Polymarket’s shutdown in Singapore increases pressure on leading prediction market

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It was lone a substance of time.

As an online prediction marketplace offering up a mode to make bets connected conscionable astir anything, Polymarket became a blistery communicative successful the 2024 predetermination arsenic users wagered much than $3.7 cardinal connected whether Donald Trump and different candidates would win.Yet questions percolated astir whether regulators would act.

Polymarket, aft all, was operating successful immoderate markets without a licence, which is par for the people successful crypto but not good with gambling watchdogs.

Now Singapore has said enough. Officials successful the Southeast Asian fiscal hub conscionable blocked Polymarket from soliciting wagers, Kyle Baird reports.

‘Illegal gambling site’

When users effort to entree the platform, they’re greeted with a announcement from the Gambling Regulatory Authority that says Polymarket is an “illegal gambling tract operated by an unlicensed gambling services operator.”The question present is whether different governments volition travel Singapore’s lead.

In the US, Polymarket drew scrutiny not agelong aft it was founded successful 2020.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission officials were acrophobic that Polymarket advertised its services connected a billboard successful New York adjacent though the tract wasn’t licenced to run successful the US.

Two years later, the institution paid a $1.4 cardinal punishment and pledged not to let US residents to entree the platform.

Then connected November 13, the FBI searched the home of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan and seized his mobile telephone and different devices.

Many successful the crypto assemblage jumped to the decision that this was immoderate signifier of “Deep State” payback for Trump’s victory. For months, the likelihood of a Trump triumph were acold much favourable than accepted polling, and Liam Kelly reported however four whales alone were skewing the odds.

Watchdogs

But authorities don’t request overmuch impetus to spell aft what they whitethorn spot arsenic rogue gambling operations. For decades, licensing and watchdogging online and brick-and-mortar casinos has been regular successful galore nations.

Given the maturation of online prediction markets,Singapore’s enactment whitethorn spur regulators elsewhere to instrumentality their ain look astatine Polymarket and its ilk.

In theory, this shouldn’t beryllium that large a woody for a institution of its scale.

All it would person to bash to assuage scrutiny is what galore different gambling operators do: registry with the authorities and get a licence.