Polymarket launches trading of heavily leveraged ‘perps’ contracts
Nikolas Kokovlis | Nurfoto | Getty Images
Prediction markets platform Polymarket is expanding into trading perpetual futures contracts, the company said on Tuesday.
The announcement came after a news report Its main rival, Kalshi, is reportedly planning to offer crypto trading, including perpetual futures, from The Information. These are futures contracts that remain open indefinitely, allowing traders to have leveraged exposure and exit at any time as long as they have sufficient funds to maintain it.
Polymarket has not stated whether its offering will include perpetual crypto futures, but the company is extremely crypto-friendly. It is built on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains and mainly processes transactions in the stablecoin USDC. Crypto traders were the main drivers of Polymarket’s meteoric rise in 2024.
This move puts Kalshi, and perhaps Polymarket, in more direct competition if its offering includes perpetual crypto assets. robinhood, coinbase and Kraken added prediction markets to their offerings last year, highlighting the value of young, speculative and risk-tolerant retail investors.
While not widely available in the U.S., international perpetual assets, or “criminals,” became especially popular among the crypto crowd in the industry’s early years as a workaround to the constraints of traditional finance. Last year, the best Last year, the best centralized crypto exchanges recorded $86.2 trillion in annual crime volume and 47% growth compared to the previous year. According to CoinGecko.
By expanding into criminals, Polymarket and Kalshi are capitalizing on derivatives trading at a time when cryptocurrency prices have stagnated and trading activity has slowed, even as signs of long-term institutional demand remain intact.
Perps have the ability to keep the ecosystem active by creating more consistent volume and allowing investors to speculate on short-term movements, hedge existing positions, and use leverage regardless of the direction of the market.
Polymarket did not respond to a request for comment. Kalshi refused to comment.
—CNBC’s Liz Napolitano contributed reporting.
Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a business relationship that includes a minority investment in CNBC.
