Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author｜Azuma (@azuma_eth)

In the early morning of March 17, the prediction market Kalshi announced on X that it would follow in the footsteps of stock god Buffett and launch the "Perfect Bracket Challenge" for the upcoming NCAA "March Madness" tournament — users who perfectly predict all match results will receive a super grand prize of 1 billion dollars.

"March Madness": The Hottest Basketball Feast in the U.S.

"March Madness" refers to the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament held every March by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The tournament, which typically kicks off each March, uses a single-elimination format, has a dense schedule and fierce competition, hence its name.

According to the schedule confirmed by the lottery yesterday, "March Madness" 2026 will officially start on March 18 (tomorrow) Beijing time. 68 college teams that have secured their spots through months of regular-season battles will compete for the championship, beginning with the First Four play-in games. Eight play-in teams will directly eliminate 4 teams, and the remaining 64 teams will determine the final winner through five rounds of single-elimination (64 teams → 32 teams → Sweet 16 → Elite 8 → Final 4 → Championship Game → National Champion).

As the most-watched college basketball event in the U.S., NCAA, based on colleges, often fosters a stronger sense of "home team identity" among the public compared to the NBA, which is centered on clubs. During "March Madness," students, alumni, and even the local communities of various colleges often rally to support their alma mater. Because of this, the atmosphere of national participation presented by this tournament can sometimes even surpass the heat of the NBA Finals.

From a competitive standpoint, although college players still generally cannot compare to professional players in overall strength, the uniqueness of "March Madness" lies in the extremely limited stage window for most participants — typically only 1 to 4 years, and the top talent often enters the NBA after their freshman season. This "fleeting" opportunity makes every possession in the game more urgent — once players step onto the court, nearly everyone will compete fiercely.

Meanwhile, 2026 is widely viewed as a critical year for the NBA draft, further amplifying interest in this tournament. Kansas University's Dariq Peterson, BYU's AJ DiBanza, and Duke University's Cameron Boozer (son of Yao Ming's rival Carlos Boozer) are all seen as rare talents expected to compete for next year's NBA first overall pick. The direct matchups between these "future stars" add an extra layer of anticipation regarding the future NBA landscape to this year's "March Madness."

A Massive Flow of Traffic, Prediction Markets Can't Miss Out

During "March Madness", filling out brackets to predict game results through sports betting services has long been a major custom in the U.S. How can professional prediction markets miss this opportunity?

Currently, prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi have launched events related to "March Madness." Polymarket even included this in its first batch of fee-based sports events, seemingly preparing to profit significantly from the upcoming tournament frenzy.

Polymarket's real-time odds show that the top four college teams currently favored to win "March Madness" are the number one seeds from the four major regions:

• Duke University, with top NBA draft prospect Cameron Boozer, ranks first with odds of 21%;
• The University of Michigan ranks second with odds of 19%;
• The University of Arizona ranks third with odds of 17%;
• Defending champion University of Florida ranks fourth with odds of 11%.

On the other hand, Kalshi launched a nuclear-level "1 billion dollar grand prize" event this morning, following Buffett's lead. All users can submit a prediction for free on Kalshi; users who perfectly predict all match results will get 1 billion dollars. If no one succeeds, Kalshi will also provide a 1 million dollar reward to the user with the best prediction result, along with an additional 1 million dollars allocated to support charitable organizations.

It is worth mentioning that Kalshi has enlisted NBA star Devin Booker to help promote the event. In 2014, Booker's Kentucky team achieved an undefeated record of 31 wins and 0 losses in the regular season, and was once considered a strong contender for the national championship that year, but they were defeated 64 - 71 by the University of Wisconsin in the semifinals. The following year, Booker entered the NBA, leaving that regret unfulfilled.

Buffett Has Been Offering Rewards for 12 Years, But No One Has Claimed the Grand Prize

The reason for mentioning Kalshi's grand prize being modeled after Buffett's is that Buffett set up a similar prize back in 2014 — employees of his company Berkshire Hathaway can win a 1 billion dollar grand prize if they can guess all game outcomes correctly, distributed over 40 years (or choose to take a one-time payment of 500 million dollars).

However, due to the extreme difficulty of making a perfect prediction, no one has ever claimed the prize. Buffett subsequently reduced the difficulty of the challenge multiple times (the rewards were adjusted accordingly) until last year when an anonymous employee from Berkshire Hathaway's subsidiary FlightSafety International correctly predicted 31 out of 32 games in the first round, winning a million-dollar prize that had been adjusted for its difficulty and rewards.

How difficult is it to make a perfect prediction? The classic number circulating in the industry is "1 in 9.2 quintillion," or "1 in 92 quadrillion." This probability comes from the following mathematical calculation: if each game is considered a 50% vs 50% outcome (completely random), not accounting for seed strengths, odds, or historical regulations, "March Madness" has a total of 63 games (excluding play-in games), so the total number of possible permutations is 2^63, which equals 9223372036854775808... If you were to write down all these possible outcomes on paper, the weight of the paper would reach 180 trillion tons, equivalent to the weight of 500 million Empire State Buildings...

Does it feel impossible? No worries, I will help you significantly increase your odds!

This morning, Kalshi's CEO Tarek Mansour stated that the probability of making a perfect prediction is about "1 in 120 billion." The huge difference between these two probabilities is because the latter is based on more realistic modeling calculations — sports games are not 50-50, stronger teams tend to win more often. After weighing historical winning percentages and related odds, academia and the statistics community generally estimate the probability of making a perfect prediction in "March Madness" to be between "1 / 10¹¹ and 1 / 10¹³," thus "1 in 120 billion" falls within this range.

But even "1 in 120 billion" still means the possibility is nearly zero. Clearly, Kalshi is playing the same probability game as Buffett, believing that no one will be able to claim this 1 billion dollars.

The Community is Ready, AI May Be the Key

After Kalshi announced the grand prize event, it immediately sparked widespread discussion on social media — after all, predictions are free, what if someone wins?

This time, many users are pinning their hopes on AI as the breakthrough revolution. Overseas KOL Chase Passive Income expressed on X that he plans to invest 50 million dollars in data processing, allowing numerous AI agents to create accounts and fill out all possible brackets, which he believes would be "the easiest 1 billion dollars to earn."

Will the unsolvable probability puzzle continue? Can AI create miracles? Before the national champion of "March Madness" is revealed, no one can know the answer.

As spectators, aside from waiting to watch the games and enjoy the show, don't forget to go to Kalshi to fill out your dream bracket.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。