Singapore has become the latest jurisdiction in the world to issue a ban against Polymarket, a prediction market platform, which has been accused of offering illegal gambling products in the city-state.
The country’s Gambling Regulatory Authority (GRA) has ordered Internet Service Providers or ISPs to cut access to the website, which offers consumers to place money on the outcome of an event, with the platform gaining a lot of publicity around the US Presidential election in November.
Polymarket has been investigated in France, where the platform opted to exit the market over concerns by the National Gaming Authority which suspected the company of offering illegal gambling as well.
Polymarket had acted preemptively in that case restricting access of French customers to its markets, however. In the United States, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are looking into the company, after media reported that Polymarket had accepted $3.2bn in the US Presidential election.
In Singapore, however, Polymarket’s exit has been much quieter and accompanied by less fanfare. Users established that the platform had been blocked upon trying to access it. Instead of connecting to the prediction market, users trying to connect to Polymarket were welcomed by a message that read that they had attempted to log into an illegal gambling website:
"You have attempted to access an illegal gambling site hosted by an unlicensed gambling service provider. Singapore Pools is the only licensed online gambling operator in Singapore."
The message also reminded consumers that they may be liable for a fine of up to $10,000 as well as up to 6 months of jail time, or even both. At the time of writing, the ISP block seemed to be effective and working with all major providers in the country.
However, some users were able to still connect to Polymarket’s website through Singapore VPNs which, they concluded, must be using smaller ISPs who may not have blocked the website.
All in all, this is the latest pushback that Polymarket faces as a platform. The company has been facing a lot of pressure. Its boss’s apartment in New York was raided by the FBI. Despite all of this, Polymarket is said to have a user base of nearly 350,000 people as of January 2025.
Furthermore, prediction markets may live to see better days under the President-elect, Donald Trump, whose son, Donald Trump Jr. has just joined Kalshi – a rival prediction market, more or less normalizing this form of business in the United States.
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