The Prediction Market in Kazakhstan: A New Financial Instrument or an Alternative to Betting?

Kazakhstan has become one of the first countries in the region to test prediction markets not in a gray crypto zone, but within regulated financial infrastructure. In September 2026, the international trading platform ITS launched its Prediction Market under the AIFC FinTech Lab, inviting participants to trade contracts on future financial and economic events.

• On September 8, 2026, the ITS exchange launched its Prediction Market in the AIFC FinTech Lab under AFSA supervision. For now, it is not an alternative to the bookmaker market or a mass-market product for everyone: event contracts are available to professional and select semi-professional clients, while the contracts are tied exclusively to financial and economic events, not to sports or politics.

At first glance, the mechanics resemble a bet: a user picks whether an event will occur, risks money, and receives a fixed payout if the prediction is correct. But from AFSA's standpoint, this is not a bookmaker product, but an event-based contract, a financial derivative whose price reflects the collective assessment of an event's probability. For now, testing is limited to financial and economic topics, available only to professional and select semi-professional clients, and does not extend to mass retail.

For the iGaming industry, the launch matters not because Kazakhstan has gained a new sportsbook. On the contrary, AFSA explicitly excludes sports, political, weather, entertainment, and celebrity events from the pilot. But the experiment shows how financial regulation can separate probability trading from classic gambling, and why that boundary is becoming increasingly important for exchanges, fintech, PSPs, operators, and affiliates.

Together with 3S.INFO, we look into the launch of a regulated prediction market in Kazakhstan, where ITS is testing event contracts on financial and economic events within the AIFC FinTech Lab.

What Was Launched in the AIFC

The Prediction Market on ITS is a suite of event options, meaning contracts tied to the outcome of a predefined event. Instead of buying a stock, an ETF, or a cryptocurrency in anticipation of price growth, a participant takes a position on a single question: whether a specific condition will be met or not.

At launch, ITS introduced four contracts:

The contract trades within a range of $0.01 to $0.99. Its price is driven by supply and demand and can be read as the market-implied probability of the event occurring. If the condition is met, the contract settles at $1. If not, its settlement value is $0. Before the settlement date, the position can be sold to another market participant.

For example, if the contract "National Bank rate above 16.75%" is trading at $0.62, the market is currently pricing the probability of that outcome at roughly 62%. If a participant buys the contract at $0.62 and the condition is met, the payout is $1; the gross profit before fees is $0.38 per contract. If the condition does not materialize, the position's value drops to zero.

Why AFSA Opted for a Pilot Regime

AFSA did not open a full-fledged retail prediction market. It created a legal framework for controlled testing within the AIFC FinTech Lab.

The FinTech Lab is a regulatory sandbox in which AFSA can observe a product before its possible expansion. The regulator assesses not only the contract itself, but also the business model, the company's capabilities, the client profile, manipulation risks, financial crime, and the quality of internal controls.

The key restrictions are as follows:

This design shows that the regulator treats event contracts not as an entertainment tool, but as a high-risk financial product with a binary outcome. Even without leverage, a participant can lose the entire amount invested in a specific contract.

ITS: From Asset Prices to Trading Probabilities

ITS operates within the AIFC jurisdiction and holds an AFSA license as a multilateral trading facility. Before launching the Prediction Market, the platform focused on providing access to international markets, primarily US equities, depositary receipts, and ETFs.

According to ITS, total trading volume on the venue exceeded $14 billion in 2025, a 70-fold increase over 2024. The platform stated that more than 1.2 million investors have access to trading through financial intermediaries, with 23 organizations from Kazakhstan, Armenia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Kyrgyzstan, Oman, and South Africa among ITS participants.

The launch of the Prediction Market is a logical continuation of ITS's strategy: adding the trading of expectations about specific future events to the trading of asset prices.

For the financial market, this could deliver three effects:

• Price discovery. The contract price turns into a dynamic estimate of an event's probability.
• A new tool for expressing an opinion. A participant gains a simple binary way to take a position on a macroeconomic or market scenario.
• An educational effect. An investor starts looking not only at an asset's price, but also at the probabilities of central bank decisions, inflation data, or the fulfillment of corporate conditions.

However, the market is still at an early stage. Its real value will depend not on the number of attractive contracts, but on liquidity, order book depth, transparency of settlement rules, and sustained interest from the right category of clients.

An Alternative to Betting in Kazakhstan: What the User Sees

The mechanics are simple:

1. Pick an event with a clearly defined condition.
2. Buy a Yes or No contract on the outcome.
3. Hold it until the settlement date or sell it earlier.
4. Receive $1 if the condition is met or $0 if it is not.

