Polymarket May Be Coming Back to Legal U.S. Market

• Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market, may be on its way back into the legal U.S. event contract space
• The company today announced the acquisition of CFTC-licensed derivatives-exchange QCX and QC Clearing LLC
• Polymarket agreed to not serve U.S. customers stemming from 2022 deal with CFTC

Polymarket may be on its way back to the legal U.S. derivates exchange market following the acquisition of a CFTC-licensed company.

The company, which brands itself as the world’s largest prediction market, today announced the acquisition of QCX and QC Clearing LLC, a CFTC-licensed derivatives-exchange, for $112 million.

This could be a way for Polymarket to move back into the legal U.S. market, and the lucrative sports event and prediction contract space, after it agreed to stop serving U.S. customers after a 2022 agreement with the CFTC.

Getting Back Into U.S. Market

Shayne Coplan, Founder and CEO of Polymarket, noted the acquisition is a key moment into once again offering U.S. customers access to its platform.

“Polymarket is the largest prediction market globally and has become synonymous with understanding the probability of current events,” Coplan said in a release. “Demand is greater than ever — not just in user growth and trading volume, but in how mainstream audiences are turning to Polymarket to separate signal from noise, bias, and speculation. Now, with the acquisition of QCEX, we are laying the foundation to bring Polymarket home — re-entering the U.S. as a fully regulated and compliant platform that will allow Americans to trade their opinions.”

While companies like Robinhood and Kalshi have profited off of the popular derivatives exchange market over the last several years, Polymarket has been banned from servicing U.S. customers since 2022.

Polymarket recently also announced a deal with social media platform X to become the company’s official prediction market partner.

As part of the partnership, Polymarket predictions will be combined with X data to provide live insights, incorporating real-time annotations to explain market moves directly from Grok and relevant X posts.

Polymarket Unavailable for U.S. Customers

Polymarket has not been available to U.S. customers since 2022, when the CFTC fined the predictions market company $1.4 million for operating an illegal, unregistered or non-designated facility for event-based binary options online trading contracts, or “event markets.”

In addition to the fine, the CFTC issued a cease-and-desist to Polymarket for violating the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations.

The CFTC declared Polymarket had been operating an illegal, unregistered facility offering event market contracts since 2020.