We’re here today to discuss the available Bitcoin markets at Polymarket, which are plentiful. The various options are divided into multiple categories, typically related to how Bitcoin prices will change over a given period of time.
We’ll also be looking at the other types of prediction markets on offer, explaining in detail how this type of trading works, and sharing some examples we found on the site. We also have some news for you regarding Polymarket’s recent overhaul, how it will affect your experience, and the opportunities it will open up once it’s fully implemented.
Prediction markets are a specific type of trading where you can predict the outcome of real world events and buy contracts. Every event contract has a value between $0.01 and $0.99. The payout for a correct prediction is $1, and zero for an incorrect one. Note that Polymarket describes its event contracts as ‘polymarkets’ but for the sake of clarity, we’ll stick to event contracts.
Below are the prediction market categories currently offered by Polymarket:
Polymarket only enables this style of trading on its platform; when you purchase event contracts, you are trading against other users, not the brand. All of the contracts on the site are binary, meaning that they only have two outcomes. Many are defined as a question, with a Yes or No answer, while others have Over/Under, Up/Down, or similar options.
For each you’ll see two percentages assigned, which total 100%. Each represents the probability of the event happening, based on the opinion of all users who have purchased a contract.
A trending event contract asks the question “Claude 5 released by 31 May, 2026?” The current probabilities show 9% Yes, 91% No. Depending on your opinion, you can ‘Buy’ a Yes contract for $0.09, or a No contract for $0.91.
Each contract has an end date and time, which is defined within the ‘Rules’ which are found below the real time graph. Once the official outcome is confirmed, the Polymarket payout per winning contract is $1, less fees.
There is a huge amount of features available for every event contract at Polymarket. While some are simply ‘nice to have’ others are vital for making informed trades, and monitoring live contracts.
Real-time graph – switch between individual Yes and No graphs, hover over any part of the graph to see the SOP at that exact moment, define your preferred timescale (from 1 hour to 1 month, or All) or view as percentages only
Market movement – review the last five changes caused by contracts being bought and sold
Fees applicable – View the percentage you will pay for each winning contract
Rules – Vital reading for all event contracts
Market Context – You have the option to generate an AI overview of the contact proposed
Resolution source – The official source Polymarket uses to determine the outcome of an event
User activity – See what other users are buying or selling, and their current holding in $
User chat – Chat with other Polymarket users, useful for gaining insights
Polymarket is a legitimate site, which is regulated as a Designated Contract Market exchange by the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission). This status means that Polymarket is currently available to users in all 50 US states, provided they are at least 18 years old.
However, it is worth remembering that prediction markets are still a relatively new concept. As such, they are still under close scrutiny and may potentially need to be regulated at state level at some point in the future.
Although we discussed cryptocurrency prediction markets in general during our main Polymarket review we’ll be focusing specifically on Bitcoin event contracts in this guide. You’ll find all of them by clicking on the ‘Crypto’ tab on the top menu.
The page you’ll land on shows every cryptocurrency market as default, but you have several ways to refine what you see. On the left menu, the first part shows the available contract type, or timeframe. The second part lists the crypto options, and by clicking on Bitcoin, you’ll be able to view all of the live contracts.
The menu immediately above the contracts allows you to refine further by:
It would be fair to say that the 5 minute and 15 minute Bitcoin markets are exceptionally volatile, and are not for the faint-hearted or uninformed trader. They also take a lot of attention to keep on top of, so if you are new to this type of trading, you are probably best going for longer term options.
In the table below we’ve given some examples of the Bitcoin event contracts we found. We also noticed that Polymarket offers Pre-market and ETFs under the crypto category, but there were no Bitcoin markets for those while we were compiling this guide.
| Bitcoin event contracts | Examples | Outcomes |
|---|---|---|
| 5 minute | Bitcoin Up or Down 5m | Up/Down |
| 15 minute | Bitcoin Up or Down 15m | Up/Down |
| 1 hour | Bitcoin above ____ on (date and time) | Yes/No |
| 4 hours | Bitcoin Up or Down 4h | Up/Down |
| Daily | What price will Bitcoin hit on (date) | Above/Below |
| Weekly | Bitcoin price on (date) | Above/Below |
| Monthly | What will the Bitcoin implied probability index hit in (month) | Above/Below |
| Yearly | Will China unban Bitcoin by 2027 | Yes/No |
There isn’t just one event contract per question. To maintain liquidity, users (aka ‘Market makers’) can place Limit Orders which state they are willing to Buy a specified number of event contracts at a certain price. This type of order can be cancelled if nobody accepts the opposite side, but once other traders get involved they must run until closing.
