GalaxyOne Head Wants Retail Investors to Stake More, Predict Less
Zac Prince, head of Galaxy’s retail platform, said he struggles to see prediction markets in diversified portfolios for long-term investors.
By André BeganskiEdited by Andrew HaywardApr 18, 2026Apr 18, 20263 min read
In brief
- GalaxyOne Head Zac Prince said he’s “not particularly excited” about prediction markets when it comes to enabling customers to build long-term wealth.
- The executive highlighted the retail investment platform’s recent support of Solana staking and associated lending products in the firm’s pipeline.
- Staking has enabled competitors like Coinbase to diversify revenue, while others like Robinhood have embraced prediction markets as growth drivers.
For Galaxy’s retail investment platform, enabling customers to bet on the news isn’t a priority, according to Zac Prince, head of GalaxyOne. Rather, the service that debuted in October is being built in a way that’s intended to reward investors’ patience, he told Decrypt.
Within the context of Galaxy’s broader business, Prince said the financial services and investment management firm is already in a good place as far as prediction markets are concerned, providing institutional clients with internal trading and risk management.
When it comes to consumers that GalaxyOne was built for, who have anywhere between $100,000 and $1 million in investible assets, he described prediction markets as tools that may not align with many affluent consumers for building long-term wealth.
“For individual consumers, I’m not particularly excited about it versus other things we have on our roadmap,” he said. “I haven’t been able to find a use case for someone who’s building a diversified portfolio—that they’re going to allocate to for the long term—for prediction markets.”
In some ways, the sentiment echoes commentary from Charles Schwab President and CEO Rick Wurster, who indicated this week that America’s largest discount brokerage would limit prediction-market access to wagers focused on financial events if it enters that territory.
Prince argued that there are two ways to be successful as a consumer-facing financial services offering: cater to investors who want time in the market to be the driving force, like Vanguard or Betterment, or seek customers that view themselves as active traders.
Retail brokerages like Robinhood have embraced prediction markets by working with Kalshi, providing what analysts have described as a sports-fueled tailwind. Still, Prince indicated GalaxyOne isn’t trying to develop a platform “where you want people to log in every day.”
GalaxyOne began supporting Solana staking last month, enabling individuals to earn rewards by locking up tokens and participating in the process of validating the network’s transactions. In the not-too-distant future, Prince said that GalaxyOne plans to support Ethereum staking.
Until the end of this year, the firm has waived commissions on Solana staking rewards that customers receive. Lending services that GalaxyOne plans to offer in the future will allow investors to borrow against staked Solana and Ethereum while still earning rewards.
“We’re really excited about that product,” Prince added.
Staking has enabled competitors like Coinbase to diversify revenue away from a reliance on trading fees, which tend to fluctuate alongside market conditions. The crypto exchange disclosed in February that it generated $677 million from staking in 2025, down 4% year-over-year, citing lower average crypto prices in a shareholder letter.
Currently, GalaxyOne’s customers are showing a preference for 8% returns on cash that the platform’s “premium yield” product supports, Prince said, describing the offering as among the most differentiated that the company has debuted so far.
This week, Galaxy announced that its retail investment platform was poised to begin accepting U.S. businesses and entities as customers. Prince noted that the move provides an all-in-one place for those customers to manage bank, brokerage, and crypto accounts.
“I think business accounts will get some traction because it is relatively unique,” Prince said. “For individuals, there’s other platforms that have that.”
