This week: Kash snares $2M to embed prediction markets into social media feeds

Also: Dustin Gouker answers our burning questions about prediction markets, and FEEN’s plans to capture crypto trading culture through a market-powered prediction game.

February 26, 2026

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Kash snares $2M to embed prediction markets into social media feeds

The news: Kash has raised $2M in pre-seed funding to bring prediction markets directly into social media feeds, starting with X. Backed by investors including Big Brain Holdings, Spartan Group, Coinbase Ventures, and several others, the company is building markets that live inside posts—allowing users to create and trade on real-world outcomes without leaving the platform.

Zoom in: Instead of redirecting users to standalone trading apps, Kash enables predictions through simple interactions with @kash_bot, turning posts into live markets settled transparently on-chain. Founder and CEO Lucas Martin Calderon said, “We’re embedding an entirely new financial vehicle where people already live, and enabling users to place, and even permissionlessly create prediction markets, directly from their feed.” The company has launched a pre-testnet simulation on X and is working with partners to embed its infrastructure into other platforms.

Why it matters: Kash aims to accelerate prediction markets through distribution, tapping into mainstream interest in politics, sports, and other macro events that already plays out across social media every day. Embedding markets natively inside social feeds, where conversation and attention are already flowing, could be the answer. As social platforms increasingly intersect with finance and real-time information, turning “opinions into positions” could reshape how digital communities express conviction.

Dustin Gouker answers our burning questions about prediction markets, emerging verticals

The news: Industry journalist and consultant Dustin Gouker will open NEXT’s Emerging Verticals event with a prediction markets-focused session alongside Alexander Cane (Sporttrade CEO) and Bill Gantz (Duane Morris Partner), aiming to cut through what he describes as the “noise and disruption” surrounding the space. Gouker hopes the panel pushes attendees to think more deeply about where prediction markets are actually headed—and the opportunities that extend beyond simply operating an exchange.

Zoom in: “The biggest of all the elephants in the room is whether sports event contracts will survive beyond the next couple of years,” Gouker told BettingStartups, noting that legal certainty remains the single largest unknown for the sector. Beyond that, he’s watching whether consumers will meaningfully engage with “everything else” outside of sports and elections, and whether major entrants, including DraftKings and FanDuel, can chip away at the first-mover advantage built by Kalshi and Polymarket.

Why it matters: Gouker believes competition is only beginning, arguing that “anyone with a customer’s wallet or a web presence could be a prediction market,” while calling Robinhood “the current biggest threat to lead the market.” Outside of prediction markets, he expects skill gaming to “have its moment in the coming years,” while sweepstakes faces a shrinking addressable market and potential pivots into adjacent emerging verticals.

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FEEN wants to capture crypto trading culture through market-powered prediction game

The news: For most crypto traders, volatility is a feature, not a bug. For the co-founders of FEEN, it’s the entire product: a gamified, high-frequency crypto prediction market built around 30-second token “races,” where users bet on which asset will pump the hardest in a short window, designed to feel more like a mobile game than a trading terminal.

Zoom in: Rather than long-dated markets or complex derivatives, FEEN compresses the action into rapid-fire, head-to-head matchups—“We are all here to get that crazy return, that thousand X move, if you will,” Michael Chiang said on the BettingStartups Podcast, but “we don’t know when that moment arrives,” so the goal is to “bring that moment to you whenever you want it at the tap of your finger.” Under the hood, the team insists it’s tied to “real assets and real volatility and not pure RNG,” reflecting a belief that finance is becoming “on demand, interactive, and highly dopamine driven.”

Why it matters: “What we bet on is different in crypto,” Chris Dancy said, as speculation expands beyond technical narratives and into more intuitive, culturally driven markets. With early usage showing “very short bursts, multiple sessions per day,” FEEN ultimately wants to become a “household pocket prediction game,” built around a simple thesis: “Volatility is king.”

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