How this industry works
Every other page here answers “which tool”. These answer the questions that decide whether the answer is usable at all — what an exchange charges for its own prices, who owns the identifier on a security, what an index licence covers. Reference pages, corrected in place rather than dated, each one cited.
What a trade actually costs on a prediction market
Venues publish trading fees in four incompatible units, so 3.00% on one can be cheaper than 1.75% on another. How to convert them, and what else takes a cut.
Next to Data APIsUpdated
Event contract or swap, and why the label decides the case
Whether an event contract is a swap under the Commodity Exchange Act decides whether a state may regulate it. Three circuits have read it, and they divide.
Next to VenuesUpdated
How a venue changes its rules, and where you can see it coming
A US exchange's rule changes wait ten business days in public; a fee under a dollar a contract need not. Broker fees and offshore terms change when posted.
Next to VenuesUpdated
How much one account may hold, and what happens past the line
Position limits and accountability levels sound alike and work differently. Where each venue draws the line, in which unit, and what happens past it.
Next to VenuesUpdated
What a combo contract is, and who is on the other side
A multi-leg contract is usually priced by a quote sent to you alone, not by a public book. Who answers it, what it costs, and what happens to a void leg.
Next to VenuesUpdated
What a crypto price contract actually settles on
Not the price on your exchange: an index or an oracle report, a window the terms name, and a rule for the minute the source goes quiet.
Next to VenuesUpdated
What a prediction market is, and how one works
A contract that pays one dollar if a stated event happens. What you buy, who takes the other side, who decides, and when the cents stop meaning a probability.
Next to VenuesUpdated
What backs the dollar on an on-chain venue
A stablecoin balance is a claim on an issuer you are usually not a customer of, held in contracts with admin keys. What you rely on, document by document.
Next to VenuesUpdated
What you may do with a venue's prices once you have them
An open API is not a licence. Who may display, store or resell a prediction market's prices, which document decides, and the part the law makes public anyway.
Next to Data APIsUpdated
Who is paid to quote, and what that does to the book you trade against
Market-maker agreements, liquidity rewards and maker rebates pay for the quotes you trade against. What each requires, what it pays, and when it stops.
Next to VenuesUpdated
Who sees your trades on a US event exchange
The public sees a price and a size, the exchange sees your name on every order, and the CFTC can ask for both. What each layer records, and where it goes.
Next to VenuesUpdated
Who stands between you and the exchange, and what each one holds
A broker, an introducing broker or a wallet app can sit in front of a US event exchange. Whose customer you are, who holds the money and who checked your ID.
Next to VenuesUpdated
Why a venue is unavailable where you are
One phrase covers four unrelated restrictions, and the federal question underneath them divides three appellate courts. What the documents actually say.
Next to VenuesUpdated
Why Europe and the UK block event contracts
Europe tests an event contract twice, as a financial instrument and under gaming law, and retail access fails both. What ESMA, the FCA, UKGC and ANJ say.
Next to VenuesUpdated
Why the same contract costs two different prices on two venues
Two venues quoting one outcome are quoting two contracts. What the gap between the prices is made of - rules, fallbacks, fees, collateral, exits, eligibility.
Next to Data APIsUpdated
How money gets back out
The rail that funded an account is usually not the rail that empties it. Same-source rules, clearing holds, jurisdiction locks, and what a bridge takes.
Next to VenuesUpdated
Who sends you a tax form, and who sends nothing
Six cards claim tax reporting, three venues, one broker and two wallet tools, and the documents behind the flag differ. What each one's own pages say it sends.
Next to VenuesUpdated
What an election contract actually settles on
A news-desk call, a certified count, a sworn-in senator or a Speaker: which event each venue's election contract names, who decides it, and when it pays.
Next to VenuesUpdated
Insider-trading rules on event contracts
What the Commodity Exchange Act, CFTC Rule 180.1 and the Kalshi and Polymarket US rulebooks prohibit, and what the cases published in 2026 show.
Next to VenuesUpdated
What each of Polymarket's APIs holds, and which one you need
Gamma, the CLOB, the Data API, four sockets and three hosts that move money, each keyed by a different ID. What lives where, and what Polymarket US shares.
Next to Data APIsUpdated
What wallet tracking shows, and what it cannot
A Polymarket fill is a public transaction and a regulated exchange position is not, so wallet analytics exist on one venue and not the other.
Next to Wallet TrackersUpdated
Where a dashboard gets its data, and what it loses when that moves
A venue API, an indexer or the chain itself. Which one a dashboard reads decides how far back its history goes and what vanishes when that source changes.
Next to AnalyticsUpdated
Where the liquidity comes from, and who is on the other side
Order book, automated market maker or pool — what each means for the price you get, and why the number on a thin market is not a probability.
Next to VenuesUpdated
Why two dashboards show different volume for the same market
Volume is several quantities under one name - contracts or dollars, one side or both, swaps or also mints and merges, and whose day. How to tell which.
Next to AnalyticsUpdated
Who decides how a prediction market resolves
Four different parties resolve these markets, each against a document named in the rules rather than in the title. Who decides, from what source, and by when.
Next to VenuesUpdated
How accurate a prediction market's price actually is
What research establishes about reading 73 cents as a 73% chance — where market prices are calibrated, the deviations that recur, and what the horizon does.
Next to ForecastingUpdated
What running a bot does not solve
A bot fixes speed and consistency. Rate limits, a missing rehearsal, a field that stops arriving, a partial fill and a paused market are not coding problems.
Next to Clients & BotsUpdated
What a forecasting platform's score actually measures
Proper rules, the two Brier conventions that differ by a factor of two, crowd-relative scores that do not travel between sites, and why profit is not accuracy.
Next to ForecastingUpdated
What a forecasting track record is worth off the platform
Who reads a forecasting record earned on one site, why it rarely converts into anything elsewhere, and how expert panels recruit from public leaderboards.
Next to ForecastingUpdated
Why your bot gets throttled, and what the limit is counted against
Kalshi meters tokens per account tier; Polymarket's order book meters requests per IP and queues the excess. What each counts, and what the libraries assume.
Next to SDKsUpdated
What a sports event contract actually settles on
The first official result from a ranked list of sources, a period of play the listing names, and a fallback price for the game that never finishes.
Next to VenuesUpdated
Scientific and government forecast hubs
Public-health agencies run open, scored forecast hubs anyone can join. The unit of submission is a model, not a person, and nothing there is a personal record.
Next to ForecastingUpdated
What a temperature market actually settles on
One named station, a day running midnight to midnight local standard time, and a number the government itself calls preliminary. Not the forecast you watched.
Next to VenuesUpdated
What an AI weather model gives you, and what it does not
The named models are public, cheap and openly licensed. What they output is a gridded value at fixed hours, which is not what a contract measures.
Next to ForecastingUpdated
What you have to prove about yourself to trade
A connected wallet is not an identity check. Which venues ask for what, at which step of the way in, and what you give up on the ones that never ask.
Next to VenuesUpdated
What your money does between the trade and the resolution
An event contract is fully collateralised, so the position is the cash. What that cash does while you wait, who earns interest on it, and how to annualise it.
Next to VenuesUpdated
Where weather data comes from and what you may do with it
Observations, model output and archives are three products with three licences. The forecast is the cheap half; a clean observation history is not.
Next to Data APIsUpdated
Where your key lives when software trades for you
Four different credentials are all called a key, and they differ in what a copy permits. What the clients in this catalogue ask for, and what to ask them back.
Next to Clients & BotsUpdated