Finally, Polymarket joins forces with Kalshi to move this cake
By Hu Hu, ChainCatcher
Derivatives markets are back to spoilers。
Yesterday, Polymarket, the market giant, announced that it was about to launch a permanent futures deal, which would allow users to trade at least 10 times the price of assets, including real world assets such as gold and silver, shares of companies such as Inweida and Coinbase, and digital assets such as bitcoin。
A few days ago, The Information reported that another market head project, Kalshi, was planning to support the renewal of futures on its platform, which would enable United States clients to trade derivatives contracts without maturity and to use so-called financing interest rates for all-weather transactions。
Prognosing the expansion of durable contract products in the short term, the markets are expanding their product and income boundaries, supporting rising financing and valuation, and responding to potential threats from some cross-border competitors。
I. High overlap of user images
The image of the user predicting the market and the lasting contract is highly homogenous: both attract high-risk preferences, speculative investors that are extremely sensitive to macro-incidents, and all have a high risk that user investment will be zero in a short time。
In fact, large volumes of transactions are projected by the market itself, which is derived directly from forecasts of the price of encrypted currency. When users predict on Polymarket that “bitcoin will be able to break $900,000 at the end of the month”, the bottom motive is not fundamentally different from how much money is available on the contract market. Through integrated and sustainable contracts, market platforms can be expected to fully exploit the commercial space of inventory users。
In addition, projections of the market as a true aggregation of user emotions and views have become an important reference point for many users to conduct encrypted currency transactions. It is also becoming the normal course of dealing for this group of users, from looking at forecasts to entering into contractual transactions。
For the platform, this is not only an increase in functionality, but also the completion of the closed circle: While observing macro events (e.g. the Fed's interest rate, geo-conflict) and participating in predictions, users can use leverage directly to hedge or magnify gains on associated assets (e.g. gold, US stock), thereby minimizing loss of flow。
At the same time, the addition of this function can bring the predictive market's “low frequency, big event driven” model up to the “high frequency, round-the-clock” dimension of the derivatives market, completely locking the attention of users。
II. Attraction of trillion-dollar-class markets
The direct driving force that attracts predictive market platforms into battle is the huge volume of capital in the derivatives market。
Although the market is projected to experience a boom since 2025 — according to Dune data, it is projected that the total amount traded each month since this year has exceeded $20 billion and the average daily turnover has exceeded $700 million。
By contrast, however, the market for sustainable contracts is at an entirely different level. The daily turnover of top-level de-centre durable contracts (e.g. Hyperliquid, dYdX) is usually at billions of dollars, while that of the Centralized Exchange (CEX) is at hundreds of billions of dollars。
This potential business outlook cannot be rejected for Pollymarket and Kalshi, which are pursuing high valuations. Against the background of a forecast of a possible fall in the market due to the cyclical nature of events (e.g. after the elections), a “high frequency, fresh demand, long-lasting” financial product such as a sustainable contract will be a central pillar underpinning the continued rise in its valuation。
Moreover, Polymarket and Kalshi's actions are not blind tests of water, but have solid endorsements of compliance。
Kalshi, the designated contracting market regulated by the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), has the natural advantage of providing futures and options trading within a compliance framework. This means that it can provide a “long-lasting contract” for compliance with United States diasporas and institutional investors within a regulated framework. Polymark US was also designated by CFTC as DCM in July 2025。
III. Trends in trade scene expansion
To some extent, the two prognosis markets are also hitting the derivative giant Hyperliquid。
In February this year, Hyperliquid made it clear on X that it was planned to support result trading, a feature that would allow users to create tools for forecasting markets and similar options directly on their platforms. As the leader of the ongoing contract on the chain, Hyperliquid tried to cover more trading scenarios through integration prediction。
Today, Polymarket and Kalshi are inversely entering into a permanent contract, essentially in response to this threat: When an opponent tries to enter your border, the most direct defence is to enter the core of the other side。
More macro-levelly, this shift points to a clearer industry trend — all platforms are fighting for “trading rings”。
Over the past few years, more and more exchanges have begun to integrate to predict market functions in the hope that the user's “information transaction demand” will remain within their own system; and now, the forecast market is going to reverse the integration contract and try to cover the user's “price transaction demand”。
Whether it is a centralized exchange, a decentralised derivative platform or a forecast market, it is essentially evolving in the same direction: From a single product provider to an integrated trading platform covering multiple assets, tools and scenarios。
Ultimately, the core variable behind this integration remains income and valuation. When the pressures of growth are combined with those of competition, they converge towards a variety of scenarios, such as derivatives, becoming the inevitable choice for almost all trading platforms。
