How 5- and 15-minute crypto Up or Down markets resolve
The rule in one sentence
A window resolves Up if Chainlink's 60-second TWAP for the asset at the end of the window is greater than or equal to its value at the start; otherwise it resolves Down. A tie goes Up.
TWAP stands for time-weighted average price. Each value of the stream averages the asset's price over the previous 60 seconds and a new value is published every second. The value stamped at the window's first second is the price to beat that Polymarket shows on the market page.
This applies to the 5- and 15-minute Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and XRP markets since Aug 7, 2026; before that day they settled on Chainlink's last price. Hourly markets did not change: they settle on the Binance 1-hour candle, close against open.
How far from the price to beat windows close
| market | windows | median distance | within 1 bp | realized vol (median, yearly) | 1 standard deviation over the window |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin 5m | 21,807 | 4.35 bps | 15.0% | 26.2% | 8.1 bps |
| Bitcoin 15m | 7,266 | 7.49 bps | 9.0% | 26.6% | 14.2 bps |
| Ethereum 5m | 21,807 | 5.73 bps | 11.0% | 34.6% | 10.7 bps |
| Ethereum 15m | 7,267 | 9.89 bps | 6.4% | 35.4% | 18.9 bps |
| Solana 5m | 21,808 | 7.91 bps | 7.5% | 45.1% | 13.9 bps |
| Solana 15m | 7,273 | 13.37 bps | 4.2% | 46.0% | 24.6 bps |
| XRP 5m | 21,808 | 8.37 bps | 7.5% | 48.4% | 14.9 bps |
| XRP 15m | 7,268 | 14.55 bps | 4.1% | 48.8% | 26.1 bps |
The median Bitcoin 5-minute window closed 4.35 bps from its price to beat, and 15.0% of them closed within 1 basis point. At 15 minutes the median distance for Bitcoin was 7.49 bps. XRP 15-minute windows closed furthest away (14.55 bps), Bitcoin 5-minute closest.
Measured against each market's own volatility, the median close lies 0.52 to 0.57 standard deviations from the price to beat on all eight markets: a typical window ends close to its line, which is why the last minute matters so much.
The two halves of the period rank the markets in the same order within each duration, at different levels: Bitcoin 5-minute medians were 4.07 bps (Aug 7 – Sep 13) and 4.66 bps (Sep 14 – Oct 21), XRP 15-minute 13.31 bps and 15.58 bps, while the median volatility at the open of 5-minute windows (all four assets) went from 34.6% to 39.6% a year.
Up or Down: how balanced
Up won 49.83% of 87,511 5-minute windows and 50.26% of 29,163 15-minute ones. By half: 49.84% then 49.83% at 5 minutes, 50.23% then 50.30% at 15. Ties go Up, yet neither share is distinguishable from 50%: both lie within two standard errors of it (1.0 and 0.9).
Why the last minute decides
Because the closing value is itself an average of the final 60 seconds, the minute before the close is when the result is written: at T−60 s, the average that decides the window has just started to form, and every second fixes one sixtieth of it.
One minute before the close the order book's favourite went on to win 91.7% of 5-minute windows and 95.2% of 15-minute ones. What happens to prices in that last stretch is the subject of our guide on the final minute.
How it was measured
Windows: the 116,674 resolved 5- and 15-minute windows, Aug 7 – Oct 21, 2026 (76 nights). Outcomes are Polymarket's official resolutions.
Distance: |close ÷ price to beat − 1|, where both are the values our collector recorded from Polymarket's TWAP stream; the median and the share under 1 basis point are taken over windows where both values were recorded.
Volatility: realized volatility at the window's open, from 1-minute candles, annualized on a 24/7/365 year; the median over the period. Variability: every ratio also on the two halves of the period (38 and 38 nights).
Limits
In 1.6% of 5-minute windows and 1.0% of 15-minute ones, our recorded close sits on the other side of the price to beat from Polymarket's official result. These are near-ties (median distance 0.49 bps and 0.74 bps), which is why every figure here uses the official result and never our own recomputation.
From Aug 7 to Aug 17, 2026 our collector approximated the price to beat from an older Polymarket price series; from Aug 18 it reads the TWAP stream directly. The distances for those 11 nights are less precise.
Hourly markets are outside this guide: their rule is a Binance candle, and the close we store for them is not that candle's close.
Related
Data analytics on Polymarket crypto markets · not financial advice · 18+. Figures from our own records of every window; outcomes are Polymarket's official resolutions.