Finance Desk

Published on
24/06/2026 – 14:16 GMT+2

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has given the green light to develop a prediction market app, according to the New York Times, as Meta moves to capitalise on one of the fastest-growing sectors in tech and finance.

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The app is currently being referred to as Arena internally and would let users earn points for correctly predicting the outcomes of events such as sports results, political developments and stock market moves but without any real money changing hands, at least initially.

It would operate independently of Meta’s existing social platforms, though those could funnel users towards it, according to the reporting.

What is a prediction market?

A prediction market is essentially a financial exchange where people buy and sell contracts or bets tied to the outcome of real-world events.

Each contract is a simple yes-or-no question, such as whether a certain candidate will win an election, a team will come out first in a championship or if a major political figure will pass by a certain date.

On Polymarket and Kalshi, the two most popular prediction market platforms, users buy contracts that pay out $1 if they are right and nothing if they are wrong.

As more people trade those contracts, the price reflects the market’s probability of the event occurring. If a bet is worth 40 cents, there’s a 40% chance of it happening, according to the people who have placed bets.

Fans of prediction markets argue the mechanism produces more accurate forecasts than polls or political analysts because participants have real money on the line.

Polymarket and Kalshi

The two dominant platforms in the space are Polymarket and Kalshi, which together generated around 85–90% of the roughly $44 billion (€40bn) in total trading volume recorded in 2025.

Polymarket, founded in 2020 by New York University dropout Shayne Coplan, operates globally on the blockchain. In October 2025, the New York Stock Exchange’s parent company invested $2 billion (€1.8bn) in the platform, in a major sign that Wall Street was taking the sector seriously.

Kalshi, founded in 2018 by two MIT graduates, spent years winning regulatory approval before launching as the first prediction market sanctioned by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

The turning point came in October 2024, when a US court ruled Kalshi could legally offer election contracts 32 days before the presidential election. Monthly trading volume has since surged from less than $5 billion (€4.6bn) in September 2025 to around $24 billion (€21.8bn) in April 2026, overtaking the roughly $14 billion (€12.7bn) wagered monthly through legal or traditional US sportsbooks.

Donald Trump Jr. becoming an investor in Polymarket and a paid adviser to Kalshi, while federal regulators adopted a more permissive stance, also helped fuel the boom.

The risks

The boom has not come without controversy and legal cases have mounted, with a former special forces soldier getting arrested over allegations he used insider knowledge of a US operation to capture Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro to place a winning trade on Polymarket worth around $400,000 (€365,000).

Some US states have begun suing the platforms, arguing they are running illegal gambling operations without proper licences. The Trump administration has responded by suing the states that have moved to ban prediction markets, creating a messy legal standoff between federal and state authority.

A New York Times review found that Polymarket published hundreds of false and misleading social media posts, while Politico uncovered a campaign to pay influencers to praise the platform’s supposed accuracy.

Whether Meta’s gamified, cashless version of the concept can avoid those pitfalls or will simply serve as a gateway to them remains unclear.

Published on 24/06/2026 – 12:44 GMT+2•Updated
13:06

One of Europe’s largest military equipment producers, KNDS, rolled out long-awaited details of its initial public offering (IPO), aiming for a dual listing in Paris and Frankfurt in the coming weeks.

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The IPO could value KNDS, the maker of Leopard and Leclerc tanks, at between €12bn and €15bn, according to the Financial Times, potentially making it one of Europe’s largest defence listings in recent years.

The listing comes at a time when European military budgets are surging, driven by the war in Ukraine and doubts over the reliability of the US as a security guarantor.

The company declined to comment on the precise date, but CEO Jean-Paul Alary told reporters the offering was expected within weeks.

According to Alary, the move comes as the continent enters what he called a new era of defence and security, with armed forces modernising rapidly and rebuilding the land-warfare capabilities run down during decades of lower spending.

According to Reuters, the firm has now formally launched the IPO process, which is expected to take place in mid-July.

The announcement comes days after Germany unveiled plans to acquire a 40% stake in KNDS, saying the move would secure long-term influence over a company it considers strategically important to European security and defence.

France, which currently owns 50% of KNDS, is expected to reduce its stake to 40%.

The remaining 20% of the company is set to be floated on the stock market, with France and Germany each retaining 40% stakes following the transaction.

According to the Financial Times, the shares are expected to be marketed primarily to institutional investors amid strong demand for European defence stocks.

Once the listing is completed, KNDS shares will begin trading on Euronext Paris and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, giving investors direct exposure to one of Europe’s largest land-defence manufacturers.

KNDS was created in 2015 through the merger of Germany’s Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and France’s Nexter.

A growing headache for Rheinmetall

The rapid emergence of the rival adds to the pressure on Rheinmetall, Europe’s largest ammunition maker and KNDS’s main competitor in subsectors such as land systems.

The Düsseldorf-based group, whose shares have shed roughly a quarter of their value this year, had itself reportedly hoped to buy into KNDS, only to be shut out by the governments’ intervention.

To make matters worse, Berlin announced it would scrap Rheinmetall’s multi-billion-euro F126 frigate programme, which would have been Germany’s largest warship order since the Second World War, in favour of smaller vessels from rival builder TKMS.

Rheinmetall, which had been poised to take over the project, fell 13% in early trading on Wednesday due to the news.

The squeeze also coincides with regulatory scrutiny at home.

