Bernstein Predicts $10 Trillion Prediction Markets Driven by Financial Assets by 2035

Bernstein put a number on it. The research firm sees the global prediction market hitting $10 trillion in volume by 2035, and the engine driving that isn’t sports bets — it’s financial assets.

That’s a big call. Prediction markets have spent years on the fringes, mostly associated with election odds and sports outcomes. But Bernstein’s forecast flips that script pretty hard. Financial instruments, the firm says, are set to become the dominant force in these markets, pulling in a completely different class of participant — people who aren’t placing bets on who wins the Super Bowl but on where interest rates go, what earnings look like, or how a macro event plays out. That’s a different animal entirely, and the money that follows tends to be a lot larger.

Financial Assets Are Eating the Market

Sports betting built prediction markets. That’s just the history. But the Bernstein view is that financial assets will eventually dwarf that original use case, which would represent a pretty fundamental shift in what these platforms actually are.

Think about what that means structurally. If financial forecasting and risk management become the primary reasons people use prediction markets, then the whole infrastructure around them has to grow up fast. Better data feeds. Smarter settlement mechanisms. Liquidity that can actually handle institutional-sized positions. Right now, a lot of these platforms can’t absorb that kind of volume — but the argument is they will.

Investors looking to diversify beyond traditional asset classes have started eyeing prediction markets as a tool, not just a novelty. The appeal is real: you get a market-implied probability on a specific outcome, which is something that’s genuinely hard to get elsewhere with any precision. For financial forecasting purposes, that’s actually useful. It’s not just gambling dressed up in a suit.

And as these markets mature, the product set probably gets more sophisticated. More nuanced instruments, more ways to hedge, more options for participants who want granular exposure to specific economic outcomes. The trajectory, if Bernstein’s read is right, is toward something that looks less like a prediction market in the traditional sense and more like a full-fledged financial marketplace.

What Could Slow It Down

Not everything lines up neatly for a smooth run to $10 trillion.

See also: Trueo Leaves Base for Ethereum, Pursuing Growth with $795K TVL Prediction Market

Regulatory clarity is probably the biggest variable. Prediction markets sit in a murky legal zone in a lot of jurisdictions — sometimes treated like gambling, sometimes like derivatives, sometimes not clearly categorized at all. That ambiguity doesn’t kill growth outright, but it slows adoption, especially from institutional players who can’t operate in legal grey zones. Bernstein’s projection is optimistic, but it kind of has to assume that the regulatory picture gets cleaner over time. Whether that happens on a timeline that supports $10 trillion by 2035 is genuinely unclear.

Infrastructure matters too. The pace at which supporting technology develops will shape how fast the market can actually absorb new participants and new volume. Slow infrastructure buildout could create a ceiling that’s hard to break through, no matter how strong the underlying demand is.

Market adoption rates are the third leg of that stool. Even if regulation improves and infrastructure scales, participants have to actually show up and use these platforms for financial purposes at scale. That’s not guaranteed. There’s a learning curve, a trust-building process, and probably a few high-profile failures along the way that could spook early adopters. It’s happened in other emerging financial sectors before.

Institutional Money on the Horizon

If the financial asset angle plays out, institutional investors are probably the ones who move the needle most on volume. Retail participation grows too, sure — but the jump from hundreds of billions to $10 trillion doesn’t happen without serious institutional flows.

Bernstein’s outlook basically bets that prediction markets become recognized as viable financial tools, not fringe products. Once that perception shift happens at the institutional level, the money tends to follow quickly. It’s happened with crypto ETFs, with certain derivatives markets, with alternative data platforms. The pattern isn’t new.

More context: Geminis 80% Valuation Drop Sparks Acquisition Speculation Over Custody Assets

What’s different here is the scale of the prediction: $10 trillion is a number that would make prediction markets genuinely significant within the broader global financial system, not just an interesting side experiment. Sports betting, which has historically dominated the space, would become almost a footnote by comparison.

For now, the market is nowhere near that figure. The infrastructure is still early. Regulation is still murky in most places. But Bernstein’s 2035 timeline gives the sector roughly a decade to close the gap — and a decade is a long time when adoption curves start to bend.

Bernstein’s forecast puts the 2035 target at $10 trillion.