A U.S. ban on Polymarket was supposed to keep Americans off the platform. Instead, wallets linked to the United States traded $571 million in notional value across Polymarket’s political markets in the past 12 months — more than any other country, including Hong Kong’s $422 million. The ban didn’t stop participation. It just pushed it offshore, out of sight of U.S. regulators.
Summary
Key takeaways
- U.S.-linked wallets traded $571 million on Polymarket political markets in 12 months, topping all other countries despite a regulatory ban.
- Polymarket blocks users by IP address, but a VPN combined with a crypto wallet is enough to bypass the restriction entirely.
- Onchain analysis firm Allium can only attribute about 6% of Polymarket’s political-market wallets to a specific country, so all figures are directional.
- American bettors favored geopolitics (46% of volume) over elections (16%), the reverse of the platform-wide average.
- U.S. wallets won 81.9% of resolved bets, nearly identical to 80.3% for all other users — no edge, just different market preferences.
How the ban fails on crypto rails
Polymarket cannot legally serve American users, so it blocks them by IP address. That would work fine for a traditional financial platform — deny the account, block the bank transfer, stop the payment. But Polymarket runs on crypto rails. There is no account to deny, no identity check to clear, and no payment processor a bank can block. Users transact directly with stablecoins and a self-custodied wallet. A VPN masks the IP address, and the barrier disappears.
This is the core finding from onchain analysis firm Allium, which tracked wallet behavior rather than IP addresses. Because Allium works from onchain data patterns, the VPN that fools Polymarket’s gatekeeper doesn’t fool the data — which is precisely how $571 million in American trading showed up anyway.
There’s an important caveat. Allium can only tie roughly 6% of Polymarket’s political-market wallets to a specific country. The firm notes the figures should be read as directional, not exact. But even as an estimate, the scale of U.S. participation suggests the ban functions more as a legal disclaimer than an effective barrier.
What Americans actually bet on
Perhaps the more revealing finding is not how much Americans traded, but what they traded on — and how that differs sharply from the rest of the platform.
Across Polymarket as a whole, elections account for 32% of political trading volume and geopolitics make up 36%. For U.S.-linked wallets, those proportions flip dramatically. Geopolitical markets drew 46% of U.S. notional volume, while elections attracted just 16%. American users trade foreign wars at roughly three times the rate they trade domestic elections — the opposite of what most observers might expect.
The Iran war dominated U.S. interest. Of the twelve largest markets for U.S. wallets, five were bets related to an Iran conflict. At one point, American bettors placed 53% of their volume on a U.S. invasion of Iran, while the rest of the platform sat at 26% — a striking divergence that speaks to the type of geopolitical risk Americans were pricing in.
The single largest U.S. market wasn’t about war at all. A novelty bet on whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would wear a suit attracted $20.8 million in trading — the biggest individual market linked to U.S. wallets. It’s an unusual data point, but it illustrates the breadth of markets Polymarket offers that regulated U.S. venues simply don’t carry.
The compliance gap between onshore and offshore
That contrast with regulated U.S. venues is where the regulatory stakes become clearest. Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket’s own compliant U.S. arm focus primarily on economic data releases, interest rate decisions, and elections — the categories that pass legal scrutiny. The offshore version of Polymarket lists regime change, ceasefires, and war scenarios. Those are the markets American bettors were most drawn to, and they are exactly the markets U.S. rules restrict.
The result is a demand migration problem regulators face across crypto broadly: restrict access onshore, and you don’t eliminate the demand — you redirect it somewhere harder to monitor. The political betting market that regulators sought to contain didn’t shrink. It relocated offshore, remained fully visible on the blockchain, and grew large enough that U.S. wallets became the single biggest national participant.
No betting edge, but bolder positions
One thing the data does not show is superior performance by American bettors. On resolved markets, U.S. wallets backed the winning outcome 81.9% of the time. The figure for all other users was 80.3% — statistically negligible. Americans took bolder positions, but their accuracy was no better than the rest of the platform. The Iran war bets are the clearest example: higher conviction, same outcome quality.
What the data does show is that blocking access did not end U.S. participation. It moved the largest single national political market offshore, beyond U.S. oversight, while demand tilted precisely toward the categories that domestic rules prohibit. For regulators, that’s the harder problem — not whether Americans are gambling on prediction markets, but that the most politically sensitive markets are now the ones furthest from any regulatory line of sight.
FAQ
How can Americans trade on Polymarket despite the U.S. ban?
Polymarket blocks U.S. users by IP address, but since the platform operates on crypto rails with no centralized account or payment processor, Americans can bypass the restriction using a VPN to mask their location and an existing crypto wallet to transact with stablecoins.
What types of political markets do Americans prefer on Polymarket?
American wallets directed 46% of their volume toward geopolitical markets — such as bets on foreign wars — and only 16% toward elections. That is the reverse of the platform-wide average, where elections account for 32% of volume and geopolitics 36%.
Does blocking access to Polymarket stop U.S. political betting?
No. According to Allium’s onchain analysis, blocking access primarily moves U.S. political betting offshore, where it remains visible on the blockchain but falls outside U.S. regulatory oversight. The ban did not reduce participation; it redirected it.
Do Americans gain better betting outcomes on Polymarket compared to users from other countries?
No. U.S. wallets won approximately 81.9% of resolved bets, compared to 80.3% for all other users — a difference too small to indicate any meaningful edge, despite Americans taking more concentrated positions on certain markets.
Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.
