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Morning Minute: CME & Fanduel Bring Prediction Markets to the Masses

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Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s top news:

  • Crypto majors mixed, ETH and SOL lead; BTC back to $113k
  • BNB hits fresh ATH at $880 overnight before retracing
  • Kanye tweets out YZY coin, briefly runs to $3B before falling
  • CME announces partnership with Fanduel to launch events contracts
  • Heaven notches first $1M revenue day, burns another $1M of its LIGHT token

🎲 CME + FanDuel Bring Event Contracts to the Masses

Wall Street is meeting Main Street in the betting arena.

And the prediction market boom is about to begin…

📌 What Happened

The CME Group and FanDuel are teaming up to launch a new event contracts platform, making it easier for everyday users to bet on markets like the S&P 500, oil, gold, and even crypto.

The two will create a joint venture that will offer fully funded, event-based contracts as a part of the initiative.

These simple yes/no markets will let FanDuel’s millions of customers trade on major benchmarks and economic indicators for as little as $1.

Expected to go live later this year (pending CFTC review), the platform will cover:

  • Indices: S&P 500, Nasdaq-100
  • Commodities: oil, gas, gold
  • Crypto: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and more
  • Macro data: GDP, CPI, and other key releases

The contracts will run through a new non-clearing futures commission merchant (FCM) jointly operated by CME and FanDuel, and listed on CME’s regulated exchanges.

🗣️ What They’re Saying

  • Terry Duffy, CME Group CEO: “Together, our event-based products will appeal to the growing public interest in markets, and we will provide education to attract a new generation of potential traders not active in derivatives today.”
  • Amy Howe, FanDuel CEO: “Partnering with CME Group will unlock our ability to bring even more new and engaging products to FanDuel’s fast-growing customer base… combining innovation with best-in-class regulatory compliance and consumer protections.”

CME & FanDuel partnering on event contracts…

I’m serious.

Basically you can wager as little as $1 on S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, oil, gas, gold, crypto, & even GDP and CPI.

Yes, you’ll be able to place these bets via FanDuel.

Full gamification of markets.

What a time to be alive. pic.twitter.com/BMUgjgqWw4

— Nate Geraci (@NateGeraci) August 20, 2025

🧠 Why It Matters

This is a huge moment for prediction markets and retail access:

  • Mainstream on-ramp: Millions of FanDuel bettors will soon have a direct line into regulated financial products, essentially turning prediction rading into a mass-market consumer activity
  • Legitimacy & compliance: With CME as the partner, these contracts have instant credibility and regulatory cover, something platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have struggled with
  • Bridging speculation & investing: By blending sports betting UX with financial markets, CME and FanDuel are creating a product that sits squarely between gambling and trading
  • Crypto crossover: Including Bitcoin and Ethereum in the initial product set cements crypto’s role as a tradable benchmark alongside equities, commodities, and macro data

Assuming this is approved, this could be the biggest step yet toward mass adoption of event-based markets in the U.S. seen to date.

There were questions (and rightfully so) if prediction markets would make it post-2024 election.

Volumes boomed into the most hotly debated election ever, but then (to the surprise of many), volumes sustained.

Prediction markets have sustained well post-election (data from https://dune.com/fergmolina/polymarket-markets-data)[/caption]

Thanks to new styles of pop culture markets, leaning more into news and geopolitics and of course sports betting markets, prediction markets have kept volumes at ~50%+ levels of peak 2024.

That’s a huge win.

And the more progress made in 2025-2026 will lead for an even bigger 2028 election cycle.

Let the prediction market boom begin…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes

A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

  • Crypto majors were mostly green on the day; BTC even at $113,300, ETH +3% at $4,285, XRP +1% at $2.90, SOL +3% at $184
  • OKB (+60%), MORPHO (+12%) and LINK (+6%) led top movers
  • BNB briefly broke to a new ATH of $880 last night
  • OKB popped another 60% to $206 after its massive token burn
  • A judge unfroze $57.6M in funds tied to the Libra meme coin case (tied to Argentina President Javier Milei) after signs of compliance
  • Xapo sees a $200B Bitcoin inflow coming from the wealth transfer from boomers to their children over the coming decade
  • Ark Invest backed Bullish and Robinhood, with Cathie Wood’s firm buying $21.2M of Bullish and $16.2M of Robinhood shares in their market debuts
  • The Winklevoss twins funded a pro-Trump crypto PAC to the tune of $21M (188 BTC as it looks to launch the Digital Freedom Fund aimed at blocking CBDCs and supporting crypto-friendly policy
  • The New York lawmaker’s push for 0.2% crypto tax will also include stablecoin transfers

In Corporate Treasuries

  • Empery Digital holds $450M in BTC but its market cap sits at just $340M, trading well below mNAV
  • Windtree Therapeutics, a BNB treasury company, has been removed from Nasdaq for listing compliance issues

