What We’re Trying to Do Here

Prediction markets and betting on world-events are currently entering a new era. The legal decisions that ushered in this new era all come courtesy of the Kalshi market: (1) 2020 they became the first fully CFTC-approved prediction market exchange in the U.S.; (2) 2024 a court appeals decision allows them to list political events on their markets; and (3) right before the 2025 SuperBowl, Kalshi started adding sports-related event contracts which at the time of this writing, allows sports related betting to all 50 states without needing the approval of individual state gaming commissions that other sports betting books are required to go through since 2018.

With this realization of what this CFTC approval could provide, we are seeing prediction markets that were once offshore like Polymarket moving back onshore after receiving CFTC approval. We are seeing sports betting giants like FanDuel and financial exchanges like Crypto.com and Robinhood getting into prediction markets. And trust me when I say that there are MANY MORE prediction markets being in the past few months (shout out to the Prediction Index for keeping up on listing them).

That’s the market reason to launch now, but my inspiration comes from seeing firsthand in national security how underappreciated, misunderstood, and unprepared our government is for non-kinetic attacks in the cyber, information, and cognitive domains. 

Getting trustworthy information has never been more difficult. Deepfakes, disinformation campaigns, the collapse of moderation guardrails, and governments pushing their preferred slant as the only acceptable version of reality; this is the information landscape we’re all forced to navigate. For years, the default answer from policymakers and academics has been to call for “better media literacy.” But what does that actually mean? Where’s the curriculum and tools? Recommended tactics like pre-bunking or inoculation strategies might work for governments and platforms that control distribution, but what about the everyday citizen, the sharp bettor, or even the analyst who doesn’t have that kind of megaphone?

Prediction markets cut through that in a different way. They reward accuracy. They force people to put skin in the game. And when money moves, it creates signals. Those signals when paired with expert insight and AI forecasting tools can often reveal sharper, timelier, and more actionable truths than consuming the news as-is.

This is why we are launching BetBreakingNews.com with this mission: grow the worldwide non-sports/world-event betting ecosystem so that bettors—wherever they are, whatever their preferred stake size, and whatever topic they want to bet on—can reliably find a betting institution ready to take their action.

That may sound like a tall order, but that’s the scale of what we need. I want to help all the players in the ecosystem—not just bettors, not just casinos/books/prediction markets (what I shorthand as “betting institutions”), and not just the companies trying to sell tools and services into the space. To build a mature, global ecosystem, we need to connect them all. That’s how you create timely, actionable insights and reward the people providing real value. My partnership motivation is simple: those who provide accurate forecasts, timely intelligence, or insider signals deserve to be rewarded for it.

To bettors whose main edge is arbitrage, sniping stale lines, or past-posting on a market where the results are public but the market hasn’t gotten to closing it yet, what I’m building may not offer much for you. No hate at all for that strategy (markets need it) but my focus is on those whose insights, actions, and positioning actually move markets because the intel that these markets can bring is my motivating principle.

At BetBreakingNews, the work will come together through articles and analysis that take three lenses: (1) what the betting markets and books are pricing, (2) what AI and decision science models predict, and (3) what experts and insiders are saying. That comparison will be the foundation of our coverage. Around it, we’ll explore markets that should exist but don’t yet, review which information sources prove accurate over time, interview operators and superforecasters, and break down the tools and services that can help both bettors and institutions sharpen their edge.

On subject matter, we’re focused on world events, politics, security, finance, and technology. We’re going to hold off on celebrity or entertainment gossip (unless it crosses into politics), and we won’t do much discussion on sports (there are already so many fantastic resources for handicapping and plenty of betting institutions to choose from no matter the sport or league). No disrespect to those market genres, but we will only likely cover things related to those topics when they illustrate an interesting principle or mechanism that we’d want to discuss further like insider trading or “non-kinetic interventions in event-driven markets,” a concept I’ll dig into in a future piece.

For the betting community, think of this site as both an analyst desk and a concierge service. We’ll connect you to markets, tools, and experts that can help, and we’ll help you find reliable betting institutions willing to take the bets you actually want to make.

For betting institutions, we’ll provide a bridge to high-value bettors, give you visibility into the markets your customers want, and connect you with expertise to sharpen your lines.

For companies, campaigns, or organizations, we’ll help you translate betting signals into actionable intelligence.

For everyday citizens just trying to make sense of the chaos, we’ll spotlight tools and communities that cut through the noise so you can do whatever you need to do with the intel (e.g. make money, vote informatively, decide to leave your country, etc.).

And to those who know me from the national security world—through my writing on cognitive warfare, my work in unconventional conflict, or the MAD Warfare podcast—here’s why this matters to you. Betting intelligence or BETINT (so sorry for another “INT” for the stack) is going to be critical for operational assessments, if it isn’t already. 

The same mechanisms that incentivize someone to throw green dildos at a WNBA game can just as easily incentivize someone to throw green grenades at critical infrastructure. We’ve already seen cases where those with foreknowledge of military strikes placed bets that signaled what was coming before traditional futures markets caught on. If you are an intelligence-focused organization and you aren’t already incorporating betting markets into your warning intelligence, you’re operating at an asymmetric disadvantage. To ignore this space is to miss where influence, action, and money are converging. And thinking you can regulate or ban it out of existence is wishful thinking (As Bill Ackman publicly tweeted, “There is no insider trading on Polymarket”). That genie is already out of the toothpaste tube.

So that’s the vision for BetBreakingNews, at least in this “Version 1” of our mission. The space is moving so fast that I’ll likely update it again in a few months. But for now, here’s the bottom line: if you care about accurate signals, actionable intelligence, and the future of non-sports betting, you should care about what we’re building here.

If you think we can be of help, or if you want to be part of building this ecosystem, reach out:
Email =  betbreakingnews@protonmail.com
X Account =  @betbreaknews
Sean’s LinkedIn Account = https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-guillory-cog-neuro/