By Jim Downs, Co-Founder & CEO, Connamara Technologies
This piece originally ran in TRADERS MAGAZINE, August 15, 2025.
The last five years have seen the death of the all-night diner, the rise of bars with 9 PM last calls, and big box stores that don’t even rope-drop until brunch. But while the brick-and-mortar world has taken on the schedule of a senior center, the markets are just waking up. Traders don’t want downtime. They want uptime, all the time. Around-the-clock trading has taken off. And for all those once-weary business owners who swore there “weren’t enough hours in the day”? Good news: now there are.
The global economy is transforming overnight…every night. And to keep up, exchanges need to invest in the infrastructure that supports this massive shift in how (and when) we trade. Enter prediction markets, which have led the way toward normalizing 24/7/365 behaviors. Recently, Kalshi announced on its Discord channel that it would no longer close from 3-8 AM EST every day, and would be moving to 24/7 trading (save for two hours a week) on August 7.
The crypto boom of the last decade undoubtedly democratized and simplified trading for a natively global, first-time, or never-would-be audience. Along the way, many of the expectations and hangups of legacy markets evaporated, replaced by the always-on convenience of the internet. Crypto proved that trading and settlement can happen around the clock, and the technology behind it has only improved.
Where crypto paved the way, prediction markets picked up. Built on crypto infrastructure, these markets began with no suspensions for reporting or system maintenance. Unlike traditional capital markets, prediction markets aren’t bound by hyper-local assets or niche commodities. There’s no need to know how soybeans are grown in Indiana. Instead, users engage with global trends, reacting to the same publicly available information. Event contracts have a natural rhythm: spikes and lulls tied to real-world developments. A team’s best player is traded. A political scandal breaks. A climate report drops overnight in Europe. A Best Actress nominee’s old tweets resurface. Put another pot of coffee on.
Of course, this energy-drink-fueled, eyes-bloodshot trading style requires serious infrastructure. The exchange must be able to deploy and update its platform without suspending trading. To do that, prediction markets borrow from the playbooks of at-scale tech giants like Netflix, Meta, and Amazon. These companies use “rolling updates” and “blue-green deployments” to push changes seamlessly. You’ve never seen a “System Under Maintenance” screen while buying paper towels at 2 AM, and now you won’t while placing a trade, either.
The exchange must also be able to define a flexible “Trade Date” and trading day. That doesn’t always mean midnight to midnight. It might mean 4:30 PM to 4:30 PM, with trades between 4:30 PM and midnight assigned to the next day’s trade date. This is a structure often used for regulatory reporting or account settlement.
And finally, the infrastructure must support onboarding and funding around the clock. A user should be able to sign up, fund their account, and start trading within minutes, whether it’s noon or when the rooster crows.
Prediction markets are thriving, particularly among Millennials and Gen Zers raised on the logic and dopamine loops of video games. But it’s not just about “gamifying” trading. It’s about rethinking access. These platforms succeed because they make trading easy to start, visually intuitive, instantly fundable, and nearly always available. The questions themselves are clear and accessible: Will the Pittsburgh Steelers win the Super Bowl? The probabilities are just as easy to grasp: 97% no, 3% yes. And the stakes can be low—users can participate with just $1, unlike traditional markets that often require hundreds or thousands just to get in the game.
