"Win Without Risk!" - Raising $2.1B On Polymarket's Bans

FORBES ·

SafeBets, a new prediction market advised by blockchain pioneers Stornetta and Haber, claims to offer "risk-free" forecasting, allowing users to earn Unicoin tokens without wagering real money. Executive Director J. Tennyson Singer positions it as "market research" to circumvent the severe gambling regulations and international bans plaguing rivals like Kalshi and Polymarket. SafeBets plans to monetize collective intelligence for affiliate brokerages. However, the platform is solely owned by Unicoin Inc.'s CEO, Alex Konanykhin, whose company is currently battling an SEC lawsuit over alleged misrepresentation in token sales and false registration claims. The Unicoin tokens awarded by SafeBets are directly linked to this legally embattled entity, raising concerns about the platform's true stability and the value of its "risk-free" rewards. Scott Stornetta and Stuart Haber are two renowned founding fathers of Blockchain technology who devised the method of cryptographically linking records into a tamper-evident chain. This technique was adopted by Satoshi Nakamoto, cited in the Bitcoin white paper and turned into the blockchain. It is perhaps a sign of the times that these cryptography pioneers have now joined the competitive world of prediction markets. They have signed as advisors for a new prediction market platform known as SafeBets. "You can win without risk. And we actually mean that," said J. Tennyson Singer, Executive Director of the prediction platform SafeBets, in an interview held on the sidelines of Toronto’s Blockchain Futurist Conference 2026. "We're not going to ask for your credit card - We're interested in your smarts." New users receive 100 house tokens and spend one per forecast. "The cost of each prediction is one of these tokens. And if you're right, you get back a real [Unicoin] token," Singer said. A wrong call costs the house token and nothing else. "You can't put your own real money at risk". The tokens are not the business. "The data is worth its weight in gold. It's tremendously valuable. In fact that's the currency that we care most about," Singer said, describing a plan to rank the most accurate forecasters into what he calls an oracle tier. "Ultimately we'll have affiliate brokerages that will make trades based off of that collective intelligence signal," he said. He pitches the product against real harm. "We live in an era of a gambling epidemic. I wouldn't say ours is the antidote to gambling, so to speak, but it is a better model," Singer continued, describing a population, "particularly young men," saturated with invitations to stake money they cannot afford. The diagnosis holds up, and the crypto casino economy has grown on that demand . "They were more accurate than 99.9% of all the other predictors," Singer said of three winners of a World Cup contest he says drew thousands of users after an April launch, placing them in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Colombia, with a top prize of a million tokens plus $10,000 in cash. "We're also very excited by the November elections in America. We're going to be offering new verticals around politics as well," he said. "We are able to go where others like [Kalshi] and [Polymarket] can't go. There's political consternation across the United States," said SafeBets Policy Advisor Sam Amsterdam, describing “the opportunity for us to permeate internationally and operate with impunity." The company's investor comparison table lists Polymarket and Kalshi as gambling, with legal exposure of "DOJ / state lawsuits" and "criminal charges (AZ)." SafeBets lists itself as "market research," with legal exposure of "None." "This model has been proven most of the time. Collective intelligence seems to outperform the market," Singer said. The evidence is narrower than that. Forecasting tournaments and election markets have beaten their baselines, but no study has shown a crowd signal can be traded profitably at scale. "You buy two challenges, you bet long on one and short on the other, you're guaranteed a win, right?" Chris Hunter, chief executive of Maven Trading, said on the On The Margin podcast, describing users who optimize against simulated accounts rather than trade in them. His description of his own product transfers: "it's essentially a game, right? It's a trading-based game, skill-based game. There's no real money being played with." Polymarket and Kalshi are fighting the gambling question particularly on more than a dozen fronts. In the United States, thirteen states have taken active enforcement or legislative action against them: Nevada's ban survived both a federal district court challenge and the Ninth Circuit; Maryland's courts rejected Kalshi's preemption argument; Ohio issued a $5 million fine notice and state courts sided with regulators; Arizona filed a 20-count criminal information against Kalshi for illegal gambling and election wagering; Connecticut issued cease-and-desist orders to both platforms; Illinois's Gaming Board sent cease-and-desist letters to more than a dozen operators; and Minnesota went furthest of all, enacting the nation's first felony statute making it a criminal offense to operate, manage, or control a prediction market platform. Globally, both platforms have been blocked or restricted in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Belgium, the Netherlands, Romania, Switzerland, Poland, and a growing list of other jurisdictions, uniformly classified as unlicensed gambling operations. The core exposure in every case is the same: a consumer placing money on an uncertain outcome. That is the legal hook that does not exist on SafeBets, where no user ever wagers anything. Unicoin Inc., which reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), describes SafeBets in its quarterly report filed Aug. 5, 2026 as "an entity founded and solely owned by the Company's Chief Executive Officer and co-founder, Alex Konanykhin." Unicoin extended a revolving credit line of up to $5 million on Feb. 14, 2026, and in exchange "SafeBets agreed to issue 50 million shares of its common stock to the Company." Konanykhin has been a defendant in an SEC suit since May 20, 2025. The agency sued Unicoin and four executives over sales of certificates conveying rights to Unicoin tokens, alleging it told investors "the company had sold more than $3 billion in rights certificates, when it raised no more than $110 million," and that the tokens were "'SEC-registered' or 'U.S. registered,' when they were not." The former general counsel settled for a $37,500 civil penalty without admitting or denying the allegations. Unicoin's filing states the rest of their position: "We believe the claims asserted by the SEC are without merit and intend to vigorously defend against the allegations." At WarOnCrypto.us , Unicoin argues that the SEC action is a residual lawfare initiated as a part of the ‘War on Crypto’. The token SafeBets awards winners is that same Unicoin. "The Company intends to make unicoins a network token on SafeBets.world, a prediction platform," the filing says. The share offering is live at 25 cents under Regulation D, "Up to $20,000,000" across 80 million shares. "The market will determine the value come September via our pending ICO," Singer noted. What the winners hold is worth whatever that offering decides, and SafeBets states the dependency plainly: "The SafeBets/Unicoin flywheel relies on Unicoin maintaining and growing its value."

AI 시장 분석

News that $2.1 billion in funds has been raised in prediction markets related to Polymarket's ban reflects high market interest in decentralized betting platforms. Such massive capital inflows could lead to increased trading activity for related cryptocurrencies and prediction market infrastructure. Investors should pay attention to the volatility between regulatory risks and increased platform utilization.

상승 영향

DYAX 전담 분석

The raising of $2.1 billion on Polymarket signifies a direct expansion of liquidity supply to the alternative betting and prediction markets sector. The profitability of related tokens and platform operators is likely to improve in the short term.

In a bullish scenario, a surge in platform trading volume would drive up related asset values, but in a bearish scenario, the risk of tightening regulations in various countries could come to the fore and cause a sharp decline. Key regulatory trends and daily trading volume indicators must be continuously monitored.

AI가 생성한 분석으로 투자 자문이 아닙니다.

DYAX Investor Sentiment

Bullish (Long) 46% · Bearish (Short) 54%

469 participants

Related News

원문 보기 — FORBES