Prediction markets have garnered quite a lot of attention lately. Anyone following the space knows about Kalshi and Polymarket – two companies with valuations in the multi-billions, offering features reminiscent of those seen in their gambling counterparts, but nevertheless regulated in a completely different manner.
But as debates whether these platforms offer events contracts or gambling services reach a boiling point, a third contender has entered the ring out of nowhere to turn the predictions concept on its head. That’s because SafeBets offers users prediction markets without the need to place wagers.
How exactly does this work though, and where does the company sit in the wider wagering space? SBC News spoke to Alex Konanykhin, SafeBets Founder and Chief Executive Officer, to get a glimpse under the hood.
SBC News: How does SafeBets keep users engaged and rewarded without requiring deposits or risking money?
Alex Konanykhin: People assume risk is what makes prediction compelling. It is not. What makes it compelling is the desire to be right, and to be recognized for it. SafeBets is built on that. Every forecast is scored against what actually happens in the markets, users build real track records, and the most accurate predictors rise and earn rewards.
The competition, the rankings, the proof that you read the world better than the next person, that is the engagement engine. And the rewards are real, funded by our Collective Intelligence trading operation rather than by anyone’s losses. You get the full intensity of having skin in the game. The difference is that the skin in the game is your judgment, not your savings.
Where does current regulation get prediction markets right, and where does it miss important distinctions?
It gets the instinct right. The consumer-protection impulse is correct, people really are losing money, and a regulator who worries about that is doing the job. Where it sometimes misses is precision. The other miss, at least in the US, is the patchwork: fifty states and a federal regulator pulling in different directions, which creates chaos without necessarily creating protection.
You’ve argued that removing the wager changes the regulatory question. Why is that distinction so important?
Because almost every regulatory regime in the world is built around the wager. Gambling law, by definition, governs risking something of value on an uncertain outcome. That is the act being regulated. Remove it, and you are no longer doing the thing the laws were written to address. This is not a loophole or a clever label; it is the substance. A platform where no one stakes anything is not a smaller, safer version of gambling. It is a different activity that the gambling framework was never designed to reach.
Regulatory scrutiny of prediction markets is at an all-time high for the sector, which is saying a lot given how young it is.
Authorities across Europe are on a crusade against Kalshi and Polymarket – Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Ukraine and Romania, to name just a couple of examples.
There are some outliers, like Gibraltar, which has licensed two predictions markets so far, but it’s fair to say that most European regulators are not on board with the new technology and products.
Back in the US, state regulators and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are battling it out in court over whether or not predictions are a fiscal or gambling product.
This has raised questions about whether predictions are a regulatory sustainable product in the long run…
SBC News: What would you say to regulators skeptical that a no-wager prediction platform is meaningfully different from betting?
Alex Konanykhin: I would say: please scrutinize us, and here is the test to apply. Ask one question. Can a user lose money on this platform? On a betting product, the answer is yes, by design. On SafeBets, the answer is no, because the user never puts money down in the first place.
If no participant can suffer a financial loss, then the central harm that gambling regulation exists to prevent is simply not present. We are not asking regulators to take our word for it, we are inviting them to look closely, because the closer they look, the clearer the difference becomes.
What’s the biggest misconception policymakers have about prediction platforms today?
That prediction requires a wager. The deepest misconception is the assumption that you cannot have the engagement, the excitement of forecasting and being proven right, without someone risking money. Policymakers have only ever seen predictions packaged with a stake, so they treat the stake as inseparable from the activity. It is not. Once you accept that prediction and wagering are two different things the industry happened to bundle together, most of the regulatory debate starts to look different.
As regulators scrutinise platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, what are they most concerned about: wagering, speculation, or consumer protection?
Underneath all three is one thing: people losing money. Wagering is the legal hook, it is the act that triggers gambling jurisdiction. Speculation is the economic worry. But what actually motivates regulators is consumer protection.
They have watched a generation get hurt by products engineered to be addictive, and they see some prediction platforms heading the same way. The integrity questions, insider information and manipulation, sit on top of that. Strip it back, though, and the core concern is simple and legitimate: ordinary people are putting money at risk on these platforms, and many are getting hurt. Any honest conversation about regulation has to start there.
With heavy regulatory opposition in Europe, do prediction platforms have a sustainable future there, or will the sector always be led by the US?
Europe’s opposition is specifically to the wager. Country after country has ruled that these platforms are unlicensed gambling, and because European gambling law is national and fragmented, a wager-based platform faces an almost impossible path there.
So, if the question is whether the American, wager-based model has a future in Europe, I am skeptical. But the appetite for prediction is just as strong in Europe as anywhere. The future there belongs to models that do not rely on a wager, because the wager is the precise thing European regulators are blocking. I would not assume the US leads forever. On responsible, no-wager prediction, Europe may turn out to be more receptive than the markets that grew up on betting.
Do you expect regulators to eventually create separate categories for prediction platforms and gambling products, or treat them largely the same?
They will have to separate them eventually, but probably not along the lines people expect. The meaningful distinction is not prediction versus gambling as labels. It is whether the user is risking money.
A regulator can draw a clean, principled line there: if a participant can lose, regulate it as the high-stakes activity it is; if a participant cannot lose, you are looking at something closer to a skill competition. Right now, most regimes are collapsing everything into gambling, or into derivatives, which is understandable when nearly every platform they have seen involves a wager. The first wave of genuinely no-wager platforms is going to force a more honest taxonomy.
The regulatory picture around predictions is mixed, and so too is the betting industry’s reaction to it.
In the US, the American Gaming Association (AGA) is bitterly opposed to the product, but major regulated betting firms including FanDuel (Flutter Entertainment), DaftKings and Fanatics have launched their own predictions propositions.
In Europe, long-time betting exchange operator Matchbook has launched its own B2B predictions platform. Others, like Smarkets, don’t expect predictions to last that long.
SBC News: Can betting companies and prediction platforms coexist or collaborate, or will there always be competition and hostility (setting aside betting firms that have joined the space)?
Alex Konanykhin: Among the wager-based players, the line between a sportsbook and a prediction market is already blurring, and I expect them to consolidate, because they are fundamentally the same business: taking a customer’s stake on an uncertain outcome.
Competition there will be fierce, and the hostility is really a fight over who gets to operate under which license. Our SafeBets.world sits outside that fight. A platform where no one wagers is not competing for the same customer or the same regulatory lane, so it can coexist with all of them. I am less interested in the turf war between betting firms and wager-based prediction markets than in serving the enormous audience none of them can reach: the people who will never gamble but would love to test their judgment.
Do you see SafeBets as an alternative to prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, or as a different category altogether?
A different category altogether. We tap the same human impulse as Kalshi and Polymarket, the urge to predict, but we use the opposite mechanic. They run on the wager; we removed it. That is not a feature on a spectrum, it is a fork in the road. We are not trying to win their customers head to head.
We are building for the far larger audience those platforms structurally cannot serve: everyone who finds risking their money unappealing or impossible, but who would happily compete on the strength of their judgment. Calling us an alternative undersells it. We are a different answer to the question of what prediction can be.