Why Susquehanna Is Building a Prediction Markets Business

What It Covers

Jeremy Maletz, head of prediction markets at Susquehanna International Group, explains how the firm is acting as a liquidity bootstrapper for institutional adoption of prediction markets, moving beyond sports betting toward economically meaningful hedging instruments for corporations and financial institutions.

Key Questions Answered

• •Institutional liquidity gap: Low on-platform volume figures — sometimes just $100,000–$150,000 traded — do not reflect actual available institutional capacity. Susquehanna will commit tens of millions of dollars in risk on a single contract regardless of printed volume, because prediction markets function primarily as price discovery mechanisms, not liquidity pools, making small-volume prices still reliable enough to trade against.
• •Speed-to-market advantage: Traditional futures listings take roughly one year to complete through exchanges like CME. Prediction market platforms can list a new contract within a single day. This compression makes prediction markets viable for hedging fast-moving, idiosyncratic risks — such as tariff exposure for a musical instrument importer — that conventional derivatives markets cannot address quickly enough.
• •Off-platform block trades: Institutional hedging trades can be structured as over-the-counter swaps that reference prediction market pricing data without appearing in on-platform volume statistics. Corporations seeking to hedge specific risks — regulatory changes, geopolitical events, commodity disruptions — can transact directly with Susquehanna through brokers, banks, or insurers acting as intermediaries.
• •Insider trading detection is easier in prediction markets: Unlike equities, where countless legitimate reasons exist to buy a stock, prediction market contracts have narrow, specific outcomes. Unusual directional flow on a contract like a specific political leadership change is far more conspicuous, making suspicious activity easier to identify and report. Regulated platforms with KYC requirements add a further structural deterrent absent from DeFi alternatives.
• •Market selection discipline: Susquehanna avoids "mentionables" — contracts that resolve based on whether specific words are spoken on podcasts or broadcasts — and any market where outcomes can be directly manipulated by participants. Focusing exclusively on regulated platforms with KYC, and on contracts tied to verifiable real-world events, reduces manipulation risk and protects institutional reputation when committing large capital positions.