Polymarket is making its most ambitious international play yet. The New York-based prediction market platform is actively preparing to secure regulatory approval in Japan, targeting government authorization by 2030.
The company has appointed Mike Eidlin as its local representative in the country, a move that signals this is more than a vague aspiration pinned to a corporate slide deck. Polymarket currently blocks Japanese users from accessing its platform due to the country’s strict gambling regulations, which means the firm is essentially lobbying to unlock a market it can’t even legally touch right now.
Why Japan, and why now
Here’s the thing about Japan: it has one of the world’s most engaged speculative trading cultures, from forex to horse racing to pachinko. But prediction markets, the kind where you bet on whether a politician wins an election or whether a central bank raises rates, don’t have a legal framework there.
That hasn’t stopped Japanese users from trying to access Polymarket. The platform has identified substantial organic interest from potential users in Japan and across Asia more broadly. In other words, demand exists. The regulatory infrastructure just hasn’t caught up.
