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Jim Downs<\/p>\nBy Jim Downs, Co-Founder & CEO, Connamara Technologies<\/p>\n
The last five years have seen the death of the all-night diner, the rise of bars with 9 PM last calls, and big box stores that don\u2019t even rope-drop until brunch. But while the brick-and-mortar world has taken on the schedule of a senior center, the markets are just waking up. Traders don\u2019t want downtime. They want uptime, all the time. Around-the-clock trading has taken off. And for all those once-weary business owners who swore there \u201cweren\u2019t enough hours in the day\u201d? Good news: now there are.<\/p>\n
Jim Downs<\/p>\n
The global economy is transforming overnight\u2026every night. And to keep up, exchanges need to invest in the infrastructure that supports this massive shift in how (and\u00a0when) we trade. Enter prediction markets, which have led the way toward normalizing 24\/7\/365 behaviors. Recently, Kalshi announced on its Discord channel that it would no longer close from 3-8 AM EST every day, and would be moving to 24\/7 trading (save for two hours a week) on August 7.<\/p>\n
The crypto boom of the last decade undoubtedly democratized and simplified trading for a natively global, first-time, or never-would-be audience. Along the way, many of the expectations and hangups of legacy markets evaporated, replaced by the always-on convenience of the internet. Crypto proved that trading and settlement can happen around the clock, and the technology behind it has only improved.<\/p>\n
Where crypto paved the way, prediction markets picked up. Built on crypto infrastructure, these markets began with no suspensions for reporting or system maintenance. Unlike traditional capital markets, prediction markets aren\u2019t bound by hyper-local assets or niche commodities. There\u2019s no need to know how soybeans are grown in Indiana. Instead, users engage with global trends, reacting to the same publicly available information. Event contracts have a natural rhythm: spikes and lulls tied to real-world developments. A team\u2019s best player is traded. A political scandal breaks. A climate report drops overnight in Europe. A Best Actress nominee\u2019s old tweets resurface. Put another pot of coffee on.<\/p>\n
Of course, this energy-drink-fueled, eyes-bloodshot trading style requires serious infrastructure. The exchange must be able to deploy and update its platform without suspending trading. To do that, prediction markets borrow from the playbooks of at-scale tech giants like Netflix, Meta, and Amazon. These companies use \u201crolling updates\u201d and \u201cblue-green deployments\u201d to push changes seamlessly. You\u2019ve never seen a \u201cSystem Under Maintenance\u201d screen while buying paper towels at 2 AM, and now you won\u2019t while placing a trade, either.<\/p>\n
The exchange must also be able to define a flexible \u201cTrade Date\u201d and trading day. That doesn\u2019t always mean midnight to midnight. It might mean 4:30 PM to 4:30 PM, with trades between 4:30 PM and midnight assigned to the next day\u2019s trade date. This is a structure often used for regulatory reporting or account settlement.<\/p>\n
And finally, the infrastructure must support onboarding and funding around the clock. A user should be able to sign up, fund their account, and start trading within minutes, whether it\u2019s noon or when the rooster crows.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Prediction markets are thriving, particularly among Millennials and Gen Zers raised on the logic and dopamine loops of video games. But it\u2019s not just about \u201cgamifying\u201d trading. It\u2019s about rethinking access. These platforms succeed because they make trading easy to start, visually intuitive, instantly fundable, and nearly always available. The questions themselves are clear and accessible:\u00a0Will the Pittsburgh Steelers win the Super Bowl?\u00a0The probabilities are just as easy to grasp: 97% no, 3% yes. And the stakes can be low\u2014users can participate with just $1, unlike traditional markets that often require hundreds or thousands just to get in the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jim Downs, Co-Founder & CEO, Connamara Technologies The last five years have seen the death of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[84,467,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-68162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-markets","tag-business","tag-markets","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}