US dominates Polymarket political bets despite geoblock: Report

New data from Allium suggest that US users are bypassing geoblocks to bet on markets offered on Polymarket’s global platform.

US-based users are the biggest political bettors on Polymarket, despite the crypto-based prediction market’s efforts to restrict US citizens from using the decentralized platform, according to new research. 

Blockchain research firm Allium estimated in a report published on Thursday that US-based users are the single biggest political market of any country by contracts traded and wallet count on Polymarket — not to be confused with Polymarket US, which is a US-regulated platform that launched in December with a narrower set of markets.

“Blocking access did not end US participation; it made the US the largest single political market on Polymarket by volume,” the report said. “The demand is still there, now offshore and beyond US oversight.”

The data suggests that Polymarket’s efforts to restrict US users from its global platform have not entirely worked, adding to an expanding list of headaches for the company in the fast-growing predictions market sector, which is under legal and political scrutiny.

Polymarket was forced to cut off US users' access to its global platform as part of a $1.4 million settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2022.

Allium based its figures on the 6% of wallets it tagged with a country, meaning the data should be seen as directional only. Source: Allium

Allium found that US users are more interested in foreign conflict-related markets than the rest of the platform’s users, with five of the US cohort’s top 12 markets by notional volume relating to the Iran war.

It also shows a lesser interest in election-related markets, which is a category of prediction markets allowed on Kalshi and Polymarket US. 

“US money pours into foreign wars, lately Iran, and largely skips the elections the global crowd trades,” said Allium. 

Cointelegraph contacted Polymarket for comment. 

Allium’s figures align with another study published in June by Rutgers University statistician Harry Crane, who estimated that 30% of trading volume on Polymarket comes from the US.