Polymarket is making a serious play for Japan, one of the world’s most lucrative and notoriously difficult-to-crack financial markets. The prediction market giant has appointed a representative in the country and begun laying the groundwork for a lobbying campaign aimed at securing government approval by 2030.
Bloomberg reported that Mike Eidlin is leading Polymarket’s Japan efforts. The platform currently blocks Japan-based users from placing trades due to what it describes as “regulatory requirements,” which is a polite way of saying Japan’s criminal gambling laws make prediction markets a legal minefield.
Why Japan, and why now
Look, Polymarket isn’t picking Japan on a whim. The country experienced a 120% year-on-year increase in on-chain value received through June 2025, the fastest growth rate in the entire Asia-Pacific region. That kind of digital asset adoption trajectory in a country with deep pockets is the sort of thing that gets boardrooms excited.
Polymarket views Japan as a “large untapped business opportunity,” according to people familiar with the company’s plans. In English: Japan has a massive, wealthy, financially sophisticated population that currently has zero legal access to prediction market trading. That’s a gap Polymarket wants to fill.
