Polymarket blocks French users, bets still go through VPN

Polymarket may be banning users from French IPs, displaying a message for a restricted jurisdiction. The betting market added France to the ban list unofficially, after the outsized gains of trader Fredi9999. 

French users of Polymarket received a notification adding the country to the restricted list, along with the USA. It appears in the past couple of weeks the betting platform limited access to French IP addresses, following the large-scale bets of Fredi9999, uncovered as a French national. Fredi9999 and Theo4 were last active a week ago, when they redeemed the prize on one of their remaining US election bets. 

The ban is not yet reflected in the Polymarket Terms of Service, which only restricts users from the USA. Yet users are already reporting the blocking message, making the entire site only available for VPN users. 

https://x.com/Arthurws14/status/1859951705850511434

France is not really one of the biggest markets for Polymarket. Despite the ban, most users still come in from the USA. The UK and Germany, as well as Ukraine, provide more active traffic compared to France. Canada is also one of the main sources of user inflows. All countries are also crypto-friendly and have been a hub for general crypto activity. 

The site also bumped its monthly visits to 29.08M, up 168% month-on-month. The activity still reflects the most active month in October, and has not revealed the slowdown after the US elections. 

Crypto users are no strangers to bypassing regional bans, in case Polymarket still holds worthwhile betting pairs. The US Presidential elections were the peak of Polymarket volumes, and since then the platform lost 80% of its trading activity.

Polymarket still the target after election tampering allegations

The bets on the US Presidential election, in their activity and scale, drew mainstream attention to the platform. The presence of large-scale bets from whales raised questions of potential tampering with public opinion.

The high profile of Polymarket eventually led to a raid against the platform’s founder and CEO, Shayne Coplan. Soon after the raid in New York, the site started displaying a ban message for French users. 

The ban on the side of Polymarket arrives a few weeks after France opened an investigation of the platform. The French gaming authority set out to explore if the betting site broke any national laws on gambling and gaming. 

Polymarkets bets diminish, but new accounts reach a record

The outflow of whales keen on Trump’s victory meant Polymarket remained with around 4100M in trading volumes, from close to $500M in the pre-election season. 

This time around, the platform relies on user growth to compensate for the outflow of whales. For the months ended October 1 and November 1, Polymarket added upward of 300K new wallets. 

Daily active traders also remained at a relatively high baseline, reflecting the new account inflows. November will show if Polymarket will retain user interest enough. The platform has already sent out a message of an eventual airdrop based on usage, potentially raising activity with small bets. Airdrops may boost some activity metrics, but can also lead to low-quality traffic and the usage of multiple wallets. Polymarket does not ban bets from multiple wallets and accounts, and whales have been using this factor to disguise their buying. 

Other accounts may be trading between themselves to spoof volume, in case the airdrop relies on criteria of activity. The Polymarket leaderboard also included similarly named wallets, potentially pointing to Sybill attempts to gain a higher airdrop share. 

The smaller betting markets are also more volatile, with traders treating the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ tokens as short-term bets. They are often betting on the token’s direction, rather than the final resolution of the market. For that reason, odds can shift dramatically in minutes for some markets, as conditions change. 

The activity and user level still happens with much lower trading volumes, as some users may only look for airdrop farming. Polymarket also has no betting pairs with billions in volumes, after closing its top political markets. Instead, sports betting carries the biggest pair, with $459M in volumes. Top pairs as of November are all linked to sports events, while bets on the price of Bitcoin are also accelerating. 

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