France’s national gaming authority has ordered internet providers to block Polymarket, which it classifies as an illegal gambling offering. The order landed on July 16, after two years of warnings that went nowhere. The core issue is the absence of identity checks, stake limits and safeguards for vulnerable players. In the background sits a criminal probe into weather markets suspected of being manipulated.
Key Takeaways
- The ANJ ordered French ISPs to block Polymarket on July 16
- Grounds: no KYC, no stake limits, no player protection tools
- Nine European regulators now target the platform valued near $20B
The ANJ Cuts Access After Two Years of Warnings
The procedure was anything but improvised. The French regulator issued a first warning back in November 2024, then hardened its stance in February 2026 by reclassifying prediction markets as a form of gambling. The July 16 blocking order is the endpoint of a two-year escalation.
The substance of the complaint is regulatory. In the ANJ’s view, Polymarket offers addictive mechanics comparable to regulated betting, but without any of the safeguards imposed on licensed operators. No identity verification, no stake ceiling, no self-exclusion tool for fragile players.
The homepage display of live odds was also held against the platform, treated as unauthorized gambling promotion. The fine threshold for advertising illegal gaming sites reaches 100,000 euros, a figure that weighs mostly on intermediaries tempted to relay the offer.
The block arrives despite a financial transaction ban already in place since November 2024. In practice, some users were bypassing the measure through VPN, which pushed the regulator to target site access directly. The question of gaming the rules is not new, and Cryptonomic has already shown how some traders exploited Polymarket’s system to take contrarian positions.
Traffic explains the urgency on the French side. In June 2026, the platform logged 578,751 visits from 205,057 unique visitors in France. Numbers that, for the ANJ, turn a de facto tolerance into a public policy problem.
Hacked Weather Sensors and a Paris Criminal Probe
Beyond gaming law, a criminal thread weighs on the case. The Paris prosecutor opened a cybercrime investigation on May 4, 2026, handed to the anti-cybercrime office. The focus of the probe strikes at the heart of a prediction market’s promise, the reliability of the information that settles the bets.
The suspicions center on weather markets. Some positions reportedly showed odd anomalies, possibly tied to hacked meteorological sensors. If the hypothesis holds, it shows that a compromised oracle skews the whole market built on its data.
The point is technical but central for the entire sector. A prediction market is only worth the source that settles yes against no. Tampering with that source means rigging the outcome upstream, without ever touching the protocol itself. It is an attack on the data, not on the code.
The ANJ had also flagged, as early as 2024, the influence of a French trader whose positions weighed heavily on certain markets. The pile-up of these signals (one actor’s weight, opaque oracles, missing KYC) fed the conviction that the platform escaped any serious oversight.
This approach fits an already firm French line. Emmanuel Macron had pushed for tighter crypto regulation, a framing Cryptonomic detailed when the government tied crypto to the fight against illicit financing. The Polymarket block extends that doctrine onto the betting field.
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Nine EU Regulators Against a $20B Model
France is not acting alone. Nine European regulators now coordinate their action, and several countries have already restricted access to the platform, including Italy, Germany, Belgium, Poland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, Portugal and Romania. In total, Polymarket is targeted in more than thirty jurisdictions.
The contrast with the United States is striking. Across the Atlantic, NYSE parent ICE invested 2.6 billion dollars in the platform, valued near 20 billion dollars and supervised by the CFTC. The same product is therefore treated as a legitimate financial asset on one side of the Atlantic and as illegal gambling on the other.
This regulatory rift outlines the real stake of the coming months. A blockchain-based prediction market ignores borders, but its access, advertising and legality remain national. Europe picks closure, the United States picks oversight, and the platform ends up torn between two opposing visions.
For the European user, the immediate effect is concrete. Direct access closes, VPN workarounds expose them to a murky legal framework, and intermediaries that relay the offer face the fine. The bet becomes riskier off the platform than on it.
Over the medium term, the fight will play out on the very definition of a prediction market. As long as Europe files it under gambling and the United States under derivatives, no platform can operate calmly on both sides. The heavily documented French case will serve as a reference for neighboring regulators still hesitating, much like the licensing deadline the AMF imposed on crypto firms.
Follow the story on Cryptonomic.
