Kevin Follonier - MR SHIFT 🦁

E193: @NEARProtocol: NEAR Is Encrypted Ethereum

@ilblackdragon is the Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol and one of the inventors of the Transformer, the technology behind every AI LLM. Today we talk about why he left Google, how a payments problem pulled him into crypto, and why he thinks AI and blockchain have to be built together.

Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
02:52 - Illia's Mission, Explained To An Uber Driver
03:46 - The Fire In Illia's Belly: Where It Came From
05:46 - How Illia Got Out of Where he Started from
06:54 - Moving out of Google That Changed Everything
07:55 - Attention Is All You Need, Explained Simply
10:59 - Did Illia Know He Was Starting A Revolution?
12:13 - Sponsor: @variational_io , @Bitwise
13:02 - Why Walk Away From Google's Fortune?
14:44 - Illia's Reaction When ChatGPT Exploded
15:55 - What Smart AI People Still Get Wrong
17:29 - How AI Led Illia To Crypto
19:50 - Did Illia Drop AI For Blockchain?
21:00 - 6 Years Of NEAR And How It Survived
22:14 - Why Stay In Crypto With An AI Edge?
24:42 - NEAR In One Sentence: Today And Tomorrow
26:39 - Sponsor: @KASTxyz
27:26 - What You Can Build On NEAR And Nowhere Else
29:03 - What's Happening Inside Centralized AI
30:48 - Does Illia Use Claude Or ChatGPT?
31:36 - What You Should Never Use ChatGPT Or Claude For
32:25 - The Danger Of A Few Companies Owning All The Intelligence
34:35 - How Cryptographic Guarantees Actually Work
35:58 - Is There A NEAR GPT?
36:50 - ZEC Explained Simply: Why It Matters
38:24 - $ZEC Is Private Bitcoin. What Is near:native?
39:32 - Is Owning The AI Interface Bigger Than Owning Banks?
40:29 - User Owned AI, Explained
42:05 - Sponsor: @JupiterExchange , @ethena
42:45 - Can User Owned AI Sustain An Economy?
44:55 - The Best Argument Against User Owned AI
46:13 - Open Weight Models, Explained
47:20 - Is AI Doom Further Off Than We Think?
51:15 - The Next Shift Nobody Is Watching
54:08 - What Humans Will Struggle With Most
55:29 - Thank You

This week, I’m releasing a 1-hour conversation with @hosseeb - Managing Partner at @dragonfly_xyz.

Dragonfly was early on @NEARProtocol, @Ethena, @variational_io and Polymarket. Ask Haseeb for the one crypto asset he believes in most right now and he doesn’t say Bitcoin or ETH. He names an AI privacy platform with a revenue run rate that grew from $15M to over $100M in under a year.

We talk about:
- Why Venice $VVV is his highest-conviction crypto asset right now
- How the third party doctrine means your AI chat logs can be pulled with a subpoena
- Why $ZEC is an insurance policy on your Bitcoin
- What the AI math breakthroughs mean for cryptography
How much ZEC to hold relative to Bitcoin depends on how much risk you see in BTC
- What would turn him bearish on crypto
- Why institutions running on cypherpunk rails does not weaken those values

And much more...

Podcast out this week!

Gm Folks
We are back!

This is another edition of the Predict Alpha Report, our bi-monthly collaboration with @CoinsiliumGroup tracking the rise of prediction markets, event-driven finance, and the growing role of AI agents within it. Each edition focuses on the signals that matter, from capital flows and fundraising activity to regulatory shifts and product innovation. As information is increasingly priced in real time by both humans and machines, the Predict Alpha Report will track where these signals lead.
But first, let’s get this part out of the way:

Always DYOR:
This bulletin is for informational purposes only and contains summaries of news articles originally published by third-party media outlets. Please refer to the full disclaimer at the end of the post.

Now, let’s get started.
Here are the highlights:

💸 Capital Signals
👉$40 Billion Valuation
👉Overtaking Crypto Revenue
👉Coinbase, Too
👉Nijinn Launches Free Public Platform with Dedicated 2028 US Presidential Election Dashboard

📈 Industry Pulse
👉NBA 🤝Kalshi et Polymarket
👉Kalshi, Kalshi
👉Non-expiring Contracts
👉All in One Place

💸 Capital Signals

💰$40 Billion Valuation

@Kalshi has raised $1 billion in a new Series G round at a $40 billion valuation, nearly doubling its valuation from $22 billion in May and marking a 20x increase from $2 billion in June 2025. The round was co-led by Sequoia Capital and Wellington Management, with Tiger Global and Dragoneer also participating. Annualized trading volume across the platform now exceeds $1 trillion, with more than 30 million accounts created on the platform.

