New research finds US-based wallets are the largest political bettors on Polymarket despite the platform’s efforts to block US users. Blockchain research firm Allium reported that, by contracts traded and wallet count, the US is the single biggest country market on Polymarket’s global platform—not to be confused with Polymarket US, a separate, US-regulated product that launched in December with a narrower set of markets.
Allium concluded that geographic blocking has not stopped US participation: instead, it says, demand migrated offshore. The firm cautioned its numbers are directional because they are based on the roughly 6% of wallets it could tag to a country, but the signal remains clear in its analysis.
The findings add to other work pointing to substantial US activity offshore. Rutgers statistician Harry Crane estimated in a June study that about 30% of Polymarket’s trading volume comes from the US, and that between May 2025 and April 2026 US-based users may have routed between $10.6 billion and $26.7 billion through the platform. Crane used patterns such as trade times and market selection to infer likely US-origin trades.
Polymarket restricted US access to its global platform after reaching a $1.4 million settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2022. Since then the company has attempted to geoblock US IP addresses and to identify and block VPN traffic, but researchers and analysts say many US users continue to trade from abroad or via workarounds.
Allium’s analysis also shows a distinctive trading profile for US wallets on Polymarket: they are more active in foreign conflict-related markets than the platform’s average user. Five of the top 12 markets by notional volume for the US cohort related to the Iran war, while US wallets showed comparatively less interest in election markets—the category that is permitted on regulated venues such as Kalshi and Polymarket US.
Polymarket has taken additional steps to curb access by users who appear to use VPNs; reporting in May indicated the company was blocking IP addresses tied to some VPN services. Still, the two research efforts suggest enforcement has not fully prevented significant US participation.
The platform is also fully blocked in more than 34 countries, most recently Spain, which barred local access while authorities investigate whether such services require local licensing. Four other jurisdictions—Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan and Poland—are in “close only” status, allowing users to close positions but not open new ones. Certain regions are separately restricted, including Ontario in Canada and Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine, where access is blocked locally but available elsewhere in those countries.
Polymarket has faced a range of regulatory and operational challenges in recent months, including the earlier enforcement settlement and security incidents reported by the company. The persistence of US-based activity on its offshore markets highlights the limits of geoblocking and the continued demand for political and conflict-related prediction markets among US participants.
Cointelegraph contacted Polymarket for comment on the Allium findings.