Oil, crypto and equity contracts with up to 20x leverage trade around the clock offshore as Kalshi seeks U.S. approval for WTI perps.
The official Polymarket Perps page confirms live perpetual markets and the underlying mechanics, including leveraged long and short trading, across crypto, equities, indices, and commodities. The official BTC-USD and SP500-USD pages specifically confirm Bitcoin and S&P 500 perpetuals, respectively, each with up to 20× leverage. Crypto Briefing corroborates that this was a launch. “Macro markets” is supported mainly by Crypto Briefing’s characterization of macroeconomic events rather than by the official product pages, but it does not undermine the core claim.
Polymarket opened perpetual futures trading to the public on Thursday, extending its event-markets platform into derivatives with never-expiring contracts on oil, cryptocurrencies, stocks and commodities. The offshore products offer up to 20x leverage and 24-hour trading across 67 markets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, gold, silver, WTI and Brent crude, Tesla, SpaceX shares, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100. Initial book volume reached roughly $73 million, led by Ether at $9 million, Bitcoin at $7 million and gold at $5 million. The rollout fleshes out Polymarket’s April plan to enter derivatives and targets demand for oil exposure when conventional futures markets are closed, a need that drew attention during the Iran war. Contracts are barred to U.S., Canadian and several sanctioned-jurisdiction residents, placing Polymarket against global venues such as Hyperliquid and Binance. Kalshi, which launched the first U.S.-regulated perpetuals under CFTC oversight on May 29, is separately seeking approval for WTI-linked perpetual futures that would be the first oil perps on a regulated U.S. platform if cleared. Polymarket’s taker fees start at 0.04% and maker fees at 0.0125%, with hourly funding capped at 4% and maintenance margin set at 0.5 divided by maximum leverage. The company has raised $2.88 billion, including a $2 billion Intercontinental Exchange investment in October 2025, and earlier this cycle received $300 million from Donald Trump Jr.’s 1789 Capital. The CFTC has stayed active in the space, recently fining a former White House staffer $172,000 over prediction-market trades tied to non-public information.