In brief
- Polymarket can now return to the U.S. after the CFTC said it won’t pursue certain enforcement actions against QCX, CEO Shayne Coplan said Wednesday.
- Polymarket acquired QCX, a licensed exchange already regulated by the CFTC, for $112 million in July.
- Polymarket was banned from the U.S. in 2022, and has been looking for a way back into the U.S. market for some time.
Polymarket has received a green light from the CFTC to resume operations in the United States, the company’s CEO said Wednesday, years after the blockchain-based prediction market was fined and pushed offshore for an alleged failure to comply with existing regulations.
The CFTC announced in a statement today that it would not pursue enforcement actions against QCX, a regulated derivatives exchange that Polymarket acquired in July, exempting it from certain recordkeeping and data reporting requirements.
The no-action letter effectively cleared Polymarket to operate in the United States under QCX’s license, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan said within minutes of the announcement.
“Polymarket has been given the green light to go live in the USA by the CFTC,” Coplan said on X. “Credit to the commission and staff for their impressive work. This process has been accomplished in record timing.”
Decrypt reached out to Coplan to ask how soon the company plans to relaunch U.S. operations but did not immediately receive a response.
Polymarket, which is based in New York, reached a settlement with the CFTC to block U.S. customers in 2022, after the regulator alleged the company had failed to register as a designated contract market.
Though the Polymarket site has remained blacklisted to U.S.-based internet users since then, the platform has surged in popularity over the past two years largely by focusing on U.S. politics and culture.
Polymarket’s wager on the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, for example, accumulated nearly $3.7 billion in trading volume, and correctly predicted President Donald Trump’s victory by a healthy margin—unlike most polls, which had the race as a dead heat.
Since Trump’s re-election, Polymarket has been angling to return to the U.S. market, amidst greatly loosened financial regulations.
The company’s $112 million acquisition of QCX was one key piece of that strategy. Just last week, Donald Trump Jr joined Polymarket’s advisory board and announced an investment in the company, in a deal that was reportedly on the hold for months until Polymarket had a clear path to reentering the American market.
It remains unclear, however, how far-reaching today’s no-action letter from the CFTC will be on Polymarket’s operations. The letter specified only that the regulator will not initiate enforcement actions against QCX or its clearinghouse, QC Clearing, for certain reporting and recordkeeping failures. It did not address Polymarket itself, though the company is likely to issue certain U.S. markets via QCX.
The CFTC did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment on the no-action letter’s effect on Polymarket broadly.
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