Germany’s Monopolies Commission has warned that defence procurement is concentrated among a small number of suppliers, potentially weakening competition and driving up costs.

Calling for reforms to procurement rules, commission chairman Tomaso Duso said competition was “the fundamental pillar of Europe’s economic order” and should play a greater role in the defence sector.

A listed KNDS will give investors a direct yardstick against which to measure Rheinmetall’s order momentum and margins.

Additional sources • AFP

The clock is running down on the most consequential deadline the crypto sector has faced in Europe.

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From the start of July, the transitional window under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) closes for good, and companies that have not secured authorisation must either stop serving European customers or wind down altogether.

MiCA is the EU’s first comprehensive law for the crypto industry, bringing exchanges, brokers and digital wallet providers under the kind of formal oversight that has long applied to banks and other financial firms.

It replaces a fragmented mix of national rules with a single rulebook spanning all 27 member states: a company licensed in one EU country earns a “passport” to operate across the bloc, but in return it must meet standards on how much capital it holds, how it is run, how it safeguards customers’ funds and how it prevents money laundering.

“What emerges is a genuine single market replacing the old patchwork of 27 national regimes,” Yamal Kalaf, co-founder of MiCAR Whitepapers Europe, which advises crypto businesses on MiCA authorisation, told Euronews.

Since the core rules took effect at the end of 2024, existing operators have been allowed to keep operating under older national registrations, but that concession was temporary.

Crypto firms need European licences but many are behind

The scale of the looming shake-out is striking.

According to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), which confirmed in April that there would be no extension, only around 210 firms had obtained full authorisation by May, out of more than 1,200 that previously held national crypto registrations across the EU.

That points to a conversion rate of well under a fifth, leaving the vast majority of the old market without a licence as the cut-off arrives in a few days.

Speaking to Euronews, Roshan Dharia, CEO of distressed-investment firm Echo Base, explained that “the low conversion rate suggests that a meaningful portion of the market has concluded that obtaining and maintaining a MiCA licence is not economically viable within its current operating model.”

National regulators have warned that firms operating beyond the deadline without the new licence face enforcement action. France’s markets watchdog has also cautioned that continuing without authorisation could expose companies to criminal prosecution.

ESMA has told unlicensed providers to prepare orderly wind-downs, including transferring customer assets to authorised platforms or self-custody wallets, and to notify clients in advance so they can move funds safely.

“What we will see after 1 July is a smaller, more institutional market with real passporting. That is not a market in retreat. That is a market growing up,” Miguel Zapatero, Head Counsel at Crossmint, told Euronews.

Crossmint is a crypto infrastructure provider whose licensed rails let developers build wallets, custody and payment products.

A market reshaped around licensed rails

Plenty of familiar names have already cleared the bar.

Coinbase has been authorised in Ireland and Kraken in Ireland and Luxembourg. At the same time, the banking app Revolut secured its licence from Cyprus’s regulator late last year, allowing it to offer crypto services across the EU.

For these firms, the new rules promise a reward as unlicensed rivals retreat, the survivors stand to absorb their departing customers.

“MiCA is a genuine regulatory identity shift, not a registration exercise,” Gal Arad Cohen, partner at law firm S. Horowitz & Co, told Euronews.

The most prominent casualty so far may be Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange.

According to Reuters, which cited two people familiar with the matter, Binance is set to lose permission to serve EU clients because its licence application to Greece’s market regulator, the Hellenic Capital Market Commission, is poised to be rejected.

Without approval in any member state, the exchange would be unable to operate across the bloc from July onwards.

Speaking to Euronews, Patrick Mollard, CEO at Fipto, a blockchain-based payments company for businesses, referred to the Binance case by stating that “scale earns you no shortcut to a licence, and that is precisely the point.”

Binance has pushed back, saying it has worked constructively with regulators for 18 months and believes its application met MiCA’s requirements. The company added that it understood the Greek authority had completed its review and found the filing compliant.

The company has promised a further update before 30 June.

The episode has also reputedly taken on a political dimension.

French crypto publication The Big Whale reported, citing unnamed sources, that ECB President Christine Lagarde had opposed Binance’s bid for a Greek MiCA licence.

Euronews could not independently verify the report, and neither the ECB nor the Greek government has publicly commented on the allegations.

The Big Whale also reported that Binance is exploring a potential MiCA application in France after the setback in Greece, a claim that neither Binance nor French regulators have publicly confirmed.

Binance did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Euronews.

A shake-out for smaller crypto firms

Beyond the biggest names, the deadline is expected to push smaller crypto apps and brokers towards licensed custody providers. Rather than building their own MiCA-compliant systems, many are likely to rely on authorised firms to hold customer assets.

“We will see consolidation and transfer of clients as the deadline will not be met by all currently operating entries,” Floortje Nagelkerke, partner at law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, explained to Euronews.

The result, analysts suggest, will be a smaller, more concentrated European market, with fewer players, higher barriers to entry and a clear advantage for those holding a licence, but stronger consumer protections.

“People who hold crypto in the EU after 1 July will, on balance, hold it on safer rails,” Miguel Zapatero, Head Counsel at Crossmint, concluded.

Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Moreno (R-OH) urged Congress to boost the payroll tax cap to save Social Security benefits, according to an op-ed piece published by the New York Times on Tuesday.

As the law currently stands, the payroll