Polymarket Launches Perps: The Prediction Market Now Sells 20x Leverage on 67 Assets, From Bitcoin to SpaceX

The platform famous for betting on elections is now selling 20x leverage contracts — the last wall between prediction markets and derivatives exchanges has been torn down by Polymarket itself.

Three Key Facts

Per The Defiant, Polymarket opened its perpetual futures product, Perps, to the public on September 3, with an initial lineup of 67 contracts spanning crypto, stocks, indices, and commodities: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, gold, silver, WTI crude, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100 — even SpaceX shares. Crypto and major indices support up to 20x leverage; individual stocks and other real-world assets cap at 10x.

The product is a standard perpetual: long or short, no expiry, with a funding-rate mechanism anchoring contract prices to the underlying asset. The mechanics are no different from Binance or Bybit perps — what's different is that the seller is a prediction market company.

The regulatory line is drawn clearly: under its 2022 settlement with the CFTC, US traders are blocked from Polymarket Perps and are directed instead to the CFTC-regulated Polymarket US platform.

WangDou's Take

The ambition is written into the asset list: SpaceX stock, crude oil, the Nasdaq 100 — all traditional exchange territory, and Polymarket's ticket in is the comparatively lightly regulated signboard of "prediction market." The logic is straightforward: prediction markets bet on whether something will happen; perpetuals bet on which way price moves. The latter is a 24/7 cash-flow business; the former only opens shop during news cycles. With 67 markets and 20x leverage, Polymarket is plainly coming for users from both ends — Binance and Kalshi — and it's the same crowd on both sides: speculators who want to bet on the world, on-chain. But the risk changes character too: lose an election bet and you're out the price of a lottery ticket; get liquidated at 20x and your principal is gone in an instant, with funding rates doing the slow-knife work afterward. Cramming a casino and a futures exchange into one app will grow the user base — and burn through regulatory patience faster. Especially in this posture: blocking American users on one side while selling contracts on US stocks and crude oil on the other. How long that stance holds depends on the mood of the CFTC's next chair.

Source: The Defiant