Twenty times is the leverage ceiling on Polymarket's new perpetual futures product, Perps, which opened to traders on September 3 and scaled from 10 launch markets to 67 within hours. The math on downside is direct: maintenance margin sits at half the maximum leverage rate, so a fully leveraged 20x position can be liquidated after losing roughly 2.5% of posted margin. American users, along with those in Canada and several sanctioned jurisdictions, cannot place orders.
Mechanics and market coverage
Perps work differently from the yes-or-no event contracts that gave Polymarket its profile during the 2024 presidential election. A perpetual future tracks its underlying price continuously with no expiration date, and a funding rate paid between longs and shorts every hour keeps the contract anchored to spot. Polymarket caps that rate at 4% per hour in either direction.
Leverage tiers split by asset class:
| Asset class | Max leverage |
|---|---|
| Crypto, S&P 500, oil, gold, silver | 20x |
| Individual equities (36 listed) | 10x |
The initial 10-market list covered Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, HYPE, gold, silver, WTI oil, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100, and a contract on SpaceX shares. Individual equities include Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, and Coinbase among the 36. Polymarket promoted the launch on X by pitching a compound trade: long Bitcoin, a position on the Federal Reserve's next move, and short the S&P 500, all from one account. The company claimed the product carries the deepest liquidity and lowest fees among crypto perps venues.
The regulated-market gap
Polymarket's own FAQ bars order placement from the United States, Canada, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk. That wall traces to a 2022 CFTC settlement in which the regulator fined Polymarket $1.4 million and ordered it to wind down noncompliant contracts after finding it had operated an unregistered swaps facility. Domestic trades route to Polymarket US, a separate CFTC-regulated exchange, though with a narrower product set.
Kalshi moved first onshore. The CFTC approved Kalshi's Bitcoin perpetual futures contract on May 29, giving the rival prediction market a head start of more than three months in the U.S. regulated market. Kalshi has since filed for perpetuals on a dozen altcoins and a separate copper contract.
The larger competitive question involves Hyperliquid, the decentralized exchange that already leads on-chain perpetuals volume. A Bloomberg report found Hyperliquid in negotiations with Kraken parent company Payward about a path to U.S. access, and President Donald Trump has said publicly that Hyperliquid is working with the CFTC toward that end.