Perpetuals.com: how simulated trades feed its AI trading ambitions
A trading app can collect useful market predictions without asking its users to fund the trades. That is the idea behind UpsideOnly, the consumer platform at the centre of Perpetuals.com’s move from blockchain development into financial technology.
Users take virtual positions; Perpetuals analyses their activity and uses its own money for selected real-market trades. Eligible participants can receive a share of profits. Understanding that separation makes the business much easier to follow: the simulated account, the AI system and the company’s trading capital serve different purposes.
From Earlyworks to Perpetuals.com
The listed company previously operated as Earlyworks, a Japanese blockchain business. It completed its acquisition of Perpetual Markets Ltd on 20 January 2026, adopted the Perpetuals.com name and changed its Nasdaq ticker to PDC. The transaction brought a different commercial direction to the existing public company.
That transition is still visible in its finances. Revenue for the year ended 30 April 2026 came primarily from legacy software and system development services. UpsideOnly launched in May, after that financial year had closed, so those annual sales do not measure a full year of the consumer platform’s performance.
What happens inside UpsideOnly
The platform lets users express views on equities, commodities, currencies and cryptocurrencies through virtual positions. BayesShield, the company’s AI system, looks for trading signals in that activity. Perpetuals then decides how to deploy its own capital, with profit sharing available to eligible users when the resulting trades make money.
The company reported more than 500,000 users across approximately 170 countries in its September annual-results announcement. That is a measure of reported reach; it does not establish how many people use the service regularly or receive payouts.
Perpetuals describes the model as risk-free for users because their simulated trades do not expose them to market losses. Its disclosures qualify that description: operational risks remain. The arrangement also does not mean every prediction earns a reward.
The AI results need the right context
BayesShield is designed to find consistently successful participants and generate signals when qualifying traders independently take similar positions at roughly the same time. Its premise is that useful information can emerge from patterns in human decisions.
In August 2026, Perpetuals reported a 380% hypothetical, non-compounded return from a 375-day historical test. The same test had a maximum drawdown of 27%, meaning the simulated strategy experienced a substantial decline from a previous peak along the way.
Those figures describe a backtest, not returns earned by customers or an established live trading record. The company said its live trading period was still too short to draw conclusions about future performance. Execution costs, available liquidity and changing market conditions can all affect what happens when a strategy moves from historical data to real orders.
Kronos X supplies the exchange machinery
Alongside the consumer app, Perpetuals sells exchange infrastructure through Kronos X. Its components handle order matching, margin and risk management, market surveillance, reporting and market data. APIs connect that machinery to a customer’s interface and back-office systems.
This is the less visible part of the business: software that banks, brokers and fintech companies can use to build trading services. Perpetuals markets it as a managed platform designed for round-the-clock operation, with infrastructure hosted in Frankfurt. The commercial ambition is to earn fees tied to trading activity.
Ownership matters here. PM MTF Ltd, the affiliated operator of the Perpetual Markets trading venue, is distinct from the Perpetual Markets Ltd business acquired in January. Perpetuals discloses an option to acquire PM MTF; exercising it would require change-of-control approval from Cyprus regulator CySEC. The relationship should not be read as an already completed acquisition of that operator.
A new business model still has to pay its way
In its fiscal 2026 results announcement, Perpetuals reported revenue of ¥256.3 million, approximately US$1.6 million, and a net loss of roughly ¥733.3 million, or US$4.7 million. Its annual report also disclosed substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.
Perpetuals now has two routes to building revenue: supplying trading infrastructure and using crowd-derived signals in its own trading. Growth in the app’s audience can expand the pool of predictions, but the financial outcome depends on whether those signals produce sustainable trading profits and whether infrastructure customers generate paying activity. That is the gap between attracting participants and building a lasting business.
