- Polymarket launched perpetual futures contracts this week, entering a market that handled $61.7 trillion in volume last year.
- The move puts prediction markets in direct competition with Coinbase, Robinhood, and Kraken—and the CFTC just gave them the green light.
- The convergence of prediction markets and 100x leveraged derivatives could reshape how Americans trade on real-world events.
Polymarket is moving beyond yes-or-no contracts. The prediction market platform quietly launched perpetual futures trading on Tuesday, a product category that accounts for more than 70% of all volume on centralized crypto exchanges, according to CoinGecko data. The contracts—known as “perps”—can offer up to 100x leverage and don’t expire, letting traders hold leveraged positions as long as they can maintain collateral.
The timing isn’t accidental. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission signaled early this year that it was working to bring “true perpetual derivatives” to the U.S.—a move that opened the door for prediction markets to expand beyond their core product. Almost a year ago, Coinbase spent $2.9 billion to acquire the crypto derivatives exchange Deribit, the largest M&A deal in crypto, to take on international players like Binance.
In 2025, the top centralized crypto exchanges registered $86.2 trillion in annual perps volume and 47% growth from the previous year, CoinGecko reported. Polymarket and main rival Kalshi are now betting that their existing user base—speculative, risk-tolerant retail traders who already use prediction markets—will want exposure to leveraged derivatives without leaving the platform.
Why ‘Perps’ Are Crypto’s Biggest Trade
Perpetual futures differ from traditional futures in one key way: they never expire. Traders can hold positions indefinitely as long as they maintain enough collateral to avoid liquidation. This structure became especially popular among crypto traders as a workaround to traditional finance limitations, and offshore exchanges like Binance and the now-defunct FTX built empires on perps volume before U.S. regulators cracked the door open.
Polymarket is highly crypto-native by design—built on Ethereum and Polygon, denominated in USDC. Crypto traders were major drivers of its meteoric rise in 2024. By expanding into perps, the platform is tapping derivatives trading at a time when crypto prices have stalled and spot trading activity has slowed. Perps generate consistent volume regardless of market direction by letting traders speculate, hedge, and use leverage on short-term moves.
The move puts Kalshi—and potentially Polymarket if its offering includes crypto perpetuals—in direct competition with Robinhood and Coinbase. Robinhood launched its Prediction Markets hub last year through a partnership with Kalshi, and it became the platform’s fastest-ever growing product line by revenue, with 11 billion contracts traded by more than 1 million customers in 2025, according to the company. Coinbase launched its own Kalshi partnership this January.
“I don’t see this as an immediate threat,” said Owen Lau, an analyst at Clear Street. “This is a natural product extension for Polymarket and Kalshi’s existing customers. It’d be hard to ask people from Coinbase or Binance or Robinhood to abandon their existing platform and go to them.”
Mizuho’s Dan Dolev offered a more nuanced read: “Eventually Robinhood is going to want to do it on their own. So it’s a defensive move more than it is an offensive move.”
The CFTC Opened the Door—Now They’re Fighting Over Who Walks Through
The CFTC’s push to legitimize perpetuals in the U.S. is part of a broader jurisdictional grab over prediction markets. The agency sued New York this week to assert exclusive federal jurisdiction over prediction markets, escalating a battle with states that have moved to restrict them. The convergence of prediction markets and crypto derivatives puts the CFTC in the unusual position of both enabling and regulating the new products.
The overlap between prediction market and crypto derivatives user bases is massive. As these products blur together, the CFTC faces the challenge of policing platforms that sit at the intersection of two weakly regulated markets. Prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi were originally designed for forecasting real-world events—election outcomes, economic data, policy decisions. Perps let traders apply that same logic to crypto price movements with leverage that prediction contracts never offered.
Polymarket did not respond to a request for comment. Kalshi declined to comment.
The prediction markets pillar at Frontierbeat has a full explainer on how these markets function.
