Quick Read
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Polymarket now offers 20x leverage on 67 perpetual futures markets, where a 5% adverse move can eliminate a trader’s entire margin.
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With a median trade of $10 and 80% of users under $500, Polymarket’s retail base now controls notional positions far larger than their cash.
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Funding costs on perps are charged against the full notional exposure, meaning a small deposit carries more financial risk than its dollar amount implies.
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Financial markets are increasingly turning price movements themselves into tradable products. Perpetual futures, or “perps,” have become one of the biggest examples, with global trading volume exceeding $90 trillion in 2025, according to estimates cited by Kalshi and reported by Reuters.
Unlike traditional futures, perps never expire, allowing traders to maintain long or short positions indefinitely. Now Polymarket is stepping into that market, giving its retail-heavy user base access to leveraged exposure across crypto, stocks, indexes, and commodities. The opportunity is enormous. So is the risk.
Polymarket Goes From Predictions To Leverage
Polymarket launched its perpetual futures product on Sept. 3, initially offering 10 markets before expanding to 67 within hours, according to Decrypt. The contracts cover assets ranging from Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) and Ethereum (CRYPTO:ETH) to the S&P 500, Nasdaq-100, gold, silver, oil, and individual stocks.
Perps work differently from traditional futures because there is no expiration date and therefore no need to periodically roll a contract. Instead, a funding-rate mechanism uses periodic payments between longs and shorts to keep the perp price aligned with the underlying asset.
That sounds straightforward. The leverage is where things get interesting. Polymarket is offering up to 20x leverage on some contracts, although maximum leverage varies by asset, according to the company’s product documentation.
At 20x leverage:
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