Bayse started with a simple idea: give people a direct way to trade what they believe is going to happen. A prediction market on whether a candidate wins, whether a song hits a milestone, whether an event plays out the way you think it will. No middleman between your view and a position that reflects it.
Today, that same idea extends somewhere much bigger. Bayse, Africa’s largest prediction market and the first Nigerian prediction market to be licensed by the FSGRN, has launched Bayse Perpetuals, bringing perpetual futures trading on stocks to Nigeria for the first time. Nigerian traders can now take that same direct approach to the biggest publicly traded companies, market indices, and commodities in the world, Apple, Tesla, the Nasdaq 100, gold, and more.
Why this, and why now
Millions of Nigerians follow US markets closely. They watch Apple’s earnings, follow Tesla’s stock price, have opinions on where the Nasdaq is headed next. What they haven’t had is a straightforward way to act on any of it. Trading a US stock the traditional way means a foreign brokerage account, a dollar balance, and enough patience to get through both. For most people, that’s the whole plan stopping before it starts.
Perpetuals closes that gap. It gives you a way to act on a view about a US stock or index directly from the local currency you already have, no separate account, no currency you don’t hold. That’s the entire reason this product exists.
What you’re actually trading
You’ll see this described a few different ways, stock derivatives, perpetual futures contracts, perpetual futures, or just Perpetuals. They all mean the same thing here, so use whichever term feels natural.
If this is the first time you’re hearing any of them, here’s the plain version: a stock derivative is a contract whose value is based on the price of something else, rather than being that thing itself. With Perpetuals, you’re not buying a share of Apple the way you’d buy it on a stock exchange. You’re opening a position that tracks Apple’s price. If you’re right about which way that price moves, your position gains value. If you’re wrong, it loses value. You never hold the actual share, but the outcome follows it exactly.
This distinction matters because of what it unlocks. Owning a share only pays off one way, you need the price to go up. A derivative doesn’t care which direction you believe in. Think Apple is about to have a strong quarter? Go long, a position that gains if the price rises. Think the Nasdaq is overdue for a pullback? Go short instead, a position that gains if it falls. Either view is tradable, which is something plain stock ownership was never built to offer.
Why “perpetual futures”
Most futures contracts you’ll come across in finance have a built-in end date, a point at which the contract settles and you’re forced to either close it or renew it. That structure made sense for the earliest version of these contracts, built centuries ago for farmers locking in grain prices ahead of a harvest with a known end date. It makes a lot less sense for a trader who simply believes Tesla is undervalued and wants to hold that view for as long as it takes to play out.
Perpetual futures contracts, true to the name, don’t expire. You can open a position and hold it for a day or a month, and it stays open until you decide to close it. Your view sets the timeline, not the contract.
The part that deserves a straight answer
None of this works without leverage, and leverage deserves to be explained honestly rather than glossed over.
Leverage lets you open a position larger than the amount you put in. Put in $50, and you can hold a position sized as though you’d put in $500. If the market moves 2% in the direction you backed, that 2% is now calculated against the full $500, not your original $50, which turns a modest move into a meaningfully bigger outcome for you.
The honest part: this works exactly the same way in reverse. A 2% move against your position is scaled up just as much as a 2% move in your favour. Leverage doesn’t choose a side. It simply makes whatever happens count for more, in both directions, which is why every position on Perpetuals comes with tools to manage that risk directly, a take profit to lock in a gain automatically, and a stop loss to close a losing position before it runs further than you’re prepared for.
Where to go from here
If most of this is new to you, that’s expected, and it’s exactly why this launch comes with a full explainer series alongside it. Separate guides cover what a perpetual contract actually is in more depth, how long and short positions work, how leverage and margin fit together, and how liquidation works and how to stay well clear of it. None of it is required reading before you place a first position, but all of it is there if you want to understand the mechanics before you rely on them.
Bayse Perpetuals is live now. Stocks, indices, and commodities, funded from your local currency, open to trade in either direction, for as long as your view holds.
Trade the future. Trade Bayse Perpetuals.