Onyx Odds, a New York startup founded in 2024 blending sports prediction with crypto trading, closed a $20 million funding round on June 24, 2026, with Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, leading the deal. The raise values the company at approximately $220 million and brings its total funding to around $28.3 million, following an $8.3 million seed round in March 2025 co-led by Velo Partners and Xfund. The investment comes as monthly global prediction market volume has grown from under $1.2 billion in early 2025 to more than $20 billion by January 2026, according to TRM Labs.

Why Payward's Involvement Runs Deeper Than Capital

The funding relationship between Payward and Onyx Odds is not straightforward. Onyx Odds operates as a CFTC-registered introducing broker guaranteed by NinjaTrader Clearing, LLC. Payward acquired NinjaTrader in March 2025 for $1.5 billion, which means it already owns the clearinghouse sitting behind Onyx Odds' regulated trading infrastructure. Payward is now investing in a company operationally tied to infrastructure it controls, giving Payward a tighter position in the regulated U.S. prediction market pipeline.

Payward has been aggressive in building out that pipeline. In addition to NinjaTrader, the company has acquired Bitnomial (a CFTC-registered derivatives exchange) for $550 million, purchased stablecoin payments firm Reap for $600 million, acquired token management firm Magna, and launched CFTC-regulated perpetual futures for U.S. traders in June 2026. Co-CEO Arjun Sethi told CoinDesk at Consensus Miami this month that the company was "80% ready" to go public. Payward has also confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC and was reportedly raising capital at a valuation of around $20 billion as of May 2026.

What Onyx Odds Actually Does

Founded in 2024 by Leul Dadi, a Harvard mathematics graduate (class of 2021) and former Jane Street quantitative trader, Onyx Odds operates what it calls a "social sportsbook." The platform uses a sweepstakes structure: users spend virtual Onyx Coins but can redeem winnings for real cash prizes. This legal model sidesteps direct sports wagering laws that restrict traditional sportsbooks in many U.S. states, allowing Onyx to operate in more than 40 states.

The platform reports more than 800,000 users and over $2 billion in monthly notional trading volume, according to the company. Beyond sports predictions, it offers daily fantasy sports and plans to add crypto trading across 500 or more tokens by July 2026. The company competes in the same sector as Kalshi and Polymarket, which together account for roughly 85 to 90 percent of global prediction market volume. The three platforms differ meaningfully in structure: Onyx Odds operates via a sweepstakes-legal social sportsbook model, Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated event contracts exchange, and Polymarket is a decentralised crypto-native platform.

In April 2026, combined trading volume across major prediction platforms reached approximately $8.6 billion for the month. Kalshi recorded $5.42 billion in taker volume, overtaking Polymarket in U.S.-regulated volume for the first time. Polymarket's global footprint remains substantial, with international volume reaching approximately $9 billion in the same month, far exceeding any U.S.-regulated competitor. Sports contracts now account for roughly 80 percent of all crypto prediction market activity globally, a significant shift from the politically event-dominated composition of 2024.

Limited Reach Beyond the U.S., but a Signal to Regional Builders

Onyx Odds is currently a U.S.-only product. For users and developers outside North America, the funding round matters less as a direct market event and more as a signal of where institutional capital is concentrating.

In South Asia, India has emerged as one of Polymarket's most active international user bases despite government-level blocks on platform access. Indian users continue to access decentralised prediction markets through crypto wallets and VPNs, navigating a 30 percent capital gains tax on virtual digital asset profits introduced in 2022, according to Datawallet (2026). The Onyx Odds raise illustrates that the largest well-funded platforms are building around CFTC-regulated clearing and crypto trading rails; industry observers note this raises the benchmark for any regionally focused competitor attempting to attract comparable institutional backing.

Africa presents a sharper contrast. Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa collectively run billions of dollars in annual sports betting activity, and the continent leads globally in retail crypto adoption relative to GDP, according to Chainalysis. Yet decentralised prediction markets have struggled to gain a foothold there, held back by UX models that do not match familiar sportsbook interfaces, expensive local data sourcing, and liquidity challenges, according to Technext24 analysis from February 2026. Ghana's Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, passed in December 2025, is one of the most significant regulatory developments for prediction markets on the continent and remains underreported in Western crypto coverage. Local platforms such as Bayse (formerly GoWagr) and UltraMarket are attempting to build locally relevant products, but capital continues to consolidate around U.S.-first platforms.

What Comes Next

Onyx Odds is targeting a July 2026 launch for its crypto trading product, which would potentially make it one of the few platforms combining a sweepstakes-legal sportsbook with a live crypto trading interface under a single CFTC-backed clearing arrangement. Whether that model can compete with Kalshi's regulatory positioning or Polymarket's global decentralised volume remains to be seen. For regional builders outside the U.S., the window to build locally anchored prediction market infrastructure before well-capitalised American platforms attempt to localise is still open, but the Payward investment suggests that window is narrowing.