Polymarket Launches Crypto Perpetual Futures With Up to 20x Leverage

In brief

• Polymarket launched Polymarket Perps on September 3 with an initial slate of 10 markets that expanded to 67 within hours, spanning crypto, stocks, indices and commodities with leverage up to 20x and no contract expiration.
• Leverage caps vary by asset: crypto, the S&P 500, oil, gold and silver support up to 20x, while individual stocks and other real-world assets top out at 10x, per Polymarket's own documentation.
• U.S. traders can't place Perps orders and are routed instead to Polymarket US, the company's separate CFTC-regulated exchange, a split that traces back to a 2022 CFTC settlement.

Polymarket, the prediction market platform that rose to fame during the 2024 presidential election, opened its perpetual futures product to traders on September 3, extending a platform built around yes-or-no election and sports bets into leveraged derivatives.

The new offering, called Perps, launched with an initial 10 markets—Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, HYPE, gold, silver, WTI oil, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100 and a contract tracking SpaceX shares—before expanding to 67 within hours, according to Polymarket's product page. Polymarket first teased the feature in April with a 10x leverage cap.