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Polymarket Blocks French Traders Amid Gambling Inquiry

The prediction market juggernaut is under investigation in the country.

Shayne Coplan, CEO, Polymarket, speaks at Consensus 2024. (Shutterstock/CoinDesk).
Shayne Coplan, CEO, Polymarket, speaks at Consensus 2024. (Shutterstock/CoinDesk).

Polymarket blocked French traders on Friday, weeks after reports that the country's government was investigating the prediction markets juggernaut for gambling law compliance.

The ban was not reflected in Polymarket's terms of service at press time, but on Friday a reporter using a VPN attempted to access the website from a French server and ran into a digital blockade.

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Polymarket fell into the crosshairs of France's national gaming authority, the ANJ, after a French trader placed massive bets on Donald Trump to win the 2024 U.S. Presidential election.

The fresh ban was first highlighted on social media by French crypto news site The Big Whale.

Polymarket did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did the ANJ.

Danny Nelson

Danny is CoinDesk's managing editor for Data & Tokens. He formerly ran investigations for the Tufts Daily. At CoinDesk, his beats include (but are not limited to): federal policy, regulation, securities law, exchanges, the Solana ecosystem, smart money doing dumb things, dumb money doing smart things and tungsten cubes. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL tokens, as well as the LinksDAO NFT.

Danny Nelson