Rapid markets settle every five minutes
Most prediction markets run on the pace of the thing they track: an election resolves when the votes are counted, a tournament when the final is played. Rapid markets run on a timer instead. A round opens, trades for five minutes, and settles against the price at the close. Then the next one opens.
How a round works
The current series asks a single question — will Bitcoin be higher or lower at the end of the round than at its start. Two outcomes, Up and Down, priced the same way as any other market on the platform: a share settles at 100 cents if it is right and zero if it is not.
The round has a visible countdown, a live order book, and a candle chart of the window you are trading. When the clock runs out the round locks, the closing price is read, and positions settle in USDT against your balance. Settlement is immediate — there is no waiting period between the outcome being known and the funds landing.
What the short clock changes
Five minutes is not long enough for most of what moves a forecast. There is no time for a story to develop or for a position to be rescued by a later turn in the news. What you are pricing is the next few minutes of order flow.
Three things follow from that.
Odds sit near the middle, and that is correct. A coin-flip question priced near 50 is not a market that has failed to make up its mind. Over a five-minute window the honest answer usually is close to even, and a price far from the middle is a claim that something specific is happening right now.
Liquidity concentrates late. Early in a round the book is thin and quotes move easily. The closer the clock gets to zero, the more participants have an opinion worth acting on. Entering early means better prices and more uncertainty; entering late means the opposite.
Position size matters more than usual. A round you can lose entirely every five minutes compounds mistakes quickly. The same stake that is unremarkable on a market resolving in March is a different proposition twelve times an hour.
Reading the chart
The chart scrolls through the round's history rather than resetting at each open, so the window you are trading sits in the context of the ones before it. That is the point: a single five-minute candle says very little, and the sequence says considerably more about whether the current move is unusual.
The order book is collapsed by default to keep the price and the countdown in view. Open it when you want to see where the depth actually is before sizing an order — on a short round, walking the book costs you more than it would elsewhere, because there is no time to wait for a better fill.
A word of caution
Fast settlement is the appeal and the hazard. A market that resolves every five minutes invites the kind of trading where the pace sets the decisions rather than the other way round. Our risk warning is worth reading before you start, and the deposit limits you set for yourself are worth deciding on while the clock is not running.