SafeBets Eyes 200 Million Users, Says No-Deposit Model Skirts Gambling Rules

SafeBets, a prediction platform that lets users forecast outcomes without depositing their own money, says it wants to grow to 200 million users by 2030 by leaning heavily on sports and politics, according to Gambling Insider. The company plans to convert its most accurate forecasters into a trading signal for financial markets, a model it argues sits outside gambling regulation because no cash changes hands from users.

SafeBets currently runs forecasts on categories including cryptocurrency, commodities and major technology stocks. It plans to add sports and political predictions ahead of the U.S. November election cycle, betting that mass-market appeal will do the heavy lifting on user growth even though it does not expect those categories to generate much trading profit.

Scale from sports, profit from markets

CEO Alex Konanykhin told Gambling Insider that sports and politics are “the only realistic path” to the company’s 200-million-user target. “For every person who feels that he or she is skillful enough to make predictions about market events, there are at least 100 people who would rather predict outcome of World Cup or similar sporting events,” he said.

The strategy hinges on volume. Konanykhin said that if just 0.1 percent of a 200-million-user base emerged as consistently accurate forecasters, that would still leave SafeBets with roughly 200,000 top predictors. Their tracked accuracy would feed what the company calls a Collective Intelligence signal.

He was blunt about the trade-off. “Unfortunately for us, those categories are those where we can get most users, but we are not going to make as much money by trading on the collective intelligence of those people,” Konanykhin said.

Affiliated trading and prediction-market bets

For stocks, commodities, currencies and crypto, SafeBets plans to have affiliated entities trade on signals drawn from its strongest forecasters, an operation Konanykhin said could launch as early as next year once the platform reaches sufficient scale.

Sports and political predictions would be monetized differently. Konanykhin said SafeBets could deploy its Collective Intelligence signal on existing prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi, though he acknowledged those markets remain far smaller than equity or commodity markets.

SafeBets maintains that because users forecast without depositing or wagering their own funds, the model falls outside standard gambling licensing frameworks. That claim echoes arguments made by other prediction-market operators now facing legal challenges in multiple U.S. jurisdictions over whether their contracts amount to unlicensed betting.

World Cup contest as proof of concept

SafeBets pointed to a recent World Cup prediction tournament as early evidence its user base can forecast accurately. The company said thousands of participants took part, forecasting outcomes across different stages of the tournament.

The top three finishers were based in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Colombia. Each received $10,000 in cash alongside Unicoin token rewards ranging from 250,000 to 1,000,000, the company said.

No-deposit prediction platforms remain a regulatory grey zone in Canada, where iGaming Ontario and other provincial bodies license conventional sports betting and casino operators but have not yet issued guidance on prediction-market products that avoid direct wagering. Players interested in forecasting platforms of any kind should still stick to regulated Canadian operators, which offer deposit limits and self-exclusion tools for anyone who wants to manage their play.

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