Polymarket adds taker fees to 15-minute crypto markets to fund liquidity rebates

Polymarket has introduced trading fees on a subset of its crypto markets, a shift for the prediction market platform that has historically operated without charging users to trade.

The change applies specifically to Polymarket’s 15-minute crypto markets, which allow users to place short-term “up or down” predictions on crypto assets that resolve every 15 minutes. Currently, such markets cover bitcoin, ether, solana, and XRP, four of the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, and are designed for quick turnovers rather than longer-term forecasting.

In updated trading fee documentation, Polymarket said that most markets on the platform remain fee-free, but its 15-minute crypto markets now carry a small taker-only fee.

The platform said the fees are collected to fund a Maker Rebates Program, with proceeds redistributed daily in USDC to market makers to improve liquidity and tighten spreads. Polymarket also confirmed that deposits and withdrawals of USDC remain free of charge, though users may still incur fees from third-party onramps or intermediaries.

Specific fee amounts were not disclosed, though the documentation suggests fees may reach up to 3%. "Fees scale with trade size and vary along the probability curve. The highest fees are at 50% probability; fees decrease toward the extremes (0% and 100%)," an excerpt from the Maker Rebates Program page reads.

While Polymarket’s political and event-driven markets continue to dominate overall volume, the short-duration crypto markets have become a high-activity niche since launching in late 2025, attracting algorithmic traders, bots, and market makers seeking to arbitrage mispricings in quickly resolving contracts.

The fee change follows Polymarket’s first update to its public exchange fee module on GitHub in nearly five months, signaling a deliberate adjustment to market structure as activity in these products has grown.

Polymarket operates as a blockchain-based prediction market where users trade shares tied to the probability of future events, ranging from elections and economic data to crypto price movements. Outcomes are settled onchain, with markets designed to reflect real-time crowd sentiment through price discovery.

The update comes amid a broader expansion of prediction markets across crypto.

In recent months, Polymarket has rolled out new offerings beyond politics and crypto prices, including housing price index markets through a partnership with Parcl, while competing platforms such as Kalshi have pushed further into regulated event-based markets.

Polymarket has also found itself under growing political scrutiny. On Monday, U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres said he plans to introduce legislation this week to restrict elected officials’ use of prediction markets, following controversy over bets tied to geopolitical events like the recent capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.