Americans Bet $571M on Polymarket Despite Being Banned

US traders spent $571M on political bets on Polymarket, the most of any country, even though the platform is banned for them.

Americans just became the biggest spenders on a betting platform they are legally not allowed to use.

A new report reveals that US-linked users traded around $571 million on Polymarket over the past year — more than any other country in the world. This happened even though the platform is officially banned for Americans.

So what is Polymarket? It's a prediction market — a website where people bet real money on the outcome of future events, like elections or wars. If you guess correctly, you win money. Think of it like betting, but on news and politics.

Here are the key facts from the report by Allium (an *on-chain analysis firm* — a company that studies data recorded on public crypto networks):

$571 million traded by US-linked wallets in the last 12 months
That's more than Hong Kong's $422 million, the next biggest country
Americans bet more on foreign wars and world events than on US elections
US traders were no better at winning than anyone else

Why can't the ban stop them? Normally, banks and brokers act as middlemen who can block illegal activity. But Polymarket runs on crypto rails — meaning it uses digital wallets and stablecoins (cryptocurrencies designed to stay equal to $1) instead of banks. There is no bank account to freeze and no ID check to pass.

To get around the block, Americans simply use a VPN — software that hides your real location and makes it look like you are in another country. Combined with a crypto wallet, that's all it takes.

Interestingly, while a VPN fools Polymarket's location block, it does not fool the data researchers. That's because Allium identifies countries by studying how each wallet behaves on the blockchain (the public record of crypto transactions), not by location.

The bottom line: This puts US regulators in a tough spot. Americans clearly want to use these markets, so officials must decide whether to bring such betting under US law and supervision — or keep leaving it offshore and outside their control.

This is an AI-generated summary. Read the original article at: https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/07/03/americans-traded-usd571-million-on-polymarket-politic-bets-despite-u-s-ban