Underdog, the prediction markets operator acquired by IG Group earlier this year, is moving to let customers fund their accounts with digital assets even outside traditional banking hours.

On October 22, at the NEXTPredict NYC Summit, the company announced a partnership with Zerohash that will give qualified customers the ability to deposit stablecoins (tokens pegged to fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar) and other cryptocurrencies directly through the Underdog app — evenings and weekends included. The timing distinction matters: traditional bank transfers generally only move on business days, while blockchain payments can settle at any hour. The feature is expected to launch before the end of the year.

"Stablecoins and onchain assets unlock greater choice and speed," said Arthik Adla, Underdog's head of payments. Adam Tesan, Zerohash's revenue chief, likewise emphasized the ability to move money globally, around the clock.

An audience that already holds crypto

Demand for such a feature appears to exist. According to IG Group's October 2026 acquisition presentation, 46% of Underdog customers had traded crypto before, while 42% said they liked funding their Underdog wallets with crypto. Another 58% had traded individual stocks.

The commercial case for crypto funding

IG, a London-listed online trading group, agreed to buy Underdog on July 30, 2026, in a deal with a total enterprise value of $1.1 billion, including an earnout of roughly $200 million — payments contingent on the business hitting future performance targets. The crossover between sports fans and retail traders was one of the reasons behind the acquisition.

Underdog's public dashboard shows $7.88 billion in cumulative notional volume across prediction markets and 49.86 million trades through October 21, 2026, including $70.72 million in trades on October 20. These figures are reported by the company itself.

Where this fits in a crowded market

Prediction markets — venues where users trade contracts whose payouts depend on the outcome of real-world events, from sports results to crypto prices — have grown quickly. TRM Labs put monthly volume at roughly $1.2 billion in early 2025, rising above $20 billion by January 2026, with more than 800,000 unique wallets active each month.

An Artemis data snapshot dated October 23, 2026 showed prediction market trading volume totaling around $400 billion over the past year. Sports contracts constituted 42.7% of the recorded volume, while crypto contracts accounted for 14.6%.

As previously reported by Cryptopolitanhttps://www.cryptopolitan.com/crypto-com-underdog-prediction-markets), Underdog initially offered sports contracts through Crypto.com's derivatives arm, approved by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), before [launching its own prediction market platform on July 18, 2026.

Stablecoin demand and the caveats

Small-ticket crypto transactions are on the rise. Chainalysis reported that transfers of less than $100 into crypto services increased by 78.4% between July 2025 and June 2026 compared with the previous year — though those statistics cover cryptocurrencies in general rather than stablecoins or prediction-market deposits specifically.

Zerohash has already brought crypto funding to the sector. The company provides the underlying infrastructure — wallets, conversions, and compliance — that lets platforms offer digital-asset features without building them in-house. In July 2026, it introduced crypto and stablecoin deposits for ProphetX. The Underdog partnership extends that option to another platform, giving existing crypto holders more opportunities to use their digital assets.

There are limitations, however. According to Zerohash's disclosures, some services may be unavailable in New York, and crypto and stablecoin holdings in its accounts lack the FDIC and SIPC protections that cover traditional bank deposits and brokerage securities. Meanwhile, the regulatory treatment of event contracts continues to evolve: on October 9, 2026, the CFTC proposed explicitly including event contracts — the instruments underlying prediction markets — within its definition of swaps, a change that, if finalized, would bring them under the same framework as other swaps.

Underdog's funding feature has yet to launch. The partnership could give cryptocurrencies a wider role in funding prediction-market accounts, but there is no evidence yet that it will attract new crypto users, increase token demand, or drive up prices.