Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin Says He's Starting to "Worry" About the Direction of Prediction Markets, Suggesting They Should Transform into Markets for Consumers to Hedge Price Risks. In a post on X, Buterin stated that prediction markets are "over-converging" on "unhealthy" products, focusing on short-term price speculation and投机行为 rather than long-term building. Buterin suggested that instead, on-chain prediction markets combined with AI large language models (LLMs) should become a general hedging mechanism, providing consumers with price stability mechanisms for goods and services. He explained how this system would work: "You would set up price indices for goods and services in all major categories, treat physical goods and services in different regions as different categories, and establish prediction markets for each category." He continued, stating that every user, whether an individual or a business, would have a local LLM that understands the user's spending and provides them with a personalized basket of prediction market shares representing that user's expected expenditure over the next 'N' days. Buterin concluded that individuals and businesses could hold a basket of assets for wealth growth, and hold "personalized prediction market shares" to hedge against the rising cost of living caused by fiat inflation. **Supporters Say Prediction Markets Are Valuable Market Information Tools** Prediction markets are crowdsourced information platforms that can provide insights into global events and financial markets, while allowing individuals and businesses to hedge against various risks, supporters of prediction markets say. Harry Crane, a statistics professor at Rutgers University, stated that prediction markets are more accurate than polling and should be viewed as a public good. Crane told Cointelegraph that opponents of prediction markets within the U.S. government want to restrict these platforms because they provide insights that cannot be easily ignored or manipulated by centralized entities. Crane stated that prediction markets like Polymarket or Kalshi offer an alternative to information from official channels or media reports that may be controlled or manipulated, channels that often distort public opinion to serve certain narratives.