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About Lightcone
Lightcone is an impact-markets platform that coined the category in October 2025. What trades is not whether an event happens but how it moves an asset's value: a user deposits 1 BTC and the contract splits it into two conditional tokens representing that BTC's value in the world where the event occurs and the world where it does not. Each token quotes separately on an order book and can be sold on its own; at settlement the winning token redeems 1:1 for the underlying and the other expires worthless. Pricing therefore becomes a continuous quote on a conditional scenario rather than a binary probability.
It sits between prediction markets and perpetual futures, giving macro and geopolitical events a hedgeable exposure where the position cap is the spot actually deposited, with no leverage. Market creation and resolution are controlled centrally by the team, and redemption depends on how it interprets the event definition.
In 2026 Lightcone turned impact markets from a concept into a tradable category. It does not ask how likely an event is; it asks what an asset would be worth if that event were certain. A user deposits one BTC and receives two conditional tokens representing that BTC in each outcome, and at settlement the winning token redeems one for one against the real asset.
Lightcone's design separates probability from price impact, letting holders hedge a specific tail risk at a cost that only materialises if the risk does. In the first half of 2026 several prediction-market directories listed it as a distinct sub-category with active status. The platform is open globally but not promoted in the United States, India or Singapore, has issued no token, and liquidity remains concentrated in a handful of macro and crypto questions.
Lightcone plans to widen depositable assets and event types, plug conditional tokens into lending and market-making to improve capital efficiency, and add institutional settlement and reporting within regulatory limits.
Aradtski: Founder of Lightcone. Former partner at Collab+Currency and affiliated with Autoglyphs. Twitter: @aradtski.
defiance (Daniel Sapkota): Co-founder of Lightcone. Twitter: @defiance_cr. Has shared insights on prediction markets and Lightcone's mechanism.