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A New York startup claims to have discovered a way to circumvent the increasingly complex web of laws which are beginning to encroach upon the burgeoning world of prediction markets. They are launching a platform on which users cannot lose a single cent. It’s only fair that potential users take a good hard look at the history of the people behind the startup before committing to anything.
In January, Polymarket processed roughly four million euros in wagers on the Portuguese Presidential Election, mere hours prior to the results of said election being made public, IBTimes reports. Within 48 hours of said election, Portugal’s gaming regulator ordered the Polymarket platform to cease trading on that country. The same week, Hungary blocked the Polymarket domain. The platform has since been banned, restricted or threatened with enforcement action in over a dozen European countries including Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands and Switzerland. All of said countries’ gaming regulators have, in effect, taken the view that a contract that pays out on a future event to be played out in reality is, in effect, unlicensed gaming.
Meanwhile, in the US, Polymarket is back up and running in the States after receiving approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in late 2025. Kalshi also operates as a CFTC-regulated contract market. However, various operators have run into trouble with state-based gaming regulators including those in Nevada, Tennessee, and Massachusetts.
In the meanwhile, a New York-based startup called SafeBets is trying to capitalize on the regulatory void. The service is available at SafeBets.world where users can register and after identity verification start playing for free with 100 unicoins. Users can predict future prices of Bitcoin, gold, oil and stocks of major companies. A wrong prediction costs one unicoin. Importantly, users do not deposit or spend any real money on SafeBets. Also, unicoins cannot be purchased on the site for real money. Thus, according to the startup’s argument, there is no wagering (gambling) on SafeBets, so the gambling laws used against Polymarket do not apply. IBTimes notes that no European gambling regulator has ruled on this type of service yet, so the argument is untested.
The money comes from the company's own trading. The combined predictions of the top-ranked users will be used to trade real markets. The top predictors will be paid half of the profit made by SafeBets from their trades in the form of unicoin awards that users can exchange for cash on the wider Unicoin market. As CEO Alex Konanykhin said previously, users risk nothing in SafeBets. In reality, most users will not earn meaningful sums, a MoneyTimes explainer notes, and awards are at the company's discretion. The company’s goal is to reach 200 million users and over $10 billion in trading profit by 2030 but that is the target of the company and not a result that has already been achieved.
SafeBets is part of a portfolio run by TransparentBusiness Inc., previously known as Unicoin Inc. This other company is apparently gearing up for a public token offering in September. The history of Unicoin Inc. is well documented by the SEC in a fraud complaint, brought by the nation’s top securities regulator against the company and several of its top executives including Konanykhin. SafeBets itself has not been the subject of SEC action, IBTimes reports, but the company is being pitched by a CEO who is currently defending a fraud complaint from the SEC.
The SEC's own release says that on May 20, 2025, it charged Unicoin and four of its top executives with false and misleading statements in an offering that raised more than $100 million from over 5,000 investors. The agency alleges the company claimed its tokens were backed by billions of dollars in real estate and pre-IPO equity when its assets were never worth more than a small fraction of that, said it had sold more than $3 billion in certificates when it raised no more than $110 million, and called the products “SEC-registered” when they were not. Konanykhin has described the case as regulatory overreach, according to IBTimes.
While the case is civil in nature, the General Counsel of the company, Richard Devlin, without admitting or denying the allegations, agreed to a fine of $37,500 and an injunction as part of the settlement with the SEC in the related case. SafeBets itself has not been charged by the SEC in connection with any illegal activity.
The idea is novel and it’s possible it will work for the users of SafeBets. But for starters, the CEO and founder of SafeBets is a guy who is currently fighting a fraud complaint by the nation’s top securities regulator. And the company is relying on the trading of a professional trading desk to generate money to pay out the top predictors. That’s not the same as free tokens to play.
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