplexity AI Predicts the Price of XRP, Solana and Shiba Inu by The End of 2026 appeared first on Cryptonews.

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Kraken rolls out xChange engine to power tokenized stock markets

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Coinbase, Kraken, NYSE, Nasdaq, Stocks, Tokenization, RWA Tokenization

Kraken’s tokenized equities platform xStocks has launched xChange, an onchain trading engine designed to facilitate trading of tokenized stocks across the Ethereum and Solana networks.

According to the company, the system supports trading of more than 70 tokenized equities backed 1:1 by underlying shares held in custody, with prices intended to track the corresponding public market stocks.

The launch adds new trading infrastructure for tokenized equities, part of the broader tokenized real-world asset market that aims to bring traditional financial instruments such as stocks onto blockchain-based trading systems.

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Kraken launched xStocks in June, offering tokenized versions of publicly traded companies issued by Backed Assets, though the products are not available to users in the United States, the United Kingdom or other restricted jurisdictions.

Since then, the platform has recorded $3.5 billion in onchain transaction volume and about $25 billion in total trading volume across exchanges, with about $225 million in tokenized assets held across about 80,000 blockchain wallets, according to company data.

The move from Kraken comes days after the exchange said its banking unit, Kraken Financial, had been granted a limited-purpose master account by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, giving it direct access to the Fedwire payments network used by banks and credit unions.

Related: Kraken introduces fixed-rate crypto loans for its Pro users

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Traditional and crypto exchanges build rails for tokenized stocks

Kraken is not alone in exploring infrastructure for tokenized securities, as both crypto exchanges and traditional market operators experiment with ways to bring stocks onto blockchain-based trading systems.

In December, Coinbase announced that it plans to launch Coinbase Tokenize, an institutional platform designed to support the issuance and management of tokenized real-world assets, including equities.

About a month later, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, Intercontinental Exchange, said it is developing a platform to support trading of tokenized securities, including stocks and exchange-traded funds. 

The proposed system would combine the exchange’s existing matching engine with blockchain-based settlement infrastructure and could support round-the-clock trading with near-instant settlement, potentially using stablecoins instead of the current one-day settlement cycle in US equity markets.

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Coinbase, Kraken, NYSE, Nasdaq, Stocks, Tokenization, RWA Tokenization
Total value of tokenized real-world assets by category. Source: RWA.xyz

The London Stock Exchange Group has also said it is developing blockchain-based infrastructure intended to support the trading and settlement of tokenized securities such as equities and bonds.

Nasdaq, meanwhile, has proposed integrating tokenized versions of stocks and exchange-traded products into its existing trading infrastructure, a change that could increase liquidity for tokenized securities if approved by regulators.

Magazine: The debate over Bitcoin’s four-year cycle is over: Benjamin Cowen