France Considering Banning Polymarket: The Big Whale

French regulator Autorite Nationale des Jeux (better known as the National Gambling Authority) is reportedly considering banning Polymarket in Europe following attention-grabbing bets from a French national on the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

National Gambling Authority Considers Banning Polymarket After U.S. Presidential Election

According to the Paris-based web3 news organization, The Big Whale, France is considering outlawing the decentralized prediction market.

🔴 Info @TheBigWhale_

La France va interdire @Polymarket, la plateforme de marchés prédictifs crypto qui a crevé l'écran lors des élections américaines

Les détails 👇https://t.co/rYPtcrcxkH

— Grégory Raymond 🐳 (@gregory_raymond) November 6, 2024

“Even if Polymarket uses cryptocurrencies in its operations, it remains a betting activity and this is not legal in France,” a source with alleged knowledge of the situation told The Big Whale.

A French national with the username “Freddi9999” has made headlines in recent weeks for betting millions of dollars on Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. The contract was resolved Wednesday, resulting in a $47.5 million payout.

The large wagers raised eyebrows on the platform, with claims of market manipulation bubbling to the surface over the validity of the poll’s results.

This continued when Fortune published an October 30 report claiming that a “significant portion of the volume” of website activity was rampant with wash trading.

“Analysts found that Polymarket activity exhibited signs of wash trading, a form of market manipulation where shares are bought and sold, often simultaneously and repeatedly, to create a false impression of volume and activity,” the report stated.

The Shayne Coplan-led company has denied all allegations against and has pledged to reassess user location as part of its response.

U.S. Lawmakers Push To Outlaw Prediction Markets

Prediction markets have caused quite a stir back in the United States, with tech billionaire and X CEO Elon Musk alleging that the platforms can be “more accurate” than traditional polling methods due to “actual money” being involved.

However, despite the markets’ successfully predicting Trump’s win over certain typical polling methods, not everyone sees it that way.

A coalition of Democratic lawmakers pushed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to ban political election betting in a letter this past August, arguing that such bets could distort voter motivations.

“Election gambling fundamentally cheapens the sanctity of our democratic process,” the group of lawmakers wrote. “Political bets change the motivations behind each vote, replacing political convictions with financial calculations. Allowing billionaires to wager extraordinary bets while simultaneously contributing to a specific candidate or party, and political insiders to bet on elections using non-public information, will further degrade public trust in the electoral process. ”