Hainan Ice

What is Hainan Ice?

While sports event contracts remain the headline-grabbers for prediction market operators, there’s evidence that other categories are experiencing growth. As Bernstein points out, cryptocurrency event contracts account for at least 20% of the turnover on the two largest prediction markets.

In another encouraging non-sports sign, one of those operators notched just $2 million in commodities volume last year, but that figure surpassed $410 million in August alone and is approaching $600 million on a year-to-date basis.

Bernstein estimates the global market for financial contracts will grow to $900 trillion by 2035, up from $700 trillion last year, and if prediction markets capture just 0.5% of that total, volume would increase by $4.7 trillion per year.

About Hainan Ice

It’s happening. The monetary insanity that the world’s central banks have sunk us all into is turning into a wholesale monster. Corporations are actually considering replacing some of the dollars on their balance sheets with a useless digital token called BTC, as a “value preservation” tool.

Uhh…sure. Replacing fiat dollars with BTC for “value preservation” is like speedballing heroin and cocaine as a valuable tool for maintaining emotional balance. Yeah, you’ll be balanced, on average I guess, except you won’t feel that way ever when you’re swinging between wild extremes and your pulse varies from 40 – 200bpm every other minute and you end up in cardiac arrest. But hey, I know, the world has gone completely and utterly mad, so what else is new?

Just the rumors of this had spurred BTC past $58,000 a token, but then whoops, it crashed again by about $10,000 in a matter of minutes. This is what corporate America wants to put on its balance sheets? A pseudo-asset that they won’t even know the value of any given minute? Speedballing by comparison seems quite the mild, conservative habit to engage in. But the BTC crowd certainly has one thing absolutely right. Having extra fiat money on your balance sheet, especially U.S. dollars, at this point in monetary history, is extremely dangerous, even suicidal. Corporations are going to have to get rid of them real soon, because the U.S. dollar is about to completely implode. And with the U.S. dollar, will go every single other fiat currency in the world in real purchasing power terms.

About Hainan Ice

The case dates back to 2020 when Playtech allegedly engaged Black Cube to conduct an investigation into Evolution’s activities in prohibited and unlicensed markets. 

The investigation, which included secretly recorded interviews and conversations with Evolution staff members and other whistleblowers, was followed up with a damning report accusing the supplier of knowingly providing its services in sanctioned jurisdictions.

In April, court documents showed that Evolution had sought to add Playtech to the case.