Allium data shows U.S. wallets lead Polymarket political trading despite access restrictions
Blockchain analytics firm Allium found that U.S.-linked wallets traded $571 million on Polymarket's political markets over the past year, making American users the platform's largest national trading cohort despite its ban on U.S. access. The data, reported July 3-5, suggests geoblocks and prohibitions are not preventing substantial American participation, with activity spilling into foreign-conflict markets. The findings raise questions about the effectiveness of geographic restrictions on the main platform.
The $571 million figure gives the CFTC a concrete dollar amount to cite if it treats U.S. access to the main platform as willful non-compliance rather than a leaky geoblock. For Polymarket, that reframes its federal registration of the separate U.S. exchange from a shield into potential evidence of systemic gaps on the primary site.
The platform is already defending staged-bet allegations and a Google engineer insider-trading case, and this data adds a third thread to the same question: whether its surveillance and identity controls match the scale of its markets. Any CFTC finding that U.S. volume reflects inadequate compliance would force immediate operational restructuring, likely stricter identity verification or reduced contract availability, just as competitors like Kalshi press their regulatory advantage.
The $571 million U.S. figure joins a closely related cluster already framing Polymarket's political volume as a potential CFTC compliance liability, with both stories surfacing in the same 48-hour window amid Kalshi and Polymarket's parallel fights against state-level bans and tax battles.