Bitcoin bets push Kalshi and Polymarket to a record $2.7B week

Crypto-linked contracts on Kalshi and Polymarket hit a record $2.7 billion in weekly notional volume last week, with short-dated bitcoin price bets doing most of the work. Bloomberg reported the figure using Dune data, as summarised by Crypto Briefing. Crypto is now the second-biggest category on both platforms, behind sports.

What drove it

The surge came from fast products, above all Kalshi's 15-minute "up or down" bitcoin contracts. Polymarket's US arm, which only recently started offering similar short-term markets, reported roughly $92 million to $101 million of 15-minute bitcoin volume in its first full week. Kalshi as a whole had a record October: total volume across all categories reached $19.03 billion in the week of 5–11 October, according to the same report.

Our take: read the number carefully

Notional volume is the face value of contracts traded, not money deposited and not platform revenue. A contract can change hands many times before it settles, and a 15-minute market settles 96 times a day, so turnover piles up quickly. The figure also says nothing about how many people trade, how concentrated the activity is, or whether bettors expect prices to rise or fall.

What it does show is where retail attention is going. Spot trading volumes have cooled, and exchanges are chasing engagement elsewhere: Coinbase offers Kalshi-powered markets, Phantom added Kalshi to its wallet and Robinhood keeps adding bitcoin and commodity contracts. A 15-minute bitcoin contract has more in common with a short-dated option than with owning bitcoin, and it rewards speed rather than conviction.

What to watch

State challenges to sports contracts could shape how fast these platforms expand, and regulators may look harder at products this short. If you are new to the format, our guide to what prediction markets are explains how event contracts are priced and settled. Short-dated bets can go to zero in minutes; treat them as high risk.