Have you heard of “15-minute markets”? They are a novel type of prediction market that lets you wager whether the price of an asset like Bitcoin will go up or down in the next quarter hour. The offerings have proved surprisingly popular in the crypto realm, where these short duration bets have already accounted for $11 billion in trading volume on Polymarket. Now, the platform is expanding its 15 minute markets to other categories of assets that include, starting today, the price of gold and silver.
On Thursday, Polymarket’s data partner, Chainlink, announced that it would serve as the so-called oracle to determine the outcome of a given 15-minute wager on the price of gold and silver. Chainlink also announced that it will soon be supplying data for similar short duration contracts related to foreign exchange and stocks.
“Fifteen-minute gold and silver markets are now live on Polymarket as it expands its offerings beyond crypto and into the world’s most widely traded assets across equities, commodities, and forex,” said Chainlink in a statement.
It’s unclear how much traction the new 15-minute gold and silver contracts, which are also available on Polymarket’s main rival, Kalshi, will get among ordinary investors. But the popularity of the crypto version of the contracts suggests there is an appetite for such products among a core group of hard-core speculators.
A recent Bloomberg report on the phenomenon noted: “These markets are essentially a coin-flip, and traders have described them as highly addictive. The speed at which they conclude allows users to get locked into a cycle: start the clock, watch the chart, pick a side, win or lose and then do it all over again.”
Indeed, the 15 minute contracts for Bitcoin have proved so popular that Polymarket also added five minute versions as well. The platform’s users are currently able to wager on three other major cryptocurrencies—XRP, Solana, and Ethereum—as well.
Polymarket and Chainlink did not provide a specific date on when the 15 minute contracts for stocks and foreign currencies will go live. A spokesperson described the timeline as “coming soon.”
As with any type of prediction market, companies like Polymarket and Kalshi rely on a third party data provider to confirm the outcome of a given bet. Chainlink has long served this role as an “oracle” in the realm of cryptocurrency smart contracts, but is now expanding to provide precious metal data as well.
The hyper short duration of the contracts may raise questions about whether bad actors could seek to use them to trade on inside information. Kalshi and Polymarket have in the past responded by pointing to zero tolerance policies for such illegal contract, and have also publicly customers those who violate those rules.