Regulators drop 2022 claims against Polymarket

Polymarket, the crypto prediction platform booted from the U.S. over federal enforcement, is officially back, this time through a regulatory backdoor.

According to Bloomberg, the New York-based site has agreed to buy QCX, a barely-known derivatives exchange that recently got the green light from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

That $112 million acquisition gives Polymarket the one thing it was missing: legal entry into the American market it had been banned from since 2022.

The platform, run by Shayne Coplan, plans to use QCX’s regulatory approval to reopen its doors to U.S. users. That move comes just weeks after both the U.S. Justice Department and the CFTC closed investigations into the company’s operations.

One probe was civil, the other criminal. Both are now shut, with no fines or charges filed. Polymarket got official declination notices earlier this month. “Polymarket has received declination notices from the U.S. Justice Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission related to investigations into the company,” one person familiar with the matter told CNBC on July 15.

Regulators drop 2022 claims, platform returns

This legal U-turn follows a tense couple of years for Coplan and his platform. The CFTC originally went after Polymarket in early 2022 for operating an unregistered market that let people bet on events, also known as binary options, without the proper license.

Polymarket was fined $1.4 million and told to block U.S. users. But even after that settlement, regulators weren’t convinced the company had actually shut Americans out. The Justice Department and CFTC launched new investigations to see if the platform was still taking bets from the U.S. under the radar.

Things escalated last year when FBI agents raided Coplan’s apartment in New York. They seized his cellphone and other electronic devices. Still, nothing came from that either. Neither the DOJ nor the CFTC brought charges against Coplan. As of this month, the government has officially dropped the entire matter.

That timing lines up with the change happening under President Donald Trump, who has shown far less interest in continuing enforcement from the Biden years. In May, the CFTC also dropped its appeal of a court decision that allowed rival prediction platform KalshiEx to accept bets on U.S. elections. Now Polymarket joins that list of crypto firms seeing an open door instead of a courtroom.

Polymarket targets 2024’s momentum

QCX first applied for a CFTC license in 2022 but didn’t get approval to operate until July 9, just days before Polymarket inked the deal. That timing allowed the company to legally base its U.S. operations through QCX, avoiding the same compliance issues that got it fined two years ago.

The timing also couldn’t be better for Polymarket. The site exploded in visibility during the 2024 U.S. presidential election, when millions of Americans were introduced to the concept of event-based betting. Ads were plastered across New York City and at the Republican National Convention, where users could see real-time odds and place bets on whether Trump would take the White House again.

And they did. A whole lot of them. NBC reported that Polymarket handled more than $3.6 billion in wagers last year alone. That volume put the company at the top of the crypto prediction game, even while technically blocked from legally operating in the U.S.

The QCX acquisition changes all of that. For the first time since its 2022 ban, Polymarket can operate with regulatory cover. No more geo-blocking. No more offshore-only bets. It’s now a fully legal player in one of its largest markets.

Coplan hasn’t made any public statement since the declination notices, but the fact that he was never charged despite an FBI raid says a lot. The regulatory firestorm that threatened to bury the company has fizzled. Polymarket’s plan to just wait it out and then buy its way back in actually worked.

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