Futuur

A global prediction market in two modes, free to learn, real money only abroad.

Futuur is a long running prediction market, operating since 2017, that lets you forecast world events in either a free play money mode or a crypto funded real money mode, as of June 2026. The real money mode runs under an overseas gaming licence and is not available to users in the United States, while the free play money mode, scored in a virtual unit called Ooms, is open worldwide including the US. Prices are set by an automated market maker rather than an order book, so there is always liquidity, and for a US reader the practical takeaway is that Futuur is a place to practise forecasting, not to trade for cash.

What Futuur is, and the two modes that define it, one platform, two separate games.

Futuur is a prediction market that has been operating since 2017, built on a simple idea: aggregate the views of many forecasters and the resulting price becomes a useful estimate of how likely an outcome is. What makes it unusual among the platforms we cover is that it runs two distinct markets side by side. One is a free play money mode, open to anyone in the world. The other is a real money mode, funded with cryptocurrency, available in supported countries under an overseas gaming licence. These are not two views of the same market; they are separate markets that can carry different prices for the same question, per Futuur's published materials as of June 2026.

In the play money mode you forecast using a virtual unit called Ooms, written with the symbol that looks like a crossed o. Every account starts with 10,000 Ooms, and the only way to accumulate more is to forecast well. Ooms have no cash value, cannot be bought, and cannot be cashed out; they are a score, a measure of skill and reputation rather than money. That design is more interesting than it sounds. It lets a complete beginner learn the mechanics of buying and selling probability without risking a cent, and it lets Futuur identify strong forecasters by their track record rather than their bankroll.

The real money mode replaces Ooms with cryptocurrency. The mechanics of trading are the same, but now a correct forecast returns real value and an incorrect one costs real value. The crucial point for many readers is geographic: the real money mode is not offered to users in the United States, as of June 2026. A US reader can use the play money mode freely, but cannot fund a real money account on Futuur. We will return to exactly where real money is and is not available below, because that is the question most people arrive with.

It helps to place Futuur in context. A prediction market is, at heart, a forecasting tool: by asking people to put something on the line behind their opinion, it tends to produce a sharper estimate than a casual poll, because being wrong has a cost and being right has a reward. Futuur leans into that purpose more than most. Its long running play money league exists specifically to surface accurate forecasters and to generate public probability estimates on questions that range far beyond sport, taking in elections, economics, science, and culture. For a reader who cares about the quality of a forecast rather than the thrill of a wager, that orientation is the most distinctive thing about the platform, and it is why the free mode deserves to be taken seriously rather than dismissed as a demo.

The two modes at a glance, side by side.

How the prices are set, why there is always a price.

Most exchanges match a buyer to a seller through an order book. Futuur does it differently. It uses an automated market maker, a piece of software that always stands ready to buy or sell, so you never have to wait for a counterparty to appear. The specific mechanism is a liquidity sensitive scoring rule published under the name LS-LMSR, which builds on a well established formula used in forecasting research, per Futuur's published materials as of June 2026. In plain terms, the software quotes a price for every outcome, and that price moves as people trade.

Two consequences follow that are worth understanding before you trade. First, the more you buy of one outcome, the more its price rises as you buy, which limits how much you can move a thin market and protects the system from a single large order. Second, the rule allows a commission to be built into trades, which is how the venue can earn a fee through the same mechanism that sets prices. As a market attracts more volume it becomes deeper, which means each new trade moves the price less, so higher volume questions are more stable and more pleasant to trade. All real money currencies share a single liquidity pool, so a trade placed in one cryptocurrency still affects the price seen by everyone.

However you read it, the headline number is a probability. A market trading at 0.50 is the crowd saying it views the outcome as a coin flip; one at 0.80 is the crowd leaning heavily one way. As Futuur reported in 2021, its play money markets had produced an average Brier score of about 0.168 across markets with bets, a measure forecasters use to grade probabilistic accuracy where lower is better (per GamblingNews, December 2021). That is a respectable record, but it is a historical figure and not a promise about any single market today.

Funding, fees, and getting money out, crypto in, crypto out.

The real money mode is funded entirely with cryptocurrency. Futuur's documentation lists support for Bitcoin, Ether, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Tron, and the USDC stablecoin, with no traditional bank or card option. There is no meaningful minimum deposit, although a tiny floor exists to block spam transfers, and deposits typically arrive within roughly 10 to 30 minutes depending on the network. Withdrawals are sent back to a cryptocurrency address you provide, are reviewed manually, and are generally processed within about 24 hours, per Futuur's published materials as of June 2026.

On costs, two things matter. Trading costs are expressed through the market maker as a commission built into the price rather than as a separate ticket fee, which is a consequence of the LS-LMSR design described above. Withdrawals carry a network fee that varies by coin and by network conditions, and a minimum withdrawal amount that also varies by coin, so the cheapest way out depends on which asset you hold. Because everything is denominated in crypto, the value of your balance in dollars or euros will move with the price of the coin you hold, which is a layer of risk that does not exist on a venue settling in cash.

Identity checks apply once you are active. Futuur's documentation indicates that know your customer verification is generally required once cumulative lifetime deposits pass about US$2000 equivalent, and that it may request proof of identity and address at other times to meet its obligations. One practical note that surprises people: real money trading is not available inside the mobile app. The app handles play money, but to trade for real you use the Futuur website in a browser. Developers can also reach the markets through a public API.

