In prediction markets, Polymarket just pulled off one of the most dramatic comebacks in crypto. After being fined by the CFTC a few years ago and forced to block U.S. users, it has now secured regulatory approval to operate as a supervised exchange structure in the U.S. via licensed entities and acquisitions. That means the same product that once looked unfixably toxic to regulators is now positioned to plug directly into regulated rails.
Even before U.S. approval, Polymarket was already posting roughly $1b in weekly volume sourced largely from non U.S. traffic, with markets on elections, macro events and crypto prices acting as real time sentiment gauges. Those flows happened despite users needing to navigate jurisdiction restrictions and on chain UX friction. The fact that liquidity still concentrated there, and not on dozens of copycat sites, shows a similar concentration dynamic as Solana memes. Surviving platforms absorb nearly all of the serious action.
The real unlock is institutional. Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, has committed up to $2b to Polymarket at valuations in the high single digit billions, with the explicit goal of distributing its data and integrating it into traditional financial infrastructure. With CFTC approved structures in place, large brokers like Fidelity or Schwab can theoretically offer access or use the data under clear rules instead of treating it as regulatory kryptonite. That flips prediction markets from “gray area gambling site” to “regulated derivatives style product that institutions can touch.”
In narrative terms, the last crypto product that was aggressively pushed out of America is now being escorted back in by some of the most conservative institutions in finance. Prediction markets move from being outsider casinos to becoming another data rich derivatives surface for Wall Street. The irony is hard to miss. Retail traders still chase memecoins and vapor L1s, while the most structurally important integration happening in the background is a once banned platform becoming a core piece of institutional market infrastructure.
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