Yet behind this simple logic lies an infrastructure quite different from betting. There is no bookmaker's line in the traditional sense, no pre-set odds, and no operator margin on every wager. The price is supposed to emerge from the market itself, through liquidity, opposing positions, and participants' expectations.

Why Is This Not an Ordinary Bet?

From the standpoint of user behavior, there is an obvious resemblance between an event contract and a bet. In both cases, a person tries to profit from a correct prediction of a future event. They assess the probability, choose a direction, and accept the risk of losing the amount invested.

But the legal and product constructions differ.

The key difference lies not in the interface, but in the purpose and the legal regime. AFSA treats event-based contracts as part of the derivatives market. Such instruments allow a participant to express a view on a future financial outcome, while the market aggregates expectations into the contract price.

That is why the term "bet" should be used in relation to ITS with a caveat. In everyday terms, a user is indeed "betting on an outcome." But under AIFC regulation, this is a financial contract, not the acceptance of a bookmaker's wager.

What Is Allowed and What Is Not?

AFSA deliberately launched the narrowest possible pilot regime. Event-Based Contracts in the FinTech Lab may be tied only to financial and economic events.

Permitted categories include:

• Prices of securities and stock indices.
• Approved digital assets.
• Commodities and commodity indices.
• Interest rates.
• Currency exchange rates.
• Scheduled macroeconomic releases.
• Inflation, GDP, and employment data.
• Central bank rate decisions.
• Select corporate events, provided they fit the established model.

Prohibited or out-of-scope categories for the pilot:

• Sports events.
• Esports.
• Elections and other political events.
• Weather.
• Entertainment events.
• Celebrity-related outcomes.
• Other non-financial and non-economic events.

This is the key takeaway for Kazakhstan's iGaming market. At present, the ITS Prediction Market does not compete directly with bookmakers for the audience of football matches, UFC, esports tournaments, or political forecasts. It is not a "legal workaround" for the betting regime and should not be seen as a new channel for sports wagering.

What About Polymarket and Foreign Platforms?

Foreign prediction markets may be technically familiar to the Kazakh audience, and Polymarket does not list Kazakhstan among the GEOs it blocks. But this does not mean that such activity has received local authorization, falls under AFSA oversight, or complies with Kazakh financial and gambling regulations.

For industry content, it is important not to conflate three different things:

1. The ITS Prediction Market is a local experimental product within the AIFC, limited to financial and economic events and to professional client categories.
2. International platforms like Polymarket are global products with their own technological, crypto, and legal model.
3. Sports betting is a separate gambling vertical with different economics, licensing, player protection, and advertising rules.

Can the Prediction Market Become an Alternative to Bookmakers?

In the short term, no. In Kazakhstan, event contracts on ITS do not replace bookmaker bets for several reasons.

• No sports markets. AFSA permits only financial and economic events. Bets on a Kairat vs. Astana match, a Champions League outcome, a UFC fight winner, or a Counter-Strike tournament result fall outside the permitted scope.
• No mass access. The Prediction Market is currently intended for Professional Clients and eligible Semi-professional Clients who have passed an appropriateness assessment. An ordinary user cannot treat the product as an accessible substitute for a bookmaker app.
• No familiar sportsbook mechanics. The prediction market has no accumulators, no live line in the bookmaker sense, no free bets, no VIP programs, no betting on hundreds of sports markets, and no familiar CRM cycle of a betting product. An event contract is a narrower instrument, built around a precise scenario and a binary settlement.
• A different acquisition logic. A bookmaker competes on bonuses, line, odds, live functionality, and sports content. A prediction market must compete on trust in the infrastructure, clarity of the contract, speed of access, liquidity, and the quality of the market price. At the same time, the prediction market may in the future partially overlap with betting in terms of user behavior. A person who is comfortable making decisions based on probabilities and who follows crypto, interest rates, or currency rates may potentially see event contracts as a new format of short-term speculative activity. But this does not mean the product should be promoted as "investment betting" or "a way to earn from predictions." Within the financial perimeter, such messaging can be risky: AFSA requires risk disclosure and confirmation that the client understands the binary, all-or-nothing nature of the contract.

Where Is the Line Between Investment and Speculation?

Event contracts can serve different purposes. In theory, a participant can hedge risk, express a view on the direction of a rate, or gauge market expectations. But in practice, the binary payout and short horizon make the product akin to a speculative instrument.

For example, a company sensitive to interest rate changes might use a contract as one of the indicators of market expectations. However, a retail client buying a Yes contract on the price of Bitcoin is most likely using it as a way to profit from a specific prediction.

