Polymarket has added five-minute crypto contracts to its US app, letting users take short-dated positions on BTC, ETH, SOL and XRP. The markets settle against CF Benchmarks prices, and any tie resolves as Up. Taker fees are charged separately from the spread.
The four markets on offer
The contracts cover the four assets by ticker: BTC, ETH, SOL and XRP. Each one runs on a five-minute clock, which puts them in a different category from the longer-dated event markets Polymarket built its name on. The settlement source is CF Benchmarks, a regulated benchmark provider whose prices are used across a range of crypto financial products.
The tie rule is the detail worth flagging. If the closing price matches the reference exactly, the contract settles as Up rather than voiding or pushing. That gives the resolution a hard edge instead of a grey zone, though it also means the house has picked a side on the rare flat outcome.
Fees sit outside the spread
Polymarket says taker fees are charged separately from the spread. In practice that means the cost of crossing the book and the platform's own cut are two distinct line items, not one blended number. For anyone used to reading a single quoted price, the distinction matters when the holding period is measured in minutes rather than days.
The fee structure also lands differently on five-minute contracts than on long-shot event bets. A position that lives for a few minutes can't absorb the same drag as one held for a month, and the separate taker fee makes that drag explicit.
Why the US app is the story
The launch is on the US app specifically. Polymarket has spent years operating under restrictions in the American market, and putting a fast-turnover product in front of US users is a different kind of move than adding another election or sports market. The contracts are simple and repetitive by design — four assets, one short window, a benchmark price at the end.
That repetition is what makes a five-minute product work. There's no research cycle, no waiting on a resolution committee. You pick a direction, you pick an asset, and the clock does the rest.
What the benchmark choice does
Using CF Benchmarks rather than an exchange-specific print gives the contracts a single reference price that doesn't depend on which venue is busiest at settlement time. For a five-minute market, that's the whole game. A settlement source that can be gamed or that diverges from venue to venue would make the product unworkable at that speed.
What the launch doesn't settle is liquidity. Polymarket hasn't said how deep these books will be, and a five-minute market lives or dies on whether there's a counterparty on the other side when the window closes. The next thing to watch is whether the four markets hold steady volume through a full trading week, or whether they thin out once the novelty fades.
