One of the biggest stories of the last U.S. presidential election was the uncanny ability of prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi to forecast the outcome. By early November, the companies had become household names, and soon after venture capitalists invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the hopes that prediction markets would grow into major businesses. But will they? Fortune reviewed download data and other metrics to gauge the popularity of Polymarket and Kalshi, and found a huge drop in activity compared with the high-water mark they achieved on election night last fall.

According to popular analytics site Apptopia, Kalshi saw combined daily downloads from Google and Apple app stores in the U.S. exceed 100,000 last October while that figure was over 50,000 for Polymarket. Since then, download activity has fallen dramatically, as the numbers for June reflect a decline well over 90%:

Apptopia’s figures for daily active users (DAU)—another common metric to assess an app’s popularity—show a similar though less dramatic pattern. On Nov. 6, both apps had their best day ever, in part because of a rush of users coming to collect their post-election winnings, with Kalshi seeing around 400,000 people use its app and Polymarket seeing around 300,000. By mid-June, however, the respective DAU numbers were 27,000 to 32,000 and 5,000 to 10,000.

For context, Apptopia says TikTok’s app gets around 200,000 downloads per day while its daily active user figure is around 69 million. ChatGPT, meanwhile, is still attracting 80,000 to 200,000 downloads a day roughly two years after it launched.

When it comes to the breakdown between different app stores, both Polymarket and Kalshi tilt significantly toward Apple’s App Store. The Apptopia data, which in this case reflects worldwide and not just U.S. downloads, shows a significant shift for both apps in June, likely reflecting that Polymarket’s app was unavailable for a number of days that month:

Apptopia, which has offered app analytics since 2011, does not claim its metrics are precise but rather that they reflect an informed estimate based on its data. In response to a request for comment, a Kalshi spokesperson said Apptopia’s estimate for its user numbers was accurate but that daily downloads in June were closer to 13,000. Polymarket, which is barred from serving U.S. customers (though this could soon change), declined to comment on the data.

On a broader level, the steep decline in download and user activity compared with last October underscores a longtime challenge for prediction market services: how to attract attention—and revenue—outside of the once-every-four-years U.S. presidential election?

While both Kalshi and Polymarket continually offer bets on a wide range of topics—current offerings include everything from future Fed moves to the release of the Epstein files—few of them attract anything close to the interest in presidential election polls. Both sites, though, have seen spikes related to other political contests, including New York’s mayoral primary. Kalshi, meanwhile, has seen its push into sports pay off with a surge in bets for the Super Bowl, and also enjoyed a surge related to the season finale for popular TV show The White Lotus.

Even if Polymarket and Kalshi have yet to hit on a way to attract steady attention from users, they have become a fixture of news coverage, earning them plenty of publicity. Both companies are also in ongoing talks with a range of big companies to provide bespoke data, while Polymarket is exploring the launch of its own cryptocurrency.

As with other new industries, these prediction market services—which also include Robinhood and industry pioneer Predictit—likely require time to figure out an optimal revenue model. And for now, thanks in part to a wave of venture capital money, they appear to have plenty of time to figure it out.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Circle on Thursday announced that the world’s biggest crypto exchange would begin accepting USYC, a type of stablecoin that shares yield with investors, as collateral from institutional clients. While the news will be of interest primarily to a niche subset of traders, the new arrangement is significant as another step in the rapid integration of the traditional and crypto realms of finance.

Circle, a newly public company that is the world’s second biggest issuer of stablecoins, acquired USYC as part of a larger acquisition in January. USYC stands out from most other stablecoins in that it is a tokenized version of a money-market fund and, unlike conventional stablecoins like USDC and Tether, it shares interest proceeds with those who hold it.

According to Circle’s chief business officer, Kash Razzaghi, the importance of USYC also lies in its appeal to institutional traders as a source of collateral. Many of these traders currently post money-market securities as collateral when they want to trade on crypto platforms like Binance. While this arrangement works well for purposes of trading, it is also cumbersome because it can take a day or more to settle a transaction—especially on weekends when the traditional financial system, which unlike crypto does not run 24/7, is closed.

This is not the case when traders post USYC, Razzaghi explained, since the collateral can be instantly redeemed for its companion stablecoin USDC, which is fast becoming a practical alternative to traditional dollars.

While many institutional traders who use platforms like Binance post collateral in Bitcoin or other crypto assets, some traditional organizations remain reluctant to do so. According to Catherine Chen, Binance’s head of VIP and institutional, this is in part because the infamous collapse of FTX left many wary of leaving collateral on an exchange.

Chen added that Binance has sought to address this concern with an offering called Banking Triparty that involves the company working with traditional banks to let them act as custodians, and post assets held at the bank as collateral for crypto trading. She added that many of these same partners are working with Binance on integrating USYC, which would provide for faster settlement.

On Thursday, Binance also announced that it would likewise be integrating cUSDO, another yield-bearing stablecoin; cUSDO (a.k.a. OpenEden OpenDollar) is issued by OpenEden Digital, a Bermuda-licensed and regulated entity.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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