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PolyQuantLab covers Polymarket’s crypto Up/Down binary markets — the markets whose event_type is one of 5m · 15m · 1h · 4h · daily_up_down.

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Event types

Each market resolves Up if the underlying’s price at the resolution boundary is above the strike price; Down otherwise. Strike is the underlying price at the market open boundary (see Strike price).

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YES / NO tokens

Each market trades two tokens on the Polymarket CLOB:
  • YES — pays out 1ifthemarketresolves∗∗Up∗∗,1 if the market resolves **Up**, 0 otherwise.
  • NO — pays out 1ifthemarketresolves∗∗Down∗∗,1 if the market resolves **Down**, 0 otherwise.
yes_ask + no_ask should be ≥ 1atanypointintime.Whenitdropsbelow1 at any point in time. When it drops below 1 — even by a few cents — there’s a logical arb on the table: buy both sides, collect the deterministic payoff at resolution.

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Strike price

The strike is the underlying’s spot price at the market’s open boundary, not its close. Markets are published 12–24 hours before they open (so users can pre-trade), which means the strike isn’t defined until the open boundary passes. The API computes strike as follows:
This is the canonical strike for backtest correctness — using the publish-time price would be off by hours of drift.

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Tickers

Three crypto underlyings: Endpoints accept the ticker form (BTC), not the symbol.

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Resolution outcome

When a market resolves, Polymarket publishes a resolution_outcome string. We normalise to "Up" / "Down": A non- resolution means the market was disputed or N/A — see Resolution risk modeling.