Inside the rise of prediction markets

Here’s a list of things you can bet on, right this second. This year’s Super Bowl winner, sure. The winner of Survivor season 49, okay. But the number of gifts Santa will deliver this year? The number of tweets Elon Musk will send in the next 7 days? How much money Avatar: Fire and Ash will make at the box office? The next president of of Portugal? On Polymarket and Kalshi, if you can dream it up, you can probably bet on it. Welcome to the age of the prediction market.

On this episode of The Vergecast, we try to figure out where prediction markets came from, and why they’ve become so popular. Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal joins the show to track the rise of Polymarket and Kalshi, explain their controversies and ultimate acceptance, and put these companies in their correct place in the economy. Most of all, he helps us figure out if there’s actually something new happening here, or if the betting has been happening forever.

After that, The Verge’s Hayden Field walks us through the details of the Model Context Protocol, better known as MCP. It’s a new protocol — barely over a year old! — that the whole AI industry seems to believe could help make AI agents more powerful and more useful. From a small project inside Anthropic to an industry-wide standard, the story of MCP appears to be crucial to whatever comes next.

Finally, Hayden helps David answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about why seemingly every AI company is desperate to get you shopping in their app. Turns out there are few activities as fun and as lucrative as helping you buy stuff.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started: