Crypto Traders Flee to Prediction Bets After $150 Billion Crash

Not long ago, Nikshep Saravanan was deep in the crypto trenches — trading memecoins, reaching out to venture capitalists, and trying to launch a startup for digital creators. By January, he’d dropped it all. These days, he spends hours on prediction markets, tracking odds on everything from sports to politics.

“As I was trying to get traction without funding, the prediction-markets space started blowing up,” recalled the 27-year-old Canadian.

Saravanan is part of a fast-growing wave of crypto-native traders cooling on the token economy and gravitating toward event betting. Where the action once revolved around meme coins and protocol launches, ...