Table 1. Compiled by Prediction Market Index from Futuur's published materials and reputable reporting, as of June 2026. Withdrawal network fees and minimums vary by coin; verify current terms before depositing.

Where real money is and is not available, the jurisdiction question.

This is the part most readers need, so we will state it carefully. The free play money mode is available worldwide, including in the United States. The real money mode is restricted, and the list of excluded countries has grown over time. As of a December 2023 platform review, real money was not offered to forecasters in the United States, Australia, Colombia, France, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the Dutch Caribbean islands. Earlier reporting in 2021 listed a shorter set. Because the list changes, treat any version as dated and check Futuur's own terms for your country before assuming access.

The licence behind the real money mode is itself something we will not overstate. Contemporary reporting in 2021 described a gaming licence issued in Curacao (per GamblingNews, December 2021), while some later listings have referenced a licence in Anjouan. Because these accounts differ and we could not confirm a single current jurisdiction from a primary source, we treat the precise licensing authority as unverified and flag it as contested. The point that does not depend on resolving that question is the one a US reader needs: whatever the overseas licence, it is not regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Futuur has not obtained CFTC designation, as of June 2026. Its founder has suggested it might pursue a US licence once the regulatory environment settles, but that is an intention, not a current status.

For US readers who want real money access to a regulated venue, our US legality hub sets out which platforms are available and where, and our platforms comparison places Futuur next to its peers on fees and terms. If you are new to the mechanics, the play money mode pairs well with our guide to reading prices as probabilities.

What we did to check this, in our own words.

In preparing this review we read Futuur's published platform materials and reputable reporting on its two modes, its funding and withdrawal process, its market maker design, and its restricted country list, on 27 June 2026. We confirmed the play money and real money split, the crypto only funding, the manual withdrawal review, and the US exclusion from those sources. We deliberately did not assert a single licensing jurisdiction, because the available accounts disagree and we could not confirm one from a primary source. We have not opened and funded a real money Futuur account from a permitted country for this page, so we do not claim a measured deposit or withdrawal time beyond what the platform documents. When we complete a first hand walkthrough of the play money mode, which is open to us, we will add an original, dated screenshot below and note what we observed.

A worked example, in Ooms, so the mechanics are concrete.

Numbers make this easier to hold. Suppose a play money market asks whether a named candidate will win an election, and the current price for Yes is 0.40, which reads as a crowd estimate of about 40 percent. You think that is too low, so you buy Yes. Because Futuur uses a market maker rather than an order book, you do not wait for a seller; the software sells you the position and, as you buy, the price you pay drifts upward, perhaps settling your average entry near 0.42. That upward drift is the liquidity sensitive design at work, and it is the same in real money mode, only denominated in cryptocurrency instead of Ooms.

Two things can happen next. If new information arrives and the crowd comes around to your view, the price might climb to 0.65. You can sell into that move and bank the difference between roughly 0.42 and 0.65, before the commission built into the price, without waiting for the election. Or you can hold to resolution: if your candidate wins, each Yes share settles at its full value, and if they lose it settles at nothing. The same logic governs the No side, which always trades as the mirror of Yes, so that the two sides together price the full range of the outcome. None of this is a prediction that you will profit; it is simply how a position is opened, valued, and closed.

The reason the play money version matters is that the muscle memory transfers exactly. A forecaster who learns, in Ooms, to read a price as a probability, to size a position, and to close when the thesis is spent, has learned the same skills the real money mode demands, minus the financial risk. That is the strongest argument for starting in the free mode, wherever in the world you are, before you ever consider funding anything for cash.

Strengths and limits, weighed honestly, an even read.

Futuur's clearest strength is the free play money mode. It is one of the better places anywhere to learn how prediction markets work, because you trade real questions with real price movement and a real record, but with no money at stake. The breadth of questions is a second strength; Futuur has long carried a wide international menu spanning politics, economics, sport, and culture, and as it reported in 2021 it had run tens of thousands of markets with tens of thousands of forecasters. The market maker design means you can always trade, which removes the frustration of thin order books on niche questions.

The limits are equally clear. For a US reader the headline limit is decisive: there is no real money option, so Futuur cannot be a place to trade for cash. The crypto only funding adds friction and a currency risk that a cash settled venue does not carry, since the value of your balance moves with the coin you hold. The uncertainty around the precise licensing jurisdiction is a genuine weakness in transparency, and it is one reason the real money mode scores lower on regulation in our rubric. And because real money trading is web only, the mobile experience is incomplete for anyone outside the play money mode.

Who does it suit. On the information here, Futuur fits a reader who wants to practise forecasting seriously without risking money, anywhere in the world, and a reader outside the excluded countries who is comfortable funding and withdrawing in cryptocurrency and accepts an overseas licence rather than US regulation. It suits a US reader looking for real money trading poorly, because that simply is not on offer. None of this is a recommendation to trade. It is the information a careful person would want, and the decision, together with the work of verifying the current rules and your own eligibility, remains yours.

A closing word on mindset. The free mode can make forecasting feel like a game, which is exactly its value for learning, but the moment real money is involved the stakes are real and so is the risk of loss. Treat each price as the crowd's opinion rather than the truth, size any real position so that losing all of it would not hurt, and never trade to win back a loss. That discipline matters more than any single platform.