CFTC drops Polymarket probe as company rebuilds U.S. presence

The Justice Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission ended their investigations into Polymarket in July 2025 without charges, clearing the way for the prediction-market platform to rebuild a U.S. presence through QCX LLC, which the CFTC later designated as a contract market under the name Polymarket US on July 9, 2025.

The agency had already taken Polymarket on January 3, 2022, when it settled charges against Blockratize, Inc., the platform’s operator, for running an unregistered facility for event-based binary options. The settlement carried a $1.4 million civil penalty, ordered the firm to wind down noncompliant markets, and required it to stop violating the Commodity Exchange Act. In its order, the CFTC said Polymarket had offered more than 900 separate event markets since its inception, including markets tied to Ethereum prices, U.S. COVID-19 case counts and the 2020 presidential election. It also required the company to block U.S. users from the platform.

Federal law enforcement agents raided CEO Shayne Coplan’s downtown New York home in SoHo, Manhattan, on November 13, 2024, and seized his phone and electronics. The raid came shortly after Polymarket had correctly forecast Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory ahead of traditional polls, and the company later handled more than $3.6 billion in presidential-election bets. Last year, the CFTC also overruled its enforcement attorneys and halted a separate inquiry into whether the Trump-tied company was illegally serving U.S. customers.

In April 2026, the CFTC sued Wisconsin and other states over attempts to regulate prediction markets under gambling laws. On June 26, 2026, senators called for federal regulators to investigate Polymarket’s advertising.