Verifact Markets opens trading on disputed facts from the past

Verifact Markets has launched an on-chain platform where traders take positions on disputed claims about events that have already happened, rather than the future outcomes that usually underpin prediction markets. Its first markets asked whether Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide and whether State Farm intentionally delayed claims tied to the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires.

The company sells True and False contracts, generally priced from $0 to $1. A contract pays $1 if its chosen outcome is adopted and nothing if the opposite outcome prevails. Traders can also submit evidence supporting their position, and Verifact says it will reward credible documentation that helps settle a market.

The company’s approach depends on a patent-pending resolution system that combines evidence collected through its technology with signals from trading activity. Submitted material is screened for relevance and verifiability, while trading prices are considered alongside documentation rather than treated as proof by themselves.

Verifact says it will resolve a market only when it reaches more than 90% confidence in either answer. If it cannot reach that threshold, the market expires and settles according to the last trusted trading price, instead of producing a binary winner or loser. Its disclaimer says a resolution is based on the best available evidence at the time, is not authoritative truth in every context and cannot be appealed or reopened should later evidence emerge.

In beta, the featured question was whether the Covid-19 pandemic began at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The True contract was trading at 76 cents and the False contract at 32 cents when WIRED reported on the launch, with most participants backing the Wuhan-lab proposition.

Verifact is funded and incubated by Positron Capital Management, the family office of technology investor Peter Wokwicz, and is being bootstrapped while it speaks with market makers about liquidity. Wokwicz said the idea took five years to reach launch and cited advances in AI, regulatory clarity and the Verifact team. The company does not plan to charge fees at launch, although trading can result in traders losing all money paid to enter a trade, including applicable fees.

The service is available only outside the United States because it is not a licensed American exchange and is seeking a viable domestic legal route. In a separate Sept. 22 advisory, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission warned that contracts based on a person mentioning a word, attending an event or interacting with someone can present heightened manipulation risks.

Verifact enters a growing field of efforts to arbitrate contested information. The Peter Thiel-funded project Objection, later renamed The Primary, had sought to judge the accuracy of particular media stories before pivoting to publishing news and ranking journalists. Wokwicz has said Verifact could eventually be used to address questions such as the energy consumption of AI data centers.

Contrary Research estimated that Kalshi and Polymarket’s combined monthly global trading volume rose from less than $5 billion in September 2025 to $24 billion in April 2026.