Crypto: Polymarket and Kalshi Seek to Expand Their Activity to Derivatives

On the same Tuesday, April 21, 2026, two heavyweights of predictive markets strike simultaneously. Polymarket and Kalshi announce their entry into crypto perpetual futures. A decision that disrupts the established order in the American derivatives market. It puts Coinbase and Binance facing new regulated rivals.

Polymarket launches into crypto perps: 10x leverage and 24/7 trading

Kalshi’s CEO, Tarek Mansour, had himself set the scene on April 13 with a cryptic video on LinkedIn: a rotating toroidal shape and a date, April 27, 2026 in New York. The project is called “Timeless.” The name sums it all up: crypto perpetual futures have no expiration date. They remain open as long as the trader maintains their margin.

Just hours after this information was released by The Information, Polymarket responded on X with a dry formula:

We value the future. Now, you can amplify it with leverage.

The platform has formalized the launch of its own crypto perps with leverage up to 10x. Targeted assets include:

• bitcoin (BTC);
• gold;
• silver;
• Nvidia;
• other tech stocks.

The pre-registration list is open. The trading environment will be available 24/7.

Polymarket’s logic is clear. The platform has indeed built its reputation on binary event markets: elections, sports results, global news… With crypto perps, it thus extends this positioning to continuous directional trading.

Analysis: the user who knew how to bet on the outcome of an election can now bet on the direction of the crypto market with leverage. A major evolution of its business model!

Kalshi and Polymarket versus Coinbase: the war of crypto derivatives is declared

Kalshi is no longer a niche player. The platform shows a valuation of $11 billion and handles more than $100 billion in annualized volume. In March 2026, it passed the $1 billion monthly volume mark on crypto assets for the first time.

On the Polymarket side, the figures are equally impressive: over $1 billion in notional weekly volume throughout Q1 2026. In total, the predictive market recorded 192 million transactions in March. An absolute record!

It is therefore a fact: the appetite of crypto traders for these platforms is real.

Against them, Coinbase tries to defend its territory. The American exchange put $2.9 billion on the table in August 2025 to buy Deribit. It is the largest international crypto derivatives platform. It then launched perpetual-style futures contracts with a five-year expiration and quadrupled its market share on American derivatives. But the real crypto perpetuals (those used by traders on Binance) remained out of reach for US users until this April.

CFTC Chairman Michael Selig stated last month that the agency plans to regulate crypto perps within its regulatory framework. This green light has unleashed initiatives. Kalshi and Polymarket, both holders of a Designated Contract Market (DCM) license issued by the CFTC, are therefore the first regulated platforms to take this step. Their structural advantage over offshore platforms is obvious.

In any case, Polymarket and Kalshi no longer just arbitrate the future. They trade it. Their simultaneous launches in crypto perps redraw the landscape of digital derivatives in the United States. For crypto investors, a new era of regulated liquidity opens. To watch closely!