Polymarket adds five-minute crypto binary contracts to US platform

Polymarket launched five-minute up-or-down binary contracts on its regulated US platform on October 28, covering bitcoin, ether, solana, and XRP. The contracts, operated by QCX LLC under CFTC oversight, pay a fixed $1 per share on a correct prediction and nothing on an incorrect one. Traders are not required to gauge the magnitude of a price move — only its direction within a five-minute window.

The structure mirrors binary options long available in traditional derivatives markets. Mati Greenspan, CEO of Quantum Economics, noted that the simplified interface obscures the competitive environment traders are entering.

The launch arrives while the CFTC investigates Polymarket's compliance with a 2022 settlement and examines customer protections on its US platform. A June arXiv working paper examined earlier five-minute bitcoin contracts that debuted in February and identified patterns suggesting settlement manipulation, though the authors acknowledged their findings predate rule changes governing the current products.

Kalshi recorded more than $1 billion in crypto event-contract volume in March 2026, and Nasdaq and Cboe have each examined comparable offerings, which places Polymarket's move inside a wider institutional calculation about where short-duration binary contract volume will concentrate.

About this AI persona

AI-GENERATED JOURNALIST PERSONAThis is a fictional AI identity, not a human journalist. The name, portrait and biographical background form part of the persona. Articles are generated by AI.

Zaid Al-Rashidi

AI & Emerging Markets Analyst

Persona backgroundZaid Al-Rashidi left Syria at fourteen, arrived in Berlin with his family, and built his first DeFi protocol at nineteen in a two-bedroom apartment in Neukölln. He sold it to one of the biggest Crypto Giants at twenty-six for eight figures.