New Study Finds 30% of Polymarket’s Offshore Trading Volume Originates From Banned U.S. Users

A groundbreaking new analysis quantifies for the first time the massive unregulated U.S. user base accessing the crypto-native prediction market, despite a years-long federal ban on the platform for American residents.

Per research led by Rutgers University statistician Harry Crane, a staggering 30% of all trading volume on the main offshore Polymarket platform comes from users based in the United States — a remarkable share, given that no U.S. residents are legally permitted to access the crypto-powered platform. The analysis estimates U.S. users funneled between $10.6 billion and $26.7 billion in total trade value through Polymarket over the 12-month window spanning May 2025 to the end of April 2026.

Crane, who also serves on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) Innovation Advisory Committee that advises federal regulators on tech-related market risks, tracked platform activity by mapping apparent U.S.-associated trades across offshore prediction market ecosystems over the study period. He found that many of Polymarket’s highest-traffic event markets are U.S.-centric, covering everything from domestic elections to major North American sporting events. U.S. user participation was especially high on the platform’s sports trading vertical, where the study estimates Americans make up roughly half of all total activity.

“We have long known that some U.S. users are active on the platform, but no one has ever been able to measure the scale — whether it’s a tiny handful of participants, or a meaningful, material share of total volume,” Crane noted.

The study was commissioned and funded by the Coalition for Prediction Markets, a trade lobbying group representing major industry players including Kalshi, Coinbase, and Crypto.com, though Crane retained full independent editorial control over all findings. Notably, Polymarket itself is not a member of the coalition.

Regulatory Context For Polymarket’s Split Operations

Polymarket is currently one of the world’s largest prediction market platforms, letting users trade on the outcome of nearly any future event, from NBA Finals results to 5-minute Bitcoin price swings to potential military actions overseas. It has struck public partnerships with U.S.-based media outlets including Substack and Dow Jones, as well as major U.S. sports bodies like Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League.

Its core crypto-native offshore platform, however, has been formally banned for U.S. users since 2022, when federal regulators ruled it was operating as an unregistered derivatives trading venue. The firm did launch a separate, U.S.-licensed mobile prediction market product called Polymarket US in December 2025. Data from Pew Research shows Polymarket US hit roughly $1.6 billion in total trading volume in April 2026, while the unregulated main offshore platform topped $9 billion that same month, making it by far the far larger, more popular marketplace.

U.S. users looking to bypass the geographic block commonly use virtual private networks to mask their location and access the offshore site, a practice explicitly prohibited under Polymarket’s terms of service. No public granular geo-traffic data for the platform exists, making it historically impossible to accurately measure how many U.S. users are accessing the banned site — until Crane’s analysis.

Methodology Validated As Standard For Finance Research

With no way to directly verify user location data, Crane built his estimation model around distinct, observable behavioral differences between U.S. and international traders: specifically, the time of day trades are placed (aligned to U.S. time zones) and consistent preference for U.S.-focused event markets that see far lower engagement from global users.

While the resulting volume range is intentionally imprecise, it is widely seen as the most robust public snapshot of clandestine U.S. participation on the platform to date.

“It’s not a perfect measurement, but it delivers a reasonable, credible estimate of what share of total offshore volume can be attributed to U.S.-based traders,” said Charles Martineau, associate finance professor at University of Toronto Scarborough, who has previously published research on Polymarket trading patterns. “Using these kinds of indirect behavioral proxies is completely standard and widely accepted across peer-reviewed finance research.”

Polymarket declined to comment on the study when contacted.

Uncertain Regulatory Enforcement Path Ahead

The CFTC typically does not hold direct oversight authority over offshore prediction market platforms, but agency chair Michael Selig told WIRED last month that he is prepared to deploy extraterritorial jurisdiction to pursue bad actors on a case-by-case basis. It remains unclear if the regulator intends to target ordinary U.S. users who only use VPNs to skirt the access ban and do not engage in any additional illegal activity. The CFTC did not respond to requests for further comment for this report.

The risks of unregulated U.S. trading on the platform already made national headlines in April 2026, when the U.S. Department of Justice charged a active-duty special forces soldier for allegedly using classified intelligence about the planned capture of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro to net roughly $400,000 in illicit profits from Polymarket trades.

The study’s final projection notes that if Polymarket’s offshore platform retains its current dominant market share, total annual U.S. user trading volume on the site could surge to as much as $133 billion by 2030.