In Memes

  • Memecoin leaders are red on the day; DOGE -3%, Shiba -3%, PEPE -4%, PENGU -8%, BONK -4%, TRUMP -3%, SPX -3%, and FARTCOIN -4%
  • Kanye West tweeted out a memecoin YZY which briefly ran to $3B FDV before falling back to $1B
  • Heaven reached $1M in daily revenue on Wednesday (75% of Pump’s revenue) while also unlocking a new “golden twap” to account for some missed revenue that hadn’t gone to LIGHT buybacks

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:

🤖 AI x Crypto

Section dedicated to headlines in the AI sector of crypto:

  • Overall market cap down 2% to $12.2B, leaders were mixed
  • FARTCOIN (+1%), VIRTUAL (+1%), TIBBIR (-3%), ai16z (-1%) & VVV (-17%)
  • fxn (+24%), Simmi (+22%) and IRIS (+15%) led top movers

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

  • ETH NFT leaders were mostly green; Punks -2% at 46.5 ETH, Pudgy +1% at 12.6, BAYC +2% at 11.6 ETH
  • Moonbirds (+15%) and Mooncats (+17%) were notable top movers
  • Bitcoin NFTs were mostly red or even; Bitcoin Puppets +6%
  • Abstract NFTs were mixed, led by BUUMEE (+20%)

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Crypto Trends

From Free NFT Mint to Drinks at 7-Eleven: Rekt Is Reaching the Masses

by admin



In brief

  • The crypto-native Rekt Drink brand has expanded into 7-Eleven stores, starting in Southern California.
  • The brand has sold more than 600,000 cans of its non-alcoholic, sparkling waters.
  • Rekt initially began with a free NFT drop that didn’t mint out, but has grown substantially since.

Rektguy didn’t mint out its free NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain in 2022—but three years later, the brand has become incredibly familiar with the phrase “sold out,” with the Rekt Drinks brand clearing out successive drops and reaching more and more consumers along the way.

The brand, which weathered a brutal crypto bear market thanks in part to the strength of its fervent community, has now sold more than 600,000 cans of Rekt Drinks, a non-alcoholic, flavored sparkling water that comes in a variety of different flavors. And this week, the brand earned placement at 7-Eleven, starting with a trio of stores in Southern California. 

Rekt Brands co-founder Ovie Faruq (aka OSF) told Decrypt that it’s “kind of funny” that the original Rektguy NFT offering didn’t mint out. The project, which started as an art collection and a “side quest” for Faruq, has since morphed its way into a leading Web3 brand, with beverages helping it expand beyond the blockchain.

(Disclosure: Ovie Faruq’s Canary Labs is an investor in DASTAN, the parent company of Rug Radio and Decrypt.)

“We sort of had a decision to make. We didn’t really promise anything, there was no roadmap, no promises made—it was really just meant to be an art collection,” he said of Rektguy. “But over the next two years, we seemed to just have this really super sticky, tight-knit community that stuck around.” 

It was during the summer of 2023 when ideas started to blossom about potential expansions.

“We spoke a while about Rektguy versus Rekt as a concept. We had put the logo on a few things, and it sort of felt like this Rekt thing could be a brand,” Faruq said, adding that the goal became getting the logo in as many places as possible. 

Drinks felt like a natural connection, according to Faruq, thanks in part to the ability to manufacture them cheaply—plus the connection to Rektguy’s imagery, which features a hooded skeleton holding a drinking bottle.

With no experience in drinks, the team brought on an advisor who had started a drinks company in the UK. Through trial and error, they got cans of Rekt into the hands of attendees at NFT Paris in 2024—and they liked it. 

“The feedback was really good. It was surprisingly good,” said Faruq. “Considering we had no experience in drinks, we just kind of like made up this drink to fuck around and find out, so to speak. It was really, really good feedback.” 

From there, the team decided to try to manufacture a bigger batch and sell them, leading to its first major sale of Liquidated Lime drinks last October—a collection of 222,000 drinks that it sold out in 48 hours.

Prior to the sale, Rekt built out a rewards program to incentivize users to engage with the brand, rewarding Drank Points to those who participated in social quests and drink purchasers as well. By earning points, users were later eligible to claim Rekt Coin (REKT), an Ethereum-based token tied to the brand. 

“I was really inspired by the Solana phone,” said Faruq about the Solana Saga, an Android smartphone that initially faced weak demand, but then sold out once the Bonk meme coin offered to buyers surged in value. “No one touched it, tons of supply left—but as soon as people could claim a $500 BONK airdrop, the phone sold out in like 24 hours.” 

After its initial success, the brand teamed up with Ethereum layer-2 network Abstract for a drop of Abstract Apple, a new flavor of its sparkling water, selling out even faster than before.



“After that, we just had tons of people reaching out to us for collaborations,” said Faruq, whose brand also dropped drinks via collabs with NFT marketplace OpenSea and Solana decentralized exchange aggregator, Jupiter. 

