YZi Labs, the venture capital company founded by Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, is ramping up its bet on prediction markets as one of its portfolio platforms posted an unusual spike in trading volume.
CZ took to X on Wednesday to welcome YZi-backed Predict.fun as a new prediction market launching on the BNB Chain.
“When you make a prediction, you funds don’t sit idle, they generate yield,” CZ wrote, adding: “This tweet is not endorsement.”
CZ’s post came a few weeks after Opinion, another prediction market backed by YZi, briefly outpaced trading volumes by major market players like Kalshi and Polymarket.
What is Opinion and why is it booming?
Opinion is a decentralized prediction market platform by Opinion Labs, a Hong Kong-based company founded in 2023 by Forrest Liu, according to data from Tracxn.com.
Announcing its first O.LAB Prediction Closed Beta Tradathon in 2024, Opinion Labs mentioned it was backed by YZi Labs, which at the time was still known as Binance Labs.
In March 2025, Opinion Labs secured $5 million in seed funding led by YZi and participated in by other investors such as Echo, Animoca Ventures, Manifold Trading and Amber Group.
The platform launched exclusively on BNB Chain in October, with CZ subsequently confirming that YZi holds a minority stake in the platform.
“We are just a minority investor, but we try to help with adding strategic value,” CZ reportedly said in a now-deleted post on X.
Opinion’s reported volume breaks records weeks after launch
Opinion was a lesser-known prediction market until recently, when it surged past established players such as Kalshi and Polymarket in trading activity.
Just four weeks after launch, Opinion’s weekly volume jumped to nearly $1.5 billion, compared with $1.2 billion on Kalshi and about $1 billion on Polymarket, according to data compiled by Dunedata on Dune Analytics.
Recording $1.5 billion in weekly volume, Opinion took 40% of the $3.7 billion market, breaking all previous prediction market records, including Polymarket’s November 2024 peak during the US presidential elections.
According to some market observers, Opinion’s trading volume spike is unusual, given how fast it broke the records.
“Opinion’s volume jump is extreme by any normal prediction market standard,” TEN Protocol co-founder Cais Manai told Cointelegraph.
“Platforms do not go from modest activity to chart-topping numbers overnight without serious fuel behind the scenes. The growth is too fast and too clean to be purely organic,” he said, adding:
“When you zoom in, the pattern looks more like engineered activity than a sudden mass onboarding […] A lot of the volume across prediction markets right now is inflated. Everyone sees it, even if nobody wants to say it outright.”
Prediction markets hit $13 billion record as Binance stays on the sidelines
The news comes amid a boom in prediction markets, which hit a new high in trading activity in November despite a downturn on broader crypto markets. According to Dunedata, cumulative trading volume on prediction markets surpassed $13 billion in November.
On Wednesday, Sports merchandiser Fanatics launched Fanatics Markets, its own prediction market, rolling out access to prediction markets in 24 US states, including California, Texas, Florida and Washington.
The trend has prompted major crypto platforms to enter the sector, with US exchange Coinbase launching a prediction market site backed by Kalshi in mid-November. In October, MetaMask partnered with Polymarket to enable users to trade predictions directly from its self-custodial wallet.
Related: Connecticut orders Robinhood, Crypto.com, Kalshi to stop prediction markets
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, has yet to announce plans for prediction markets, even as CZ-owned Trust Wallet yesterday launched Predictions, a new section aiming to unify multiple markets, starting with Myriad and eventually including Kalshi and Polymarket.
Cointelegraph reached out to Binance for comment on its prediction markets plans, but had not received a response by the time of publication.
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