Americans are moving billions of dollars on Polymarket, a crypto prediction market that is officially off-limits to them.
Researchers have published the first quantitative estimate of US activity on the platform, and the number reaches into the billions. Polymarket operates offshore and lets users bet cryptocurrency on political and world events. The company barred American users under regulatory pressure but apparently set a bar that many US traders had little trouble clearing.
Prediction markets occupy awkward legal ground in the United States - historically treated closer to gambling than to financial instruments - which is why platforms like Polymarket block US users in the first place. A nominal block that billions of dollars flow around anyway functions mainly as legal cover: it lets the platform claim it tried, while doing little to stop determined traders. The gap between a banned platform and an inaccessible one is familiar territory in crypto.
If billions in apparent violations can be estimated from the outside, regulators can see them too.