New York demands $3.4B in crypto fines: Inside the fight to turn prediction apps into nonstop leverage casinos

Piyasa gündeminde öne çıkan haber: Top prediction market platforms, including Kalshi and Polymarket , are rushing to offer highly leveraged crypto derivatives at the exact moment state and federal authorities are clashing in court over whether the industry’s core products constitute illegal betting or legitimate financial instruments. Over the past year, these companies have gained national prominence by facilitating wagers on discrete, real-world occurrences, ranging from political races to macroeconomic data releases. Now, by preparing to list perpetual futures, which are complex contracts that never expire and allow traders to multiply their market exposure using borrowed funds, these platforms are blurring the line between niche forecasting hubs and full-service digital asset exchanges.

Against this backdrop, this shift drastically expands their potential customer base, but it also amplifies the legal risks associated with the platforms. Perpetuals push prediction venues toward full-time trading Historically, platforms like Kalshi operated on a cyclical, event-driven basis, with traffic and trading volume spiking around major catalysts such as a presidential debate or a championship sporting event and then plummeting once the outcome was settled. In this kind of market, a user purchased a binary “Yes” or “No” share, and the contract expired upon the event's resolution.

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Perpetual futures fundamentally alter that business model. Because these derivatives lack an expiration date, participants can maintain their market positions indefinitely, provided they meet ongoing margin requirements. The instruments frequently allow users to leverage their bets up to 50 times their initial capital, attracting aggressive speculators seeking rapid returns from minute price fluctuations.

By rolling out these derivatives, Polymarket and Kalshi are abandoning their siloed event-contract operations to compete directly with centralized exchanges and retail brokerages. The underlying strategy for both platforms is to convert occasional political bettors into daily, high-frequency traders. While Kalshi has explicitly stated its intention to enter the perpetuals arena, Polymarket’s exact roadmap remains guarded, including which specific assets it will cover and whether it will restrict access for US customers.

Why prediction markets are moving into perpetual futures Why perps, why now? The motivation to embrace this new feature comes down to basic market structure. Traditional crypto spot trading, which is the simple buying and holding of digital assets, has decelerated from the frenzied peaks of previous market cycles, logging $18.

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6 trillion in volume last year. Meanwhile, perpetual futures generated more than three times that amount. Data from CryptoQuant show that the global trading volume for crypto perpetual futures hit $61.

7 trillion last year. That volume disparity dictates corporate strategy. Platforms recognize that to maintain engagement during periods of low volatility, they must offer instruments that allow users to short the market, hedge portfolios, and employ leverage.

While prediction markets currently command significant capital, with all-time notional volume surpassing $150 billion, the episodic nature of event contracts cannot match the continuous, around-the-clock fee generation of a highly active derivatives order book. Moreover, the broader financial technology sector is experiencing a rapid collapse of operational boundaries, with centralized platforms like Robinhood , Coinbase , and Gemini all embracing event-based offerings. Mo Shaikh, co-founder of the Aptos blockchain network, noted that financial applications have historically trended toward consolidation, citing the expansions of legacy platforms like PayPal.

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