France’s gambling regulator has ordered the country’s internet service providers to block access to Polymarket, escalating an earlier ban that failed to reduce French traffic to the crypto prediction market.
What the Regulator Ordered
According to the Reuters report, the president of the Autorité Nationale des Jeux, France’s national gambling authority, issued the order on July 16, with the regulator publishing its statement on Friday. The ANJ said Polymarket “attracts a particularly large audience” and is “promoting an illegal gambling and betting offering.”
The regulator cited two grounds: that the platform could expose users to significant gambling losses, and that some wagers offered on it could be manipulated. A spokesperson told Reuters the site would remain blocked for as long as authorities consider Polymarket non-compliant with French gambling rules.
The ANJ also took aim at the site’s visibility itself. Because Polymarket displays betting odds updated in real time, the regulator argued its continued accessibility constitutes advertising. “Advertising, by any means whatsoever, in favour of an unauthorised betting or gambling site is a criminal offence,” the ANJ said, noting fines can reach €100,000 ($114,000).
The First Ban Did Not Work
The order is not France’s first attempt. In November 2024, the ANJ moved against Polymarket following scrutiny of a French trader who placed enormous bets on the US presidential election, and financial transactions from French accounts to the platform were banned. Polymarket subsequently implemented restrictions for French IP addresses.
Those measures did not hold. The ANJ said that despite the transaction ban, visits from French internet addresses to Polymarket have been rising, reaching 578,751 last month.
That figure is the clearest justification for the escalation, and also its central problem. Cutting off payments did not stop French users from reaching the platform, which raises the question of whether cutting off the domain will fare better.
Why Blocks Struggle Against Crypto Rails
The evidence from other jurisdictions is not encouraging for regulators. Research published this month by blockchain analytics firm Allium found that US users had traded roughly $571 million in Polymarket’s political markets despite being geo-blocked from the platform.
Crucially, Allium attributed wallets to countries based on on-chain behavior rather than IP addresses, meaning VPN use did not conceal the activity. Its conclusion was that geoblocking had not eliminated US participation but had instead shifted it outside domestic regulatory oversight entirely.
The mechanics that make this possible are the platform’s crypto rails. Users deposit USDC or other tokens directly from a self-custodied wallet, without a bank account or traditional onboarding, and Polymarket converts deposits into PUSD, its dollar-pegged stablecoin. There is no payment intermediary in that chain for a national regulator to lean on.
India has already demonstrated the workaround at scale. After Indian ISPs began blocking prediction market sites, users restored access through VPNs and DNS changes, funding accounts by buying USDC on local exchanges and bridging it to Polymarket over the Polygon network. In April, India’s IT ministry wrote to VPN providers warning that users were still reaching blocked platforms—an acknowledgment that the block itself had become the thing being circumvented.
The Manipulation Cases Behind the Order
The ANJ’s second stated concern, that wagers could be manipulated, rests on a growing record.
France has direct experience. In April, the national weather agency Météo-France filed a complaint after one of its weather probes was hacked in an apparent attempt to fix bets on Polymarket weather markets—an unusually literal case of tampering with the real-world data a prediction market resolves against.
Similar allegations have surfaced in the United States. A US Army special forces master sergeant faces federal charges for allegedly trading on classified information about the January operation to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, with authorities saying he made more than $400,000. This week, the White House suspended a teleprompter operator over allegations he placed bets with a prediction market on the content of President Trump’s speeches.
None of those cases has been resolved, and the individuals involved are accused rather than convicted. But together they describe the structural vulnerability regulators keep citing: pseudonymous wallets make it difficult to identify traders acting on material non-public information, and some markets resolve against data sources that can themselves be attacked.
A Widening Wall
France joins a lengthening list. The ANJ noted that Germany, Italy, and Spain also restrict or block prediction markets. Singapore and Taiwan have ordered ISP-level blocks, with Taiwanese authorities arresting 17 people over election betting. Brazil moved against Polymarket and more than 20 similar platforms in April, and Indonesia blocked the site in May after a wager on its president’s tenure went viral.
The Crypto Times reported in May that Polymarket was restricted or banned in more than 33 jurisdictions, with enforcement accelerating sharply through 2026.
The platform is growing regardless. Reuters reported last month that Polymarket’s annualized revenue has surpassed $1 billion, and the company returned to the US market in late 2025 under an amended CFTC designation after acquiring the licensed exchange QCEX.
That combination defines the standoff. National regulators can make Polymarket harder to reach, and each successive measure demonstrates that the previous one did not work. What the French figures show is demand that has so far proved indifferent to the barriers placed in front of it.
Also Read: Is Polymarket Legal Worldwide? What You Need to Know
