Four years after paying a $1.4 million settlement to the CFTC and agreeing to block American users, Polymarket’s offshore platform is still processing billions in trades from the very country it’s supposed to exclude.
In April 2026, Polymarket International, the company’s offshore arm, recorded $9 billion in trading volume. Its regulated US counterpart? Just $1.3 billion. That’s roughly a 7-to-1 ratio in favor of the platform Americans aren’t supposed to be using.
The geo-fence that couldn’t
Polymarket settled with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2022 for $1.4 million after regulators determined the platform was operating as an unregistered exchange. Part of the deal required Polymarket to geo-block US users from its prediction markets.
The offshore platform, linked primarily to jurisdictions like Panama, has become the real center of gravity for the company’s business. VPNs and workarounds have allowed US-based traders to access higher-volume markets covering everything from elections to geopolitics to sports outcomes. Polymarket has reportedly initiated measures to crack down on VPN usage and enforce stricter identity verification, but the volume numbers tell a different story about how effective those measures have been.
