Hedge funds and family offices have watched prediction markets grow into a serious price-discovery tool but had no institutional way in. That changes today with BitGo Prime and Susquehanna Crypto collaboration.
BitGo Prime and Susquehanna Crypto have announced a partnership that gives institutional investors OTC access to prediction markets using cryptocurrency or stablecoin collateral. The offering is the first of its kind designed specifically for institutional participants.
The partnership targets hedge funds, family offices, and ultra-high-net-worth individuals. Until now, these investors had no structured path into prediction markets without either using retail-facing platforms or liquidating existing crypto positions to fund trades. The new framework allows them to post BTC, ETH, USD, or stablecoins as collateral held within BitGo’s existing platform while trading listed event contracts with a minimum transaction size of $100,000.
Liquidity is provided by Susquehanna Crypto. Trades are executed bilaterally with BitGo’s OTC desk rather than through retail order books. All transactions are documented under standard derivatives trading agreements, including binary option and event contract confirmations — bringing prediction market trades in line with how institutional derivatives are handled in traditional finance.
The infrastructure gap being addressed here is real. Prediction markets have grown significantly in prominence as venues for forecasting political, economic, and other event-driven outcomes. But the custody, collateral management, and execution infrastructure needed for institutional participation has been largely absent, forcing professional investors either out of the market entirely or into workflows built for retail users.
“Prediction markets have developed into an increasingly relevant venue for price discovery around real-world events, but institutional access has remained limited,” said Matt Ballensweig, Global Head of Trading at BitGo. “This offering is designed to give clients a more seamless way to access that liquidity through bilateral OTC execution and digital asset collateral frameworks built for institutional use — clients can post USD, stablecoins, BTC or other crypto as collateral to trade any listed contract for $100k or greater.”
“Prediction markets have matured into a genuine institutional asset class,” said Chase Lax, CEO at Susquehanna Crypto. “We’ve long believed in their power as a tool for price discovery around real-world events. Partnering with BitGo to give institutional clients access to these markets is a natural extension of the work we’ve been doing in this space.”
BitGo (NYSE: BTGO) is a digital asset infrastructure company that has operated since 2013, offering custody, trading, staking, and settlement services to institutional clients globally. Susquehanna Crypto is a proprietary digital asset trading firm headquartered in Nassau, with offices in London, Hong Kong, and New York.
Though the offering is novel and may be empowering for the institutions, the concept of moving prediction markets to enterprise-grade infrastructure is also controversial. Prediction markets occupy a legal grey zone between derivatives and gambling, with regulators in many countries banning them outright, while others side with prediction platforms.
Their core premise that crowd wisdom produces accurate forecasts is undermined when wealthy actors can move odds through large positions, potentially influencing media narratives and real-world outcomes in the process. Insider trading advantages, thin liquidity, and herd behaviour further distort results. Politically, commodifying elections raises ethical red flags, and the empirical case for prediction markets outperforming traditional forecasting methods remains inconclusive.
Now that institutional capital is entering the space at scale, the “wisdom of crowds” dynamic that justified the model may be compromised entirely. The question of technical mechanisms preventing power abuse cases, such as actors causing certain outcomes to profit from them, remains at the cornerstone of prediction markets at scale.
