Polymarket Opens New Front in The Perpetuals Market

Polymarket Perps Goes Live With 20x Leverage

Polymarket launched its Perps platform on September 3, 2026, marking a significant expansion beyond its core prediction market business. The initial lineup covers nine markets: $BTC, $ETH, $SOL, gold, silver, WTI crude oil, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100, and SpaceX shares (trading under the ticker SPCX). With Perps, a trader can go long to bet on an asset rising, or short to bet on it falling, with leverage of up to 20x available.

Perpetual futures have no set expiry date, meaning positions can stay open as long as the trader meets the required margin. This distinguishes them from traditional futures contracts, which settle on a fixed date. Traders can also use the platform around macro events such as Federal Reserve decisions and major moves in equity indexes.

The product is available to international users only. The international rollout does not mean the same product is automatically available to U.S. traders, as derivatives offered to U.S. customers remain subject to Commodity Futures Trading Commission requirements.

A Direct Challenge to Kalshi

The move puts Polymarket in direct competition with Kalshi, which is preparing its own regulated filing for a U.S. perpetual WTI crude oil contract. The competition also extends to Robinhood, Coinbase, and Kraken, which have all added prediction markets in the past year.

In 2025, the top centralized crypto exchanges registered $86.2 trillion in annual perps volume and 47% growth from the previous year, according to CoinGecko. That scale helps explain why both platforms are moving fast to claim a share of the space. Behind the launch, Polymarket is also working to increase the capacity of its trading infrastructure, targeting 200,000 orders per second, around 15 times its current throughput.

The rivalry between the two platforms has been building for months. Combined, Kalshi and Polymarket saw $44.8 billion traded in June 2026 alone. With perpetuals now live on Polymarket and Kalshi pressing ahead with its own equivalent product, the competition between the two prediction market giants is moving well beyond binary event contracts and into the heart of the global derivatives market.

Sources:
CNBC: Polymarket launches trading of heavily leveraged perps contracts
Crypto Briefing: Polymarket launches perpetual futures tied to oil, competing with Kalshi
CoinGape: Polymarket Launches Perpetual Futures Trading With Up to 20x Leverage