#预测市场 Seeing this research report from Kalshi, the first thing that came to my mind were the scenes before and after the 2008 financial crisis. Back then, Wall Street elites were being proven wrong one after another, while retail investors sometimes showed more insight. Over ten years later, prediction markets have quantified this phenomenon with data—an average error of less than 40% over 25 months, which is no small number.

The logic behind this is actually very old. When economic incentives truly influence each trader, collective rationality naturally emerges. Wall Street consensus forecasts are often limited by institutional influence and vested interests, whereas prediction markets disperse information across millions of participants. Everyone is voting with real money. The most telling indicator of market truth is money itself.

What’s especially interesting is that when reality deviates most from expectations, the accuracy of prediction markets can surpass consensus by 67%. What does this imply? It shows that during times of greatest uncertainty, when traditional forecasting systems are most likely to collapse, market-based predictions demonstrate a stronger adaptive capacity. This is an endogenous, self-correcting ability.

From this perspective, prediction markets are not just financial tools; they are proof of an ancient truth: dispersed market participants are often closer to the truth than centralized expert groups. History has repeatedly taught us this, and now we finally have more precise evidence.