Sports still make up roughly 80% of its prediction market volume, but the company is pushing further into crypto, commodities, and other financial products, including perpetual futures that have already generated $83 billion in trading volume since launching a few months ago. Kalshi also plans to expand internationally and develop products tied to stocks and indexes, while CEO @mansourtarek_ has acknowledged discussions around a potential IPO.

💰Overtaking Crypto Revenue

Revenue from @RobinhoodApp's prediction market business jumped more than sixfold year over year to $173 million in Q3 2026, overtaking crypto revenue, which fell 55% to $120 million. Its Rothera exchange, launched with Susquehanna International Group, processed 3.4 billion contracts and generated more than $100 million in its first full quarter, putting the business on track to reach a $1 billion annual revenue run rate.

Meanwhile,

💰Coinbase, Too

@Coinbase’s prediction markets business more than doubled in the third quarter, passing a $200 million annualized revenue run rate from just over $100 million in Q2. Daily active traders rose more than 60% quarter over quarter, and more than half of trading activity came from non-sports contracts. The growth stood out against a lower quarter for Coinbase’s core crypto business, with total transaction revenue falling 1% from Q2 and 44% from a year earlier.

The next step is about improving the economics. Coinbase currently routes prediction market trades through outside venues such as Kalshi, meaning part of the revenue is lost to exchange and clearing fees. In September, Coinbase secured CFTC approval for Coinbase Clearing LLC, giving it the regulatory infrastructure to eventually list, broker, and clear its own contracts. That would allow the platform to keep more of the fees generated by prediction markets and settle trades directly in USDC.

And rounding up this section:

💰Nijinn Launches Free Public Platform with Dedicated 2028 US Presidential Election Dashboard

@Predictive_Labs has launched the free public version of @nijinn_official, a prediction-market discovery terminal comparing markets across Kalshi, Polymarket, and Limitless. Coinciding with the company’s presence at Web Summit, the release includes a dedicated 2028 US Presidential Election dashboard, enabling users to explore election-related markets and compare probabilities across venues. The launch builds on Nijinn’s US Midterms dashboard, with additional venues, including Crypto_com, planned.

Predictive Labs is exhibiting at Web Summit Lisbon from 9 to 12 November 2026, with founder @johann_evrard showcasing Nijinn alongside leading figures in AI and blockchain.

📌 FYI: Predictive Labs is backed by Gibraltar-based venture builder, Coinsilium Group. Coinsilium’s shares are traded on the Aquis Stock Exchange Growth Market in London, under the ticker symbol "COIN", and on the OTCQB Venture Market in the United States under the ticker symbol "CINGF".

But it’s not just capital flowing into the space.
Keep reading for the latest signals in regulation, adoption, and structure.

📈 Industry Pulse

⚡️NBA 🤝Kalshi et Polymarket

The NBA has named Kalshi and Polymarket as its preferred prediction market platforms, giving both companies access to official league data and permission to use NBA branding on their platforms. The agreements also create an integrity framework around NBA-related markets, including information sharing, limits on certain contracts, and restrictions preventing league and team personnel from trading on NBA events. The league has also signed an agreement with the CFTC to help identify suspicious trading and potential misuse of inside information.

The partnership is another sign that prediction markets are moving deeper into mainstream U.S. sports, following similar deals involving the NHL and Major League Baseball.

⚡️Kalshi, Kalshi

Kalshi has received CFTC clearance to list more than 50 perpetual futures tied to individual stocks, including Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, Microsoft, and Amazon. Trading began on November 3 with contracts linked to Costco, McDonald’s, Qualcomm, and Amgen. Unlike regular futures, these contracts do not expire, giving traders ongoing exposure to a stock’s price without having to roll into a new contract every few months.

