Polymarket is a prediction market: a place to buy and sell shares in the outcome of real events, from elections to Fed decisions to who wins the Super Bowl. Each share pays $1 if the outcome happens, so a share trading at 64¢ means the crowd puts the odds around 64%. Founded in 2020 by Shayne Coplan, it became the largest prediction market in the world on crypto rails, was pushed out of the US in 2022, and came back in December 2025 as a regulated, dollar-based app.
How it works
Every market is a question with a yes or no answer and a set of shares. Buy Yes at 64¢; if it happens, the share settles at $1 and you made 36¢. If not, it settles at $0. You can sell at any time at the going price instead of waiting. The platform doesn't take the other side; it matches you with another trader and takes a small fee on most markets.
What makes Polymarket different from a poll is that the prices are set by people risking money, continuously, on everything from a Supreme Court decision to a Taylor Swift album. That's why newsrooms quote it: in 2025 it became the exclusive prediction market partner of the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones.
Why it runs on crypto
The global version lives on the Polygon blockchain and trades in USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the dollar. That let Polymarket launch globally in 2020 without a banking relationship or a licence in every country, and it makes deposits and withdrawals a matter of moving a token rather than waiting on a bank. The cost was that US regulators saw an unregistered derivatives platform; in January 2022 the CFTC fined it $1.4 million and Polymarket agreed to keep US users out.
How it came back to the US
- July 2025: the CFTC and Justice Department closed their investigations without new charges.
- Same month: Polymarket agreed to buy QCEX, a small exchange that already held a CFTC licence, for $112 million.
- October 2025: Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, committed up to $2 billion.
- November 2025: the CFTC amended QCEX's licence for Polymarket's use.
- December 3, 2025: the Polymarket US app launched, in dollars, with full identity checks, invite-only at first.
So today "Polymarket" means two things: the global crypto site (not for US users) and the US app (not for anyone else). Same brand, different rules, different markets.
What it's good for
- Politics and world events. The deepest markets anywhere, and geopolitics markets carry no trading fee.
- Reading the news. A price moving from 30¢ to 70¢ in an hour tells you something happened before the article is written.
- Macro and crypto. Fed decisions, CPI prints, where Bitcoin closes.
For US sports, the app is newer and more restricted by state than Kalshi or Novig.
What to be careful about
- Thin markets can have wide spreads; the headline price isn't always a price you can trade.
- Resolution disputes happen on the global site, where a decentralised oracle decides; read how each market resolves.
- Markets on military or classified events have attracted insider trading, and people have been charged.
- Using a VPN to reach the global site from the US violates the terms and the reason the block exists.
Ready to try it? Outside the US, sign up on the global site through our link; in the US, use the Polymarket US app.
Sign up on Polymarket How to use Polymarket