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- Resell Market is GenZ's Backdoor into Luxury
Resell Market is GenZ's Backdoor into Luxury
&Prediction Markets Go Mainstream
Luxury’s Fastest-Growing Customer Is Buying… Pre-Owned
Gen Z’s spending habits are being reshaped by social media influence, personal branding and resale culture, with younger consumers spending roughly 20% more on non-essentials like fashion and beauty than a year ago — even as they tighten belts on everyday purchases like dining out.
They use social platforms not just to discover products but to showcase purchases, and short-form video plays a huge role: 71% of Gen Z say social media is their top way to discover new products and 58% have bought something they saw on social. This creates a feedback loop where every purchase — especially in fashion — becomes part of a broadcast identity, not just a closet choice.
Perhaps that explains why eBay bought Depop from Etsy. With the exploding secondhand and luxury resale markets, which are projected to grow from nearly $220 billion today to $360 billion by 2030 — expanding roughly three times faster than traditional retail — with Gen Z at the forefront of the trend. Younger buyers are also more likely than older generations to purchase pre-owned luxury (42% vs. lower rates among Boomers), both for value and sustainable style signal.
Prediction Markets Go Big: From Niche Betting to Financial Frontier
Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket have exploded from fringe platforms into massive venues for pricing uncertainty, with combined notional volumes in recent years ballooning into the tens of billions of dollars annually. Kalshi alone reported roughly $23.8 billion in trading volume in 2025, more than a tenfold increase over the previous year, and platforms collectively approach nearly $50 billion in combined volume — numbers that reflect institutional and retail interest alike.
Unlike traditional stock markets, prediction platforms let traders take positions on outcomes ranging from elections and policy shifts to economic indicators and world events. Growth has been driven by a mix of sports betting, macro markets, and geopolitical forecasting — with weekly volumes hitting billions of dollars as markets mature.
But with scale comes scrutiny: regulators are debating whether these markets are financial derivatives, gambling, or something in between, and some states have begun issuing challenges — a dynamic that could shape how these systems integrate with mainstream finance. Still, the sheer data scale — billions in trade and accelerating liquidity — suggests they’re no longer niche curiosities but emerging layers of information finance.
App Stores Just Flipped — Non-Gaming Revenue Just Overtook Games
For the first time in history, mobile in-app spending on non-gaming apps eclipsed that of games in 2025, signaling a fundamental shift in how consumers value their phones. According to mobile analytics data, total global in-app purchase revenue hit a record $167.4 billion, but non-game apps — including productivity tools, social platforms, AI assistants and subscriptions — collectively accounted for $85.6 billion, surpassing game revenue for the first time ever.
At the same time, gaming downloads and spending have stagnated: worldwide game downloads dipped more than 7% in 2025 to 50.4 billion, and revenues flattened even as blockbuster titles continued to pull in money.
AI and subscription models are key drivers of the shift, with generative-AI apps seeing nearly 120% growth in downloads and multimillion-dollar in-app revenues, while other categories like fintech, social and utilities expand their monetization