**The near-certain trader consensus on “No” (97.1%) stems from the extreme rarity of magnitude 9.0+ earthquakes and the short window remaining until December 31, 2026.** Only five such events have been recorded in the instrumental era (1952 Kamchatka, 1960 Valdivia, 1964 Alaska, 2004 Sumatra, 2011 Tohoku), averaging roughly one every 15–25 years or longer according to USGS and global catalogs. No M9+ quake has occurred since 2011, while recent activity has included an 8.8 in Kamchatka (2025) and several M7–8 events. Global rates show M8+ quakes occur about once per year on average, but M9+ events require simultaneous rupture across hundreds of kilometers on major subduction zones and remain statistically improbable in any given multi-month interval. Realistic scenarios that could still shift the outcome include an unexpected full-margin rupture in a high-strain zone such as Cascadia or the Nankai Trough, though official time-independent models assign only single-digit to low-double-digit probabilities even over 30–50 years. New seismic or geodetic data showing rapid strain accumulation could introduce modest uncertainty, but current monitoring indicates no such precursors.