At the same time,

Kalshi has also filed rule changes that would let it list perpetual futures on newly public companies as soon as two business days after an IPO. Under the new rules, a company trading for less than a month could become eligible once at least 2.4 million shares have changed hands, while certain early price-history requirements would also be temporarily waived for companies valued at $3 billion or more at the time of their offering.

This means Kalshi could offer stock-linked products much closer to an IPO, similar to the faster timelines already used by major options exchanges such as Cboe and NYSE American. While Kalshi’s other eligibility rules remain strict, the filing fits a broader pattern as the platform pushes beyond prediction markets and deeper into traditional derivatives, where offering quicker exposure to newly public companies could matter more to institutional traders.

⚡️Non-expiring Contracts

@OG_com and @Cryptocom have launched regulated crypto perpetual futures for eligible U.S. traders, giving users access to non-expiring contracts with 24/7 trading and leverage of up to 5x. Crypto_com has registered as an Introducing Broker with the National Futures Association, allowing orders placed through its app and exchange to be routed into OG_com’s federally regulated exchange, clearinghouse, and brokerage infrastructure.

The launch gives Crypto_com users a way to take long or short positions on major cryptocurrencies without having to roll contracts as they expire, while also keeping spot trading, derivatives, and prediction markets within the same ecosystem. More broadly, it reflects the growing push to bring products that have traditionally been popular on offshore crypto exchanges into regulated U.S. markets, with firms increasingly competing on who can offer the widest range of derivatives under a federal framework.

⚡️All in One Place

@BinanceUS is planning a broader trading platform that could eventually bring prediction markets, spot crypto, and other financial products into one place. CEO Steve Gregory said the company is targeting the first half of 2027 for a prediction market launch, subject to regulatory approval, and has already applied for a CFTC-designated contract market license. The idea is to build an “everything exchange” where customers can move across different products without leaving the BinanceUS ecosystem.

The bigger challenge is regulation rather than technology. Gregory said BinanceUS already has surveillance and compliance systems in place, including Nasdaq’s SMARTS technology, but still needs clearer rules around issues such as insider information and election contracts. With more crypto exchanges, including Coinbase expanding beyond crypto into prediction markets and derivatives, offering several products in one venue is an increasingly important advantage.

And that’s it!
Long read, but if you enjoyed this, set a reminder in your calendar for the next edition of the Predict Alpha Report.

Thanks to Coinsilium, we’ll be dropping these updates every other Monday, i.e., twice a month.

Till then,

Thank you for being a part of the When Shift Happens family.

Full Disclaimer
All rights to the original content belong to the respective publishers. We do not claim ownership of any third-party material and provide proper attribution, including source links, for transparency and reference. While we strive for accuracy in our summaries, we make no warranties or guarantees regarding the completeness or accuracy of the information provided.

Any mention of cryptocurrency, financial products, public company stocks, or other investment instruments in this newsletter or the referenced articles is not intended as financial advice or a recommendation to invest. The information is not tailored to any individual’s circumstances and should not be relied upon for investment decisions. Readers are encouraged to consult the original articles and seek independent financial, legal, or professional advice before making any investment.

The author(s) of this report may hold, directly or indirectly, positions in the securities or digital assets (including shares or tokens) of the company(ies) or project(s) mentioned herein. Any such holdings are disclosed for transparency and should not be construed as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any financial instrument.

Building a successful and sustainable, $$ making business is very hard

By definition, most people can’t do it

That’s why the majority of the people go for short term, extractive games

And why would they not? In terms of $ and life quality the result is the same (or even better often as its easier to make $$ by extracting value than by creating value)

But the one thing that wont change after you made all these $ playing the wrong game:

You perception of yourself and therefore your sense of meaning and happiness

That’s why so many of the course sellers, “KOLs”, and grifters try to then build more “real businesses” (that they often fail) or turn to “God”

Both the PUMP and FOMO teams know exactly what they are doing and what they have been doing (cant really call them out as it does make business sense for them obviously. There is huge $$ in short term games and they take on that opportunity and make a ton of $$)

It’s just short term extraction and it matches the values of 99.99% of the KOLs and influencers so everyone is aligned

The question you have to ask yourself as a builder in the space is what game are you playing?

Long term games with long term people or short term games with short term people?

Whatever you chose is fine as long as you aren’t in denial about it and understand that the people playing long term games with long term people see you (even if they don’t say anything) and mentally disqualify you directly