Limitless CEO Urges South Korea to Launch Institution-Only Prediction Markets Excluding Sports Betting, Retail Trading at EastPoint: Seoul 2026

Interview with CJ Hetherington, co-founder of Limitless

Global prediction market platform Limitless

Moving beyond betting into corporate risk management

Competing on brokerage networks and trading infrastructure for institutions

Exploring entry into South Korea with a no-betting platform

"Exclude sports and retail trading, and start with institutions"

"The simplest way for South Korea to introduce prediction markets is to allow only institutional investors to participate while excluding sports and retail trading. That would let major industries use a next-generation risk-management tool."

CJ Hetherington, co-founder and chief executive officer of Limitless, made the proposal in a Sept. 23 interview with Bloomingbit on how South Korea should formalize prediction markets. He framed them not as a retail betting tool, but as financial infrastructure that can help companies reduce business risk and glean market information.

In South Korea, debate has continued over whether prediction markets encourage gambling. The Korea Communications Standards Commission decided on Aug. 18 to block domestic access to overseas prediction market platform Polymarket after concluding it effectively provided an illegal gambling environment. Hetherington's view is that the economic function of prediction markets can still be used if both participants and tradable contracts are restricted.

Limitless is a blockchain-based prediction market platform where users trade on whether specific events will occur. Users buy and sell contracts linked to the outcome of future events, including cryptocurrency prices, and receive settlement once the outcome is determined. Market prices are used as an indicator of how participants assess the probability of an event.

Beyond Betting to Risk Hedges as It Targets Institutions

Hetherington identified institutional risk management as the next growth driver for prediction markets. The idea is to turn events that are difficult to hedge with traditional financial products into tradable contracts so companies and investors can reduce exposure to losses.

"Financial products for transferring risk have existed for hundreds of years, but they haven't kept pace with how the world has changed," he said. "Many of the risks companies and individuals face today aren't covered by existing products." In his view, the bigger opportunity lies not in improving legacy financial instruments, but in building tools for areas where no effective risk-management product exists.

The U.S. exchange Limitless is preparing will also focus on institutional risk management. It would serve only institutional clients, subject to regulatory approval, and concentrate on creating next-generation risk-transfer products.

Winning institutional business will require more than trading technology, he said. Brokerages that connect clients to exchanges will also matter. Prediction markets have so far grown through direct participation on exchange platforms, but futures brokers with long-standing client relationships are set to play a larger role in the institutional market.

"Institutional business will be relationship-driven," he said. "A large share of early volume will come from block trades negotiated between two parties off-exchange." In practice, that means broker-led matching and term negotiation will become more important as institutions look for counterparties.

He also stressed that prediction markets can serve not only as risk-management tools but as information venues that show how markets are thinking. "Every contract produces information," he said. "Even before an event occurs, moves in contract prices show how the market is pricing its probability."

In-House Matching and On-Chain Settlement, With AI to Expand Trading

Limitless combines order-book trading with blockchain settlement. It processes trades through its own matching engine that pairs buy and sell orders, while settlement takes place on-chain. The strategy is designed to provide both execution speed and settlement reliability.

Hetherington said simple transfers and large-scale high-frequency trading require different infrastructure. "On-chain settlement provides trust and finality, while our proprietary order-execution system supports the speed and depth of an order book," he said. He also cited the decision to build the matching engine in-house, rather than adopt third-party technology, as a competitive advantage.

AI agents could reshape both trading methods and the mix of participants in prediction markets, he said. Because prediction markets rely on clearly framed questions and defined resolution criteria, AI is well suited to analyze information and trade them. If AI can identify opportunities and execute orders within rules set by users, it could also reduce the need for users to monitor markets constantly.

Limitless has introduced "Limitless MCP," which the company said allows AI assistants and agents to query markets, check price and probability data, and then trade. MCP is a standard designed to connect AI to external data and tools. Within the next few years, Hetherington said, AI agents could move beyond convenience tools for individual users and become major players in liquidity provision and price formation.

He said prediction markets would grow both as a standalone financial market and as a feature embedded in exchanges, news platforms and financial services. The competitive battleground, he added, will be infrastructure. The goal is not to beat rivals through marketing, but to build a platform with deep liquidity and clear settlement that lasts.

"South Korea Should Start With Institutions"

Hetherington said Limitless is focused on developing a prediction platform for the South Korean market that does not involve users staking money. The aim is to build a service that complies with regulation. Through a separate initiative called Limitless Research, the company is also studying how formalizing prediction markets could affect the South Korean economy.

"We are examining the economic benefits South Korea could gain from formalizing prediction markets, as well as ways to keep Korean capital from flowing to offshore platforms and instead retain it domestically," he said.

South Korea would not need to open prediction markets to every product and every investor all at once, in his view. Instead, he proposed an institution-first design that would allow companies to use new risk-management tools. "South Korea has one of the most advanced financial markets in the world," he said. "If its key industries use next-generation tools for risk mitigation and monitoring, that could help them gain an edge over global competitors."

His message to industry participants in Seoul ahead of EastPoint also centered on the growth potential of prediction markets and the need to build infrastructure. "Prediction markets are still at an early stage, and much of the infrastructure this sector will need has yet to be built. That's where the opportunity is," Hetherington said. "I'm grateful to everyone in Seoul who is seriously thinking about where this field should go next."