Polymarket, Kalshi smash crypto volume records as traders migrate

Polymarket and Kalshi recorded $176 million and $108 million, respectively, in daily crypto-category volume on June 2, according to data shared by analytics firm Artemis. 

Both figures are all-time highs for the respective prediction market platforms, and they come on the same day crypto markets saw their heaviest liquidation event since February.

Did the crypto liquidation day fuel the surge?

The two prediction market platforms posted their highest single-day crypto volumes during a session that saw over $1.76 billion in leveraged positions wiped out across crypto markets. 

Bitcoin fell below $67,000 for the first time since April 2, and the total crypto market capitalization shed around $137 billion.

Kalshi crossed the $100 million mark for the first time in its crypto category with its $108 million, topping a previous daily record set on March 16. Polymarket’s $176 million session was also a new peak, per Artemis’ tweet.

The sector was running hot before the spike

Prediction markets generally have been having a relatively good year, as the sector posted $28.4 billion in total volume during May, a new monthly record that extended a streak of four consecutive months with rising volumes.

Kalshi accounted for $17.3 billion of May’s total, which is around 61% of all prediction market volume and close to double Polymarket’s $8.4 billion, according to the Artemis data. 

Kalshi has pulled away from Polymarket since February across multiple categories. In crypto-specific contracts, Kalshi held a 60.45% share for the week ending May 17, which is a reversal from Polymarket’s 91.11% dominance at the start of the year.

The gap has gotten wider at the platform level, with Kalshi crossing $4 billion in total weekly notional volume for the first time in the week ending May 17, and this is a 7,424% increase from $54.5 million a year earlier. Polymarket processed $2 billion the same week.

Kalshi adds perpetual futures on the same day

Kalshi announced on X on June 3 that Bitcoin perpetual futures are now live for trading on its platform, calling it “the first American perpetual future.” 

Perpetual futures are a mainstay of offshore crypto exchanges like Binance and Bybit, but have not been available on a CFTC-regulated venue until now. The product adds continuous exposure alongside Kalshi’s existing binary event contracts.

Polymarket still commands liquidity depth

Polymarket trails Kalshi on volume share but holds a larger pool of locked capital. DefiLlama data shows Polymarket with $535.58 million in total value locked, $488.35 million in open interest, and over 108,000 active addresses in the past 24 hours. Cumulative trading volume on the platform has reached $36.1 billion across its Polygon-based and off-chain order books.

Polymarket’s revenue has also picked up. The platform generated $20.94 million in revenue over the past 30 days on $3.89 billion in trading volume during the same period, according to DefiLlama.

New entrants eye the space

The prediction market sector is also seeing new players enter the market, and one of them is Hyperliquid’s HIP-4. Cryptopolitan has previously reported that Hyperliquid launched HIP-4 outcome contracts on its mainnet on May 2, allowing developers to deploy prediction markets on top of an exchange already clearing hundreds of billions in monthly perpetual futures volume. 

HIP-4 has reached roughly 1% of Polymarket’s volumes so far, with about 500 active traders and 1 million trades processed, according to Dune Analytics data. Hyperliquid’s approach uses its own validators for market resolution rather than third-party oracles, and the platform plans to let third-party builders launch their own outcome pairs.

The prediction market category now holds $595.91 million in total value locked across all platforms, according to DefiLlama.