TurboFlow Raises $6M to Build the Leading Prediction Market for APAC

Hong Kong-based startup TurboFlow has closed a $6 million seed round to bring institutional-grade TurboFlow prediction markets to Asia-Pacific — a region that, despite its appetite for speculative trading, has been almost entirely overlooked by the platforms defining this space in the West. Pantera Capital led the deal, with Susquehanna Crypto and Digital Currency Group rounding out the investor list.

• TurboFlow prediction markets raised $6M in seed funding led by Pantera Capital, with Digital Currency Group and Susquehanna Crypto also participating.
• The TurboFlow prediction markets platform targets Asia-Pacific, where platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have yet to build meaningful regional traction.
• TurboFlow has processed over $19 billion in trading volume across more than 15,000 beta users since launching its beta six months ago.
• The platform combines perpetual futures with event-based prediction markets, allowing entry sizes as small as $2 per trade.

TurboFlow Prediction Markets: Filling the APAC Gap

The pitch is straightforward but the execution is harder than it sounds. Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have done a credible job building prediction market infrastructure for English-speaking, Western-centric audiences. But Asia is a different beast — different regulatory environments, different cultural relationships with speculation, and different events that actually matter to local traders. TurboFlow prediction markets are built around this insight: founder Tony He, who previously co-founded and served as partner at crypto trading giant Amber Group, put it plainly: ‘People here are interested in different topics and assets to trade. It’s about staying close to users and being able to deliver the products they want, fast.’

That insight isn’t trivial. TurboFlow prediction markets aren’t just about the underlying mechanism — they live and die by what’s actually being traded. An election market tailored for US voters doesn’t resonate the same way in Southeast Asia or South Korea. TurboFlow’s bet is that localization is the competitive moat, not just the product.

The Numbers Behind the Beta

Before anyone dismisses this as another white-paper startup, TurboFlow has been running a live beta for over six months — and the numbers are worth paying attention to. The platform says it has registered more than 15,000 beta users and, more strikingly, processed upwards of $19 billion in trading volume. That’s a big figure for a company that hasn’t formally launched yet, and it speaks to how much demand exists once you actually build TurboFlow prediction markets for these users rather than repurposing a Western platform with a translated interface.

He also pointed out something telling about where TurboFlow’s growth is actually coming from: ‘Perps have traditionally been the most popular product among crypto users, but our fastest-growing segment is coming entirely from prediction markets — which proves to us that offering a genuinely new trading experience is what matters most.’ That’s a significant signal. Perpetual futures are a known quantity in crypto Asia — Binance, OKX, and Bybit have dominated that space for years. If TurboFlow prediction markets are outpacing perps in user interest, it suggests genuine product-market fit rather than incremental competition with established players.

Who’s Backing TurboFlow — and Why It Matters

The investor lineup tells its own story. Pantera Capital has been one of the most consistent early-stage crypto investors in the world, with a track record that includes early bets on Bitstamp, Ripple, and more recently Solana-adjacent infrastructure plays. Getting Pantera to lead a seed round is a signal the wider market reads as meaningful. Susquehanna Crypto adds a specific flavour of credibility — Susquehanna International Group is one of the most respected quantitative trading firms on the planet, so having its crypto arm on board speaks directly to TurboFlow prediction markets’ liquidity ambitions. Digital Currency Group, meanwhile, brings the kind of network and strategic weight that can open doors across exchanges and protocols.

He was transparent that Susquehanna’s involvement isn’t just financial — the firm is expected to play a role in building the liquidity stack that makes TurboFlow prediction markets actually function. Tight spreads and reliable liquidity are existential for a prediction market platform. Without them, you get shallow markets, high slippage, and users who quickly go elsewhere. He’s background at Amber Group, one of Asia’s largest market-making operations, means he understands this intimately.

Regulation: The Elephant in the Room

Prediction markets have always had a complicated relationship with regulators, and APAC makes that complexity multiply. Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Australia — each jurisdiction has its own framework, and in many cases those frameworks haven’t caught up to what onchain event contracts actually are. Kalshi spent years fighting the CFTC in the US before eventually winning the right to list election markets. TurboFlow prediction markets don’t have that battle behind them.

When pressed on licensing, He acknowledged the reality candidly: regulatory frameworks for prediction markets ‘vary significantly across APAC and are still evolving,’ but said TurboFlow is ‘proactively building toward a compliant, legitimate setup’ with a market-by-market approach guided by legal advisors. That’s the right answer, honestly. Blanket regional compliance isn’t realistic here — the region is too fragmented. But it does mean TurboFlow will need to move carefully in certain markets, and the speed advantage it’s chasing could bump into regulatory friction in ways that are hard to predict.

Hong Kong is an interesting base for this reason. The city has made genuine efforts to position itself as a crypto-friendly hub, with its own licensing regime for virtual asset trading platforms under the Securities and Futures Commission. Whether TurboFlow prediction markets fit neatly under that umbrella is a different question, but the regulatory posture of the city is at least oriented toward ‘figure it out’ rather than ‘shut it down.’

The ‘High-Velocity Event Trading’ Model

TurboFlow describes its product philosophy as ‘high-velocity event trading’ — which is a more direct framing than the academic language prediction market advocates usually reach for. The minimum trade size of $2 is a deliberate design choice. It signals this isn’t a platform being built for institutional desks who want to hedge macro exposure through binary contracts. It’s being built for individual traders who want a low-friction, high-engagement experience around real-world events. That’s the Polymarket lesson applied to a different audience, and it’s central to how TurboFlow prediction markets are positioned for retail-first growth.

The perpetual futures layer adds another dimension. Rather than choosing to be purely a prediction market platform or purely a perps exchange, TurboFlow is combining both — which is either a smart way to attract multiple user types, or a product focus problem waiting to happen. He’s argument is that the two products reinforce each other: traders who come for perps discover event markets, and vice versa. The $19 billion in beta volume, if accurate, suggests the combination is working so far.

The team of 30-plus, mostly based in Hong Kong, is being kept deliberately lean. He said the company plans to stay ‘relatively lean’ as it scales — sensible for a seed-stage startup, though the pace at which prediction market competition is heating up globally means TurboFlow won’t have unlimited time to find its footing. With fresh capital from three credible backers and a live product already generating volume, TurboFlow prediction markets have the foundation in place. Whether the platform can genuinely become the Kalshi of APAC — or something bigger and more distinctly Asian than that framing implies — is the question the next 18 months will answer.

Source: The Block

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