Since October of last year, the global crypto market has lost nearly $2 trillion in value. Much of that was driven by everybody’s favorite blockchain currency, Bitcoin, which fell from a high of over $126,000 in early October to below $63,000 in February.
Bitcoin has since clawed back some of those losses, and has been hovering around the $70,000 mark over the last month, give or take a few thousand. While the crypto free-fall seems to have paused, the extreme price swings remain. Yet in our deranged modern world of microbets and prediction markets, even volatility itself can become a financial vehicle.
Enter the five-minute crypto price prediction. Basically, prediction bettors can now wager on whether the price swings of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP will end higher or lower than they did five minutes ago.
On Polymarket’s tab for Bitcoin, a line graph crawls along like a seismograph, showing the price to beat as the total cost fluctuates by hundreds of dollars a second. In the top-right corner, a red timer counts down the seconds until the market becomes resolved, at which case the line graph freezes and the next five-minute segment opens for business.
Trading data supplied by the analytics firm Dune and flagged by Fortune shows just how popular this new format has become. Each day, the volume of money traded on five-minute markets reaches into the tens of millions, the majority of which is on Bitcoin. So far, the highest single trading day was March 4th, when gamblers wagered over $60 million combined.
That’s just Polymarket. Kalshi, the other big prediction market, offers 15-minute crypto bets for those who prefer a slower burn. While the trading activity shows a high volume of small bets worth a few cents a pop, there are definitely sharks in the water.
So when crypto gets too turbulent for your blood, just know the fun doesn’t have to end: there is, increasingly, a market for that.
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