Perpetuals.com, the Nasdaq-listed firm run by former FTX Europe boss Patrick Gruhn, says its new UpsideOnly platform drew more than 30,000 active users and $4.5 billion in trading volume in its first two weeks. There is a catch worth stating up front: none of that money was real.

Users do not trade their own capital. They forecast moves in assets like gold, Bitcoin and major stocks using virtual money, and the company turns those predictions into trades with its own funds, keeping half of any profit for users and covering any losses itself.

In written responses to questions from FinanceMagnates.com, Perpetuals defended both that structure and the way it sells the product. "Perpetuals generates revenue from its own proprietary trading, not from users," Jason Alderman, the company’s Chief Communications Officer (CMO), commented.

The product sits in a fast-growing slice of retail finance where brokers and prop firms use prediction features to reach younger traders, while prediction markets become a Gen Z entry point to trading.

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Those are simulated figures, showing what users chose to bet on rather than where real money moved.

A Game in the Terms, Prop Trading in the Pitch

Perpetuals sells UpsideOnly as an AI-powered prop trading platform. Its own terms call it an online prediction analytics game and trading simulation platform.

Asked why the two descriptions differ, the company said they cover separate parts of the same operation. "The two descriptions refer to different aspects of the same model," said Alderman.

The game label, Alderman added, reflects the user experience and the platform's legal structure, while the prop trading label describes how the company uses player signals to trade its own money. Users, he continued, do not buy real stocks, derivatives or any other instruments.

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The CMO said the platform is open to users in the EU and the US, and that it works as a prediction game rather than a brokerage or managed account.

The compliance language in the announcement, citing MiFID II, MiCA, DORA and EMIR, applies to an affiliate, PM MTF Ltd., not to UpsideOnly itself, which is run by a Perpetuals subsidiary, USO Labs.

European regulators have started folding similar products into old rulebooks, with ESMA ESMA European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) is an independent Authority of the European Union that is responsible for the safety, security, and stability of the European Unions’ financial system and is charged with protecting the public. The European supervisory authority for the securities sector, ESMA was established on 1 January 2011. The European Securities and Markets Authority is an independent EU authority based in Paris. It aims to contribute to the effectiveness and stability of t European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) is an independent Authority of the European Union that is responsible for the safety, security, and stability of the European Unions’ financial system and is charged with protecting the public. The European supervisory authority for the securities sector, ESMA was established on 1 January 2011. The European Securities and Markets Authority is an independent EU authority based in Paris. It aims to contribute to the effectiveness and stability of t Read this Term last year ruling that perpetual futures fall under EU CFD rules, a sign of how the prop trading world is being pulled into existing oversight.

What Happens If the Bets Go Wrong

The pitch rests on a promise that users cannot lose.

"If a trade loses money, the loss is absorbed by the company rather than the user," Alderman commented for FinanceMagnates.com. Users can place a refundable deposit to lift their payout eligibility, capped at $500 and, he added, "held separately in U.S. Treasury Bills by an external fiduciary," not used for trading.

FinanceMagnates.com asked how the trading book is funded to back that promise, given Perpetuals' roughly $20 million market value and its run of losses.

The company declined to give figures, saying it does "not comment on specific capital allocation, treasury management, or exposure limits..." beyond public disclosures, and that it is "well-positioned to deliver on our mission and to grow."

Perpetuals also said the $20 million valuation and the loss history belong to Earlyworks, the listed shell it absorbed, and "do not reflect the value and financial forecast of Perpetuals.com Ltd."

It did not offer alternative figures for the current business.

Prop Firms and Prediction Markets Are Already Colliding

UpsideOnly arrives as the line between prop trading and prediction markets blurs.

In the past few days, New York startup PropMarket took the prop model into prediction markets, and Match-Trade supplied the technology for a prediction-markets push by prop-firm-backed Trade Tech Solutions.

Others moved sooner. For Traders launched a prediction-markets prop product in beta, billed as a first for a prop firm, routing events from Kalshi and other venues into a challenge format.

Maven Trading, a CFD-focused prop firm, added its own prediction-markets product, and Robinhood set an earlier marker with its Prediction Markets Hub in March 2025.

There is also news from this week about the New York startup PropMarket that also is putting the prop trading model into the prediction markets.

UpsideOnly does not fit that mold. It runs no event contracts in the Kalshi or Polymarket style and charges users nothing to take a position.

It treats their forecasts as fuel for the company's own book, then shares the upside, a setup with few parallels among the prop firms remaking themselves through 2026.

A Tokenized Commodities Deal With a Volatile Partner

Alongside the user numbers, Perpetuals said it signed a Mutual Services Agreement with Datavault AI to list tokenized real-world commodity assets, trading on the EU-licensed PM MTF venue that runs on Perpetuals technology.

The deal starts with the MTB Copper project and could widen to gold, copper, geothermal energy, US critical minerals and European iron and nickel resources, with combined targeted issuance above $328 million, the company said.

Datavault AI, also Nasdaq-listed, is a thinly valued partner. Its shares recently traded around $0.42 for a market value near $476 million, and the stock is down about 70% over six months even after the company reported revenue growth of 1,274% over the trailing twelve months through the first quarter of 2026.

The push connects Perpetuals to a theme drawing larger names, with the NYSE turning to tokenization to extend trading beyond market hours and tokenized stocks jumping thirtyfold as platforms test 24/7 equity trading.

The FTX Europe Backdrop

The venture carries history. Gruhn ran FTX Europe, the arm Sam Bankman-Fried's exchange bought in 2021 for $323 million, which collapsed alongside the wider group in 2022.

After the bankruptcy, the FTX estate sued to claw back that money. The dispute ended in February 2024, when Gruhn and co-founder Robin Matzke bought the European assets back for $32.7 million with what Alderman called "a full release of any other known or unknown claims," leaving no clawback outstanding against them.

FinanceMagnates.com earlier reported the estate's move to recover the $300 million-plus paid to FTX Europe's leadership.

The regulated FTX Europe entity later passed to Backpack, after CySEC cleared the rebranded Trek Labs Europe on compliance.

What Perpetuals carried forward is the technology and a trading dataset that Alderman said spans more than 22 billion retail trades, anonymized and tracing through FTX to the firm's earlier Digital Assets DA AG business.

"We do not disclose proprietary details regarding the composition of the dataset," he said.

Perpetuals reached the Nasdaq by converting Earlyworks, a Japanese-listed shell, into Perpetuals.com Ltd in February.

Gruhn has leaned into the early trading mix as proof of changing retail behavior, saying users who favored gold over Bitcoin are "behaving like macro traders."

Whether that holds, and whether a no-loss prediction game can keep feeding a profitable trading book, will take more than two weeks of simulated volume to judge.