The Future of Prediction Markets Lives in Group Chats
The experience I had on Base App this morning reminded me of some of my first mobile experiences back in the day.
In 2010, people laughed at the idea of trading stocks on your phone.
Too clunky. Too risky. Not Serious. Real investors used real terminals.
Then mobile-native apps like Robinhood showed up and changed everything.
Today, it’s happening again. But the shift isn’t from desktop to mobile.
It’s from apps to chats.
Group chats are becoming the new App Store. Apps like Base that are native to digital money change the game for what's possible. Protocols like XMTP allow thousands of builders to deploy mini-apps and agents without permission.
Bracky is a new prediction market agent that you can add to any group chat on the Base app and make predictions on sports.
Using Bracky in Base Chat doesn't feel like any other prediction market website or app. It feels like you have a friend in your group who's also the greatest coach in the world. Prediction markets didn’t just become social — they became coachable. Predictions are inherently social; it's what we do with our friends every day. It only makes sense that it should live in our group chat.
Bracky feels like trash-talking fantasy football in a sports bar, with an AI coach whispering in your ear.
I asked Bracky what games I can make predictions on today. It breaks it all down. Friends chime in. If someone makes a prediction, the entire group can see the prediction. I replied with a simple 🤝 emoji and copied his prediction with a single click. No app switching. No learning a new app. No adding a new credit card. No signup funnel. Just vibes and value, without leaving the chat. Everyone has a wallet, everyone has money, everyone can send each other money, and everyone knows how to reply with 🤝 to join in on the fun.
One of the coolest features is to spin up a side chat for any specific game or prediction. You reply to the agent with "Titans vs Jaguars," and it spins up a new group, and anyone in this bigger group can select "Yes, Join" and instantly get an invite to a group chat just for this game. It turns group chat into a prediction-based micro-social network. Kudos to Mateo for building this functionality into the Base Chat experience. It's cool seeing multiple agents working together in a single group. It's even cooler that this all works today.
Spinning up a side chat for today's Titan's game.
Watching my friends bet on sports today is a nightmare of 6 different apps where one person is placing the predictions, others are paying them on Cash App, Venmo, Cash, and IOUs. One person keeps tabs in a notes app. Most download a new group chat app to keep it out of their default messenger. Then all individually are googling and talking to ChatGPT trying to get some Alpha. It's insane. The one thing that's at the core of everything is always the same: A Group Chat.
Base App changes the game when you combine secure chat + global native money underneath the entire thing. Everything can be done in one chat.
"Super Apps" doesn't mean the app does everything. To me, the magic is that the app doesn't require me to do anything. No download, no sign up, no account, no learning, no credit card on file, nothing. Everything works because the app uses a single key for my identity, secure chat, and digital money. When no one has to sign up to make a prediction, and it feels like just talking with friends, everyone is going to make predictions on everything... Just let people talk and make predictions like they already do all day, every day, in chat.
This is the experience that's missing to turn prediction markets from something everyone consumes into something everyone contributes to.
The technology needs to come to the conversation, not make the conversation go download and learn new technology.
There's 70 people in this Bracky chat on Base and every single person can place a prediction by replying to a message without every signing up for anything. It's actually kinda insane when you think about it.
The experience I had during the F1 race is the moment I realized the future of prediction markets isn't about apps, it's about being the coach.
From what I can tell, a lot of people are hearing about prediction markets. Some understand them. Most don’t use them.
But when making a prediction is as simple as replying to a message with a 🤝, that’s going to change — fast. Especially when you feel like a coach is part of the conversation helping everyone be smarter and learn together. It literally has removed all friction from the entire process of making a prediction.
Mid-race, the agent surfaced new info: rain might hit the F1 race. That changed the odds. It told me why my Verstappen bet was slipping and which drivers now had better probabilities. I swapped my pick by simply replying to the message, "Well then, let's move everything to Lewis." And it just happened.
That real-time coaching blew my mind. Every other market app feels single-player: you vs. the interface or some random people on the internet.
Bracky feels like Moneyball meets WhatsApp: it’s multiplayer, social, and always one step ahead.
Here’s the kicker:
I don’t care if the underlying market is on Polymarket, Kalshi, Robinhood, or another prediction market platform.
My relationship isn’t with a market. It’s with the agent. With my friends. With the group chat.
In the old world, group chats sent you to prediction markets. In this one, prediction markets come to the group chat — with digital money and intelligence baked in.
Whoever owns the group chat owns the relationship with the user. The platform for the coach.
Whoever owns the relationship with both owns the market.
This isn’t a prototype. It works today.
I placed two predictions today with Bracky on Base App after the coach told me what to do. I opened both the prediction apps today, but didn't place any.
The question I'm wondering is: Who's going to own the chat, and who's going to be the coach I trust?