Polymarket perpetual futures launch on international site, U.S. users blocked
Polymarket Perps has launched perpetual futures trading on a separate international site, with U.S. users blocked and routed to polymarket.us. Vice President of Engineering devjoshstevens announced the product on September 20. The offering has also been listed on Binance Wallet Perpetuals, enabling leveraged positions on Polymarket tokenized exposure. The product expands Polymarket beyond binary event contracts into leveraged derivatives, but remains inaccessible to American traders who remain on the CFTC-registered exchange.
Polymarket's two-platform split hardens into a permanent geographic divide. U.S. traders stay on the regulated exchange with no leverage; international users get perpetual futures on a separate site with up to 20x leverage and no cross-margin between pools. That gap creates arbitrage opportunities that concentrated global bets can exploit against the U.S. book.
Kalshi is racing to match product breadth under full CFTC registration, filing for single-stock and oil perpetuals within days of Polymarket's earlier launch. CME already lost one lawsuit against Kalshi's bitcoin perps; a second front on crude oil or equity index perpetuals would test whether courts treat prediction-market leverage as commodity innovation or evasion. The exchange that first bridges both pools captures a structural edge neither owns today.