That is precisely why the regulator imposed restrictions:

• Full collateralization of the position.
• No borrowed capital.
• Pre-assessment of the client.
• An age threshold of 21+.
• Limiting topics to financial and economic events.
• Control over market abuse and financial crime.

This design does not eliminate risk, but it contains it. It reduces the likelihood that the market turns into a mass high-frequency gaming mechanic, where a user makes dozens of binary decisions with borrowed funds.

Liquidity Is the Key Test of the New Market

Any prediction market faces a problem that a classic bookmaker does not: liquidity. A bookmaker can accept a bet using its own risk model and limits. An exchange-traded contract requires opposing interest or the work of a market maker.

If there are few participants in the market, the following risks arise:

• A wide spread between the buy and sell price.
• Difficulty closing a position before settlement.
• Sharp price swings on small volume.
• Weak informational value of the price as a probability indicator.
• Heavy dependence on a small number of large participants.
• The risk of manipulation in a thin market.

For ITS, this means that the main KPI of the launch is not the number of published events, but the quality of the trading environment. The market needs market makers, clear settlement rules, reliable data sources, and sufficient order book depth.

What to Track

As long as the market lacks a long public track record, no conclusions can be drawn about its sustainability. The launch provides the infrastructure and legal foundation, but it does not guarantee that a liquid ecosystem will emerge automatically.

What Does This Change for iGaming and Affiliates?

For a standard casino or sportsbook affiliate, the ITS Prediction Market does not yet create a ready-made new vertical. There is no retail access, no sports contracts, no confirmed affiliate program, and no basis for promoting the product as an alternative to betting.

However, new B2B opportunities are emerging for the market.

For Fintech and Brokers

• Interfaces for event-based trading.
• KYC and suitability assessment.
• Risk disclosure and client education.
• Exchange analytics and expectation indicators.
• Tools for monitoring suspicious transactions.
• Market making and liquidity management.
• Settlement and clearing infrastructure.

For MarTech and Media

• Educational content on central bank rates, inflation, cryptocurrencies, and macroeconomics.
• Infographics on market probabilities.
• Financial editorial special projects.
• Analytics on gaps between market forecasts and official data.
• B2B lead generation for brokers, trading platforms, data providers, and RegTech.

For Payment and Compliance Providers

• Source of funds checks.
• Transaction monitoring.
• Sanctions screening.
• Anti-money laundering.
• Fraud detection.
• Reporting and data retention.
• Systems for detecting market abuse.

It is important not to conflate a financial product with a casino offer. The messaging should explain the risk, the settlement terms, and the specifics of an event contract, rather than promise quick income, guaranteed profit, or "betting on Bitcoin without a bookmaker."

The Prediction Market in Kazakhstan's iGaming: What Comes Next?

The next stage of the market depends on the results of the FinTech Lab. AFSA may assess products individually, change testing conditions, restrict specific contracts, and terminate the experiment if it sees a threat to clients, market integrity, or its own regulatory objectives.

The development scenarios can be roughly divided into three options.

1. The conservative scenario. ITS maintains a limited set of contracts on central bank rates, macroeconomic statistics, currencies, commodities, digital assets, and select corporate events. The product remains a niche instrument for professional clients and does not reach mass retail.
2. Financial market expansion. Given sufficient liquidity and manageable risks, new contracts could emerge on inflation, GDP, employment, oil, currency rates, stock indices, IPOs, corporate decisions, and other measurable events. This would turn the Prediction Market into a standalone segment of the AIFC financial infrastructure.
3. A broader consumer shift. The most distant and uncertain scenario is gradual access to the product for wider categories of investors. But for that, AFSA would need evidence that the market is sufficiently transparent, liquid, and safe, and that participants understand the nature of binary risk. Expansion into sports, politics, or entertainment should not be treated as a baseline forecast: these categories currently sit firmly outside the permitted pilot perimeter.

The prediction market in Kazakhstan is not yet a full-fledged alternative to bookmakers, nor a mass financial service. It is a regulated experiment by the AIFC, in which ITS and AFSA are testing event-based contracts on financial and economic events: Bitcoin, SpaceX, central bank decisions, and other verifiable market conditions.

For a participant, such a contract resembles a bet in its mechanics, but qualifies as a financial derivative under regulation. For the state, it is a way to test a new class of instruments in a controlled environment. For the iGaming industry, it is an indicator of a broader trend: the line between betting, trading, and probability trading is becoming increasingly blurred, and regulation is ever more often defined not by a product's name, but by its underlying event, audience, distribution method, and level of client protection.

In the coming months, the key question will not be whether "sports betting via an exchange" will be allowed. Far more important is whether ITS can build a liquid market, and whether AFSA can prove that event contracts can function as a transparent financial instrument without turning into uncontrolled mass speculation.