Perpetuals, the Nasdaq-listed company led by former FTX Europe chief Patrick Gruhn, claims its UpsideOnly platform attracted over 30,000 users and processed 4.5 billion dollars in notional volume during its first fortnight of operation. The platform operates on a hybrid model where users make predictions on assets including gold, Bitcoin and equities using virtual currency, while Perpetuals executes actual trades with proprietary capital based on these forecasts, sharing half the profits with users but absorbing all losses itself.
The company markets UpsideOnly as an AI-powered proprietary trading platform, though its terms of service describe it as an online prediction game and trading simulation. Perpetuals maintains these labels address different aspects of the same operation, with the gaming designation reflecting user experience and legal structure while the prop trading description captures how user signals inform the firm’s own trading activity. The platform operates through USO Labs, a Perpetuals subsidiary, and is available in the European Union and United States without functioning as a brokerage or managed account service.
The regulatory positioning appears deliberate, with compliance references to MiFID II, MiCA, DORA and EMIR applying to an affiliated entity rather than UpsideOnly directly. This structure emerges as European authorities increasingly scrutinize similar offerings, following ESMA’s 2024 decision to classify perpetual futures under existing CFD regulations.
FXnCO Insight
Brokers watching this space should anticipate regulators examining whether prediction-based models that inform real trading constitute regulated investment services regardless of their consumer-facing branding.
Source: Finance Magnates