Polymarket plans to return to the U.S., founder says

Online election betting platform Polymarket plans to bring its prediction markets back to customers in the United States.

“I want to give a lot of credit to the people who fought the battle to go and legalize political prediction markets in America,” Polymarket founder and CEO Shayne Coplan told Andrew Ross Sorkin on “Squawk Box,” in his first live TV interview. “Now we are in the position to be aggressive around expansion.”

Polymarket’s betting platforms are currently only available to customers outside of the United States. In 2022, it halted U.S. operations and paid a $1.4 million penalty to settle charges with the CFTC that it had failed to register with the commission. 

In October, the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit lifted a freeze on competitor Kalshi’s election contracts that was put on by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. In the ruling Judge Patricia Millett wrote, “a showing of irreparable harm is a necessary prerequisite for a stay.”  

Soon after Kalshi was given the green light, Interactive Brokers and Robinhood launched their own products.

“This is going to be a larger market in my view than the equities market maybe in 15 years or so,” Interactive Brokers founder and chairman Thomas Peterffy said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” Wednesday.

“It is basically a global marketplace–the questions are equally relevant for people wherever they live around the world.”

The great thing about these markets is people have money on the line,” Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev told Sorkin in an interview from the company’s “Hood Summit,” more than a week before the company officially launched its election contracts.

“You can trust that they care much more about the result and those results should be much more reliable in a sense than simple polling.”

These betting platforms, where President Elect Donald Trump’s victory was wagered on with millions of dollars, also stand to benefit from a changing of the guard in Washington.

Elon Musk, who spent time and money on the campaign trail for Trump, has posted on X praising Polymarket, calling it “more accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line.” At 8:24 p.m. ET on Election Day, Musk wrote “the prophecy has been fulfilled!” 

Election contracts for the 2024 presidential race on prediction market sites ultimately proved to be an accurate indicator of Trump winning the election. 

As the polls closed Tuesday evening, prediction markets for the presidential race, including Polymarket, Kalshi, ForecastEx, and Robinhood swung higher in Trump’s favor.

Ultimately, trading volume on Polymarket for the presidential race reached nearly $3.7 billion, according to the platform’s tracker.

“On Polymarket it looked like a done deal, and if you were just watching TV, you would think it’s neck and neck,” said Coplan, who is 26 and created Polymarket when he was only 21 years old.

“This is a complete shift in the Overton window,” he said, referring to a theory about about the range of policies the public is willing to accept. An inflection point in news and politics.