Looking at a daily prediction market for ‘Bitcoin above _____ on 4 May, 2026’ as an example.
Of the 12 contracts listed, which had the blank replaced by values from $68k up to $86k, eight of the contracts were resolved (active) and four remained unresolved (inactive) one hour before the appointed close time.
Although unrelated to Polymarket’s Bitcoin prediction markets, we came across an interesting promotion of sorts. For specific event contracts, the brand is offering 4% daily bounty payments in order to keep long-term pricing as accurate as possible.
The only options available during our review were political events, but it’s highly likely the list of eligible contracts is updated regularly. To explain how this works, we took a look at this event contract:
Xi Jinping out before 2027?
At the time of writing, the implied probabilities for the outcome of the event were Yes 8% and No 92%, and the Rules state:
“This market will resolve to “Yes” if China’s General Secretary of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping, is removed from power for any length of time between July 3, 2025, and December 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to “No”.
Our position valuation would be based on the latest median price for each outcome, multiplied by the number of contracts we had purchased. As the reward is applied on a daily basis, then a further calculation is applied.
Example: For 10,000 ‘No’ contracts at a median value of $0.56
Position value = 10,000 x 0.56 = $5,600.00
Daily reward = 5,600 x (0.04 / 365) = $0.613
The entire Polymarket exchange stack was updated on 28 April, 2026. Trading was paused for just one hour while the brand implemented the upgrade to CLOB V2. This only relates to the backend of the platform, and explaining it in detail isn’t necessary.
All you need to know is that by implementing it, Polymarket is able to provide a faster and more streamlined service to prediction market traders. However if you are technically minded, there is a useful information page about CLOB V2 in the ‘Trading’ section of the brand’s Help Center.
As well as making changes to the underlying infrastructure of its platform, Polymarket also converted all open contracts from USDC, to its new collateral trading token, pUSD (Polymarket USD).
For those interested, pUSD is a standard ERC-20 token, which is routinely used on the Polygon blockchain, to enable the use of smart contracts, and eliminate the need for certain validation processes which had previously caused trades to fail.
In terms of making withdrawals, nothing has changed pUSD is pegged to USDC at a ratio of 1:1 and you will still receive payouts in USDC in the same way. In terms of the post-upgrade Polymarket experience, traders have experienced a few interruptions since the changes were made, but usually lasting just a few minutes.
Some online sources are claiming that Polymarket airdrops will be available immediately following the brand’s platform upgrade. However, there is nothing to see so far, and Polymarket clearly states that it has no current plans to introduce any. Furthermore, the brand reminds users that any site claiming otherwise is likely to be a scam.
Plenty of impressive Polymarket features for every Bitcoin contractWe hope that we’ve accomplished our mission by clearly explaining what Polymarket is all about, the prediction markets it offers, and how event contracts work in practice. We’ve also put the spotlight on Polymarket’s Bitcoin markets which are both plentiful and available across multiple timeframes.
Overall, we were incredibly impressed by the detailed information Polymarket provides for every event contract, and also by the brand’s Help Centre, which was a huge help in answering most of our questions. We were also fortunate enough to be exploring Polymarket less than a week after its radical upgrade, and therefore able to enjoy a more streamlined trading experience. If Polymarket is a brand you’d like to try, we’ve added a link to the banners of this page to take you straight there.
While users cannot create their own event contracts currently, Polymarket actively encourages proposals for new prediction markets via X. To proceed, you will need to provide a title, declare a resolution source, and show evidence of demand for the contract you are proposing.
Polymarket fees range from 0% for Geopolitical prediction markets, and up to 1.8% for other categories. Fees are calculated individually for each event contract, and you will be able to see the relevant percentage before you buy. Note also that fees are only applied to winning contracts.
As you’ll find at most prediction market sites, promotional rewards are fairly limited. However, Polymarket has a referral program, where you can receive a percentage of each referral’s trading activity, but this isn’t available until you’ve traded $10,000 worth of contracts.
Following recent upgrades to Polymarket’s trading platform, Polymarket USD (pUSD) is the on-site collateral token the brand now uses. pUSD is pegged 1:1 to USDC, and all payouts are automatically converted to USDC.
Polymarket has six main categories of prediction markets: Sports, Politics, Culture, Cryptocurrencies, Economics, and Climate. Each is sub-divided further, making it easier to find the markets you are interested in. For example, in the Crypto category, you can choose to view Bitcoin event contracts only.
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