A headline breaks. Someone posts the odds. Someone else immediately starts talking about the trade. Polymarket now wants a place in both conversations.

The platform launched Perps on September 3, extending its business into perpetual futures. These are contracts for taking a position on price movements without a fixed expiration date. The cultural shift is easy to spot: an app associated with predicting an event is moving further into trading what happens around it.

One balance, a bigger ambition

In Polymarket’s September 9 interview with Perps lead Xtine Fang, the company describes markets covering stocks, indices, crypto and commodities, using the same balance as its prediction platform. Maximum leverage varies by asset, reaching 20x on major crypto markets.

The important word is “same.” Moving between products is a point where people pause, reconsider or leave. Bring them together and the platform can turn one reason to open the app into several reasons to stay.

That is a substantial change in the relationship with the user. Following the probability of an event and carrying a leveraged position through a volatile afternoon demand different kinds of attention. A familiar interface can make the transition feel smaller than it really is.

The slider does not make the risk smaller

Leverage increases exposure relative to the collateral backing a position. That amplifies losses as well as gains. Polymarket’s margin documentation says liquidation begins when equity falls below the maintenance requirement. A position can be closed by the system before the trader’s longer-term view has a chance to play out.

Costs also need to be understood at the position level. The published fee schedule calculates trading fees on the trade’s full notional value, with tiers based on recent volume. The amount posted as collateral is not the number used to calculate that fee.

These mechanics matter more than a dramatic profit screenshot. A leaderboard tells you who is ahead at a moment in time; it does not show that a strategy will keep working or that another person can reproduce it.

The platform story to watch

Our interest is in how Polymarket connects an audience built around events with a broader financial product. The company says cross-selling between its products is a goal; its interview does not establish that users have already adopted that behavior at scale.

The international platform also restricts access: its publication states that U.S. persons and people in certain other jurisdictions cannot use it to trade. Read the applicable product terms rather than assuming every Polymarket-branded service has identical availability.

The launch makes the ambition clear. The next question is whether the product can make its differences in risk as legible as its shared balance.

Image: Polymarket. Official Perps promotional graphic.