Authors: Matou, Big Screwing
Prediction markets might be the only area in 2025 that can simultaneously excite the distinguished dollar fund investors, crypto natives, and media practitioners.
There are many reasons to be bullish on it, such as the regulatory arbitrage between state and federal betting laws in the US, the massive transaction fees brought by the extreme extrapolation of 0DTE, and the convergence of the content industry with light betting, and so on.
But today, we won't talk about these. Let's change direction and discuss the spirit behind prediction markets and how this spirit aligns with a16z, which champions the banner of "New Media," becoming one of the most crucial pieces in its new media empire.
The Spiritual Chronology of Prediction Markets
The product of a prediction market is simple (at least on the surface): it turns the object of a binary option bet into any event or information. However, the underlying spiritual core has evolved through several eras.
The earliest discussions about prediction markets actually come from Hayek. In his view, knowledge is unevenly distributed, and the market, as a coordination mechanism, mobilizes information from every corner of society. From vendors to experts, different people's judgments about the future converge into a price on the order book within the prediction market.
This discussion is the most ancient, but also the most frequently cited today. When you see marketing posts talking about "probability aggregation markets," "truth machines," etc., they all stem from Hayek's The Use of Knowledge in Society, published nearly a hundred years ago.
The torch was then passed to Robin Hanson after Hayek. The man still surfs Twitter with high intensity, debating with crypto natives. His main contribution lies in designing a mechanism called the Logarithmic Market Scoring Rule (LMSR), which makes it more beneficial for those who know the truth to tell it. This design basically established the paradigm for current prediction market design.
With such an incentive mechanism in place, information holders in various corners are motivated to contribute their information and participate in the market. Extrapolating further, it seems such markets could also be used for public governance. Opening a market for every future issue, letting people vote with real money, the future scenario would then be constructed in the changing odds on the order book. This utopia is called Futarchy, formed from "future" and the suffix "-archy" meaning governance.
Seminal Work: A Logarithmic Market Scoring Rule for Modular Information Aggregation
The above belongs to the official history, the kind you'd cover in a timeline lecture in a university microeconomics class. However, I believe that metaphysical discussions about prediction markets after this point are largely meaningless until a16z set its sights on this field.
Presence and New Media
a16z came into contact with the prediction market company Kalshi in 2024, then invested in its $5 billion round in August 2025 (the discount, if any, is currently unknown). Kalshi's valuation has now reached a staggering $22 billion, hailed as the fastest-growing company outside of AI (in terms of valuation).
After establishing its position, a16z activated its media machine, writing a series of long articles about why Kalshi is one of the most important companies of our time. Frankly, while the exchange and casino business is enticing, due to potential compliance pressures and moral risks, it never commands high PE multiples in the market. Clearly, a16z's vision extends beyond this.
So, where exactly does Kalshi, or the entire prediction market sector, hold its importance? a16z's answer is "Presence."
At our current juncture, human contact with the world is actually separated by a thin layer of plastic film—somewhat like only being able to browse the front end of a webpage while knowing nothing about its back-end construction. You can consume the front-end's audiovisual experience, narratives, and even "real feelings," but you cannot change or be present.
Not to mention, clearly in the not-too-distant future, even the transformation of the real world will be gradually outsourced to agents. So, what role do humans have in the historical process? It seems we're only left to bury our heads in light-colored sheets and cry after eating and drinking.
However, prediction markets offer a way to intervene, called prediction. It requires you to place bets with real money, then, like buying a ticket to enter a stadium, participate and observe the fluctuation of probabilities throughout the process, willingly bearing theta decay, and even screenshotting the prediction market probabilities, forwarding them in all group chats, loudly declaring your position and the viewpoint behind it.
This feeling is profoundly anti-cynical. In an instant, the infinite distances, the countless people, the selection of the cardinal, the depth of snow in New York, the rise and fall of crude oil within five minutes, and even whether Jesus will return in 2026, all become relevant to you. The uncertainty and powerlessness of postmodernity collapse under your potent predictions. You are no longer a gambler; you are an esteemed super-observer, a prophet of your tribe, a calm bystander of history.
When enough people start using, discussing, and relying on this medium, the authority of the market itself begins to rise. Kalshi will grant the ultimate interpretative power over an event's: 1. Authenticity 2. Significance. This is undoubtedly a key component in the new media empire envisioned by a16z.
One chart explaining the assassination of Charlie Kirk
Case Study: MTS
Finally, let's talk about this new media as defined by a16z. From the first-generation In-house Media championed by a16z and YC, to the second-generation VCs emerging from media like 20VC and Not Boring Capital, to the final stage where media like TBPN are acquired by companies and institutions, media power has been constantly shifting and decentralizing. The battleground for public opinion has also moved from blogs and TV programs to Twitter and podcasts.
Talking about VCs also needing to do content, build brands, and help founders with distribution is already old news in 2026. The new media a16z talks about is a full-spectrum project, covering upstream narrative setting, midstream product financing and promotion, to downstream customer acquisition—all within its scope, and at a pace far beyond what traditional media and agencies can comprehend.
What previously might have taken 3-6 months to plan, the new media will execute within weeks: founder podcasts, short video clips, AI-generated launch videos, newsletters about the company's spirit and development plans, etc., releasing information with extremely high intensity in an extremely short time. They call this "taking over the timeline."
Perhaps with all the noise from various self-media and AI-generated information, we just have to be even noisier. And our noise is more important than yours.
MTS (full name "Monitoring The Situation") embodies this philosophy, conducting 24/7 live news coverage on Twitter, putting a series of political figures, tech founders, and key figures in hot news stories on mic, then slicing and disseminating the content. They claim to only report on the most important thing happening in the world right now, until the next more important thing happens.
MTS Interviewing Robinhood
Looking back at Kalshi now, everything clicks. Relying solely on volume and a16z's endorsement, media like MTS can certainly survive, but their influence beyond a16z's light cone remains limited, more akin to a fraternity media or campus club publication. But prediction markets are different; the trading volume and positions are real money, seemingly possessing a certain detached, third-party coldness and persuasiveness.
Imagine, if you were a staunch MAGA supporter, seeing on Kalshi that the market for a Republican victory in the midterm elections had reached tens of billions in trading volume, but the price for the YES option for victory had dropped to $0.1, wouldn't you have a moment of doubt—do the Capitol Hill elites already know the result? Has the fair information market already given a picture of the future?
This is perhaps the core reason Kalshi is worth $22 billion. This kind of reality distortion field is not often seen in human history being obtained by a private company.
TBPN New Media Landscape
References:
[1] Alex Danco, “Prediction: the successor to postmodernism,” Andreessen Horowitz, October 10, 2025.
[2] Alex Danco, “Prediction Path Screenshots: A New Kind of Meme,” Andreessen Horowitz, October 10, 2025.
[3] F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” The American Economic Review, Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 519–530, 1945.
[4] Erik Torenberg, Ben Horowitz, and Marc Andreessen, “a16z’s New Media Playbook,” Andreessen Horowitz Podcast, February 27, 2026.