But beyond the crypto walls, the connections didn’t always come easily.

“No one’s really heard of us outside of crypto. We did the first sale, and people are sort of wondering if this is a one-hit wonder sort of thing,” he said, adding that the brand’s crypto origins initially led to some skepticism, as well. “You tell people the story, they expressed some interest, but there wasn’t really a ton of movement,” he added.

But after the Abstract and OpenSea drops, the brand started to pick up some momentum that has carried into its placements in 7-Eleven stores, placing Rekt alongside giants of the beverage industry.

“With 7-Eleven, I just think we had a very strong pitch to them,” said Faruq. “This is the perfect product for a 7-Eleven store, and we can get a ton of people out to the stores when we launch it and make it some really big thing and a really good launch. They were onboard.” 

The brand carried out its first 7-Eleven activation on Thursday, overselling its initial planned supply of 600 cans in the process. The cans were priced at $2.80 a pop, or $10 for a 4-pack. Another event took place Friday, with the last set for Saturday. And early 4-pack buyers each day will earn an allotment of REKT tokens, as well.

“​​[You] never really know if people will turn up to stuff when it’s not a crypto event,” Faruq told Decrypt of the initial Thursday event. “But we had a good turnout, and all the drinks selling out was obviously nice.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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‘It’s for Everyone’: With $60 Billion in Bitcoin, Strategy’s Michael Saylor Appeals to the Masses

by admin



In brief

  • Strategy CEO Michael Saylor on Thursday touted the benefits of Bitcoin for ordinary folks at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas.
  • He called Bitcoin “perfected capital,” urging his listeners to buy Bitcoin through whatever means possible.
  • Strategy holds more than $60 billion in Bitcoin as of the time of writing.

Strategy CEO Michael Saylor touted Bitcoin as a virtually foolproof path to wealth creation for “everyone”—from business owners to families, and even one’s enemies—in his speech at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas this week.

During the roughly 35-minute presentation on Thursday entitled “21 Ways to Wealth,” the famous Bitcoin maxi said the world’s oldest cryptocurrency is “perfected capital,” championing its “incorruptible… [and] programmable” nature. He urged his audience to buy Bitcoin to enrich themselves. 

“Bitcoin is engineered to outperform everything,” Saylor proclaimed.

Of course, juicing demand for Bitcoin would likely benefit Saylor and Strategy and boost the value of the company’s holdings. The firm added billions of dollars in Bitcoin to its corporate treasury this month, bringing its total holdings to 580,250 BTC—worth more than $60 billion as of the time of writing, according to data provider CoinGecko.



Although speaking before Bitcoiners, the executive stressed that his sales pitch was largely for crypto-curious listeners watching via livestream at home, stressing that Bitcoin is “not [just] for multi-billion-dollar companies.”

“It’s for everyone,” Saylor claimed. “Take your fiat currency, trade it for Bitcoin. Take your long-term capital, trade it for bitcoin. Sell your bonds, trade [them] for Bitcoin. Sell your inferior equity, sell your inferior real estate property, buy Bitcoin.”

The Strategy executive also urged his listeners to embrace AI tools, touting their ability to transform the average person into “100 super-geniuses.”

“I tell all my executives, before you ask a lawyer, before you ask a banker, before you ask any expert, go to the AI,” Saylor said. “Make it think. Grind the silicon overlord.”

Saylor recently shared that Strategy used AI to help craft its unique stock offerings to help power the firm’s bountiful Bitcoin buys.

Its Bitcoin acquisition spree has inspired a growing number of firms to stockpile the token, with public companies like Metaplanet, Semler Scientific, and most recently GameStop allocating massive amounts of capital to increase their Bitcoin holdings over the past few months. 

Similarly, institutional investors are also increasingly investing in Bitcoin via exchange-traded funds, pouring billions of dollars into spot Bitcoin ETFs over the past year and a half since their debut in the U.S. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF recorded nearly $6 billion worth of inflows in May once all was said and done, coming close to the monthly record, Farside Investors data shows. 

Investors’ growing appetite for Bitcoin has pushed the token’s price to new all-time highs. The asset surpassed $109,000 on May 21 before cresting to nearly $112,000 a day later, although its price has since moderated, sitting just above $104,000 as of this writing.

Saylor’s speech seemed largely geared towards ensuring Bitcoin would continue its climb to new record highs, bolstered by investments from individuals and institutions across the world. 

The Strategy founder rounded out his speech by eschewing loftier ideas such as “changing the world” or chasing one’s passions as “dilutive distractions,” advising his disciples to narrow their focus to buying Bitcoin if they wanted to get rich. Saylor acknowledged the work of pseudonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto in his advice.

“Satoshi gave you an idea worth half of everything on Earth,” Saylor said. “You don’t have to topple any particular system that exists in this world… don’t fight lost causes.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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