On the same Tuesday, April 21, 2026, two heavyweights of the predictive markets draw simultaneously. Polymarket and Kalshi announce their entry into crypto perpetual futures. A decision that shakes up the established order on the American derivatives market. It puts Coinbase and Binance face new regulated rivals.
In brief
- Polymarket announced on April 21, 2026 the launch of perpetual futures with 10x leverage on BTC, gold, Nvidia and other assets.
- Kalshi, valued at $11 billion, is launching its own crypto perps on April 27, 2026 in New York under the code name “Timeless”.
- Both platforms are regulated by the CFTC as Designated Contract Markets (DCM).
- These launches put Kalshi and Polymarket in direct competition with Coinbase, Robinhood and Binance on crypto derivatives.
Polymarket launches into crypto perps: 10x leverage and 24/7 trading
Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour 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 do not have an expiration date. They remain open as long as the trader maintains his margin.
Just hours after this information was released by The InformationPolymarket hits back on X with a dry formula:
We value the future. Now you can amplify it with leverage.
The platform has formalized the launching its own crypto perps with up to 10x leverage. The assets covered include:
- bitcoin (BTC);
- gold;
- money;
- Nvidia;
- other technological stocks.
The pre-registration list is open. The trading environment will be available 24/7.
The logic of Polymarket is clear. The platform has in fact built its reputation on binary events markets: elections, sports results, world news, etc. With crypto perps, it therefore extends this positioning to continuous directional trading.
Decryption: the user who knew how to bet on the outcome of an election can now betting on the direction of the crypto market with leverage. A major evolution of its economic model!
Kalshi and Polymarket against Coinbase: the crypto derivatives war is declared
Kalshi is no longer a niche actor. The platform has a valuation of $11 billion and processes over $100 billion in annualized volume. In March 2026, it crossed the billion dollar monthly volume mark for the first time on crypto assets.
On the Polymarket side, the figures are just as impressive: more than a billion dollars in weekly notional volume over the entire Q1 2026. In total, the predictive market recorded 192 million transactions in March. An absolute record!
So it's a fact: the appetite of crypto traders for these platforms is real.
Faced with them, Coinbase is trying 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 five-year expirations and quadrupled its market share in U.S. derivatives. But real crypto perpetuals (those used by traders on Binance) remained out of reach of US users until this month of April.
CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said last month that the agency plans to regulate crypto perps within its regulatory framework. This green signal freed the 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 are no longer content to arbitrate the future. They trade it. Their simultaneous launches in crypto perps are reshaping the digital derivatives landscape in the United States. For crypto investors, a new era of regulated liquidity is dawning. Keep a close eye on it!
Maximize your Tremplin.io experience with our 'Read to Earn' program! For every article you read, earn points and access exclusive rewards. Sign up now and start earning benefits.
