Polymarket Adds Five-Minute Crypto Contracts to US App

Polymarket spent years locked out of the US retail market after a 2022 CFTC settlement over unregistered binary options, geoblocking American users while rivals like Kalshi built CFTC-licensed, short-duration contracts domestically. Polymarket's re-entry came through acquiring a licensed derivatives exchange, letting it relaunch as Polymarket US. Five-minute crypto up-or-down contracts are the latest product built on that license, pricing BTC, ETH, SOL and XRP off CF Benchmarks rather than a single exchange feed.

US-based traders can now place rapid directional bets on four major tokens every five minutes directly inside a regulated app, something previously confined to offshore Polymarket or Kalshi's event contracts. Taker fees sit apart from the spread, so active traders must track two cost layers instead of one, and a tie automatically resolves Up rather than voiding the contract. That favors whoever is positioned long at expiry and adds a structural quirk bettors need to price in before entering.

A five-minute binary contract on an asset's price is functionally indistinguishable from the short-term binary options the CFTC spent the last decade restricting, even when wrapped in prediction-market language and a compliant license. Crypto Briefing's own framing, that the format 'could increase market volatility and attract speculative traders,' underscores the open question of whether this serves price discovery or simply repackages gambling-speed trading inside a regulatory wrapper that looks more permissive than it is.

Trading volume and complaint data on these five-minute markets in the weeks after launch will show whether the CFTC treats Polymarket US's structure as settled business or revisits it, much as it previously moved against short-dated binary options elsewhere. Kalshi's response, whether it matches the five-minute format or holds to longer-dated event contracts, will also indicate whether this becomes the industry standard for crypto prediction products or a narrow experiment.