Picture a trader in Brooklyn opening Polymarket on a laptop in late 2022, placing a few hundred dollars on a midterm election contract, then opening the same site on the same laptop two months later and finding a polite geo-block where the order book used to be. That trader did not move. The site did. In January 2022, Polymarket settled with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, paid a $1.4 million fine, and agreed to wind down US access to its unregistered event contracts. For roughly three years, the answer to "is Polymarket available in the US?" was a clean no, with a side order of VPN workarounds the platform's own terms of service explicitly forbade.
That answer has changed, but not in the simple way a casual reader might assume. Polymarket's route back into the US runs through a regulated derivatives exchange, a specific acquisition, and a settled set of CFTC and Department of Justice investigations. The shape of US access today is narrower than the offshore version most international users know, and the rules around it are still being written. Anyone trying to use the platform from a US address needs to understand which Polymarket they are actually using, and what that version is allowed to do.
The short answer, with the asterisk attached
Yes, Polymarket is now available to US users, through a regulated US entity, and the experience is meaningfully different from the offshore product. After relaunching to US users in December 2025 through an invite-only waitlist, Polymarket dissolved that waitlist in spring 2026 and now offers open general signup to US residents aged 18 and over, led by its iOS app with broader Android and web availability still rolling out. In July 2025, Polymarket announced its acquisition of QCEX, a CFTC-registered designated contract market and derivatives clearing organisation. That acquisition is the legal scaffolding that lets US residents trade event contracts on a Polymarket-branded venue without violating the 2022 settlement. US access runs through the regulated, intermediated path enabled by the CFTC's November 2025 Amended Order of Designation, with the funding rails, ACH and debit, sitting inside that regulated stack.
The offshore Polymarket, the one denominated in USDC on the Polygon blockchain that international users have traded on since 2020, remains geo-blocked for US residents. The CFTC settlement did not get reversed. What changed is that Polymarket built a separate, regulated US business alongside the offshore one, the same structural pattern Kalshi has used since 2021 and that the regulated US prediction market industry now broadly operates on. If you want the detail on how that legal architecture works, our explainer on Polymarket's regulated US access after the QCEX acquisition walks through the mechanics.
What the 2022 settlement actually said
The CFTC's January 2022 order was not subtle. It found that Polymarket had operated an unregistered facility for the trading of swaps since at least June 2020, and that the binary options offered on the platform were swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act. The agency required Polymarket to pay $1.4 million and to wind down all markets that did not comply with CEA registration requirements. In practice, that meant cutting off US access to almost every contract on the site.
The order was civil, not criminal, and it did not shut Polymarket down. It pushed the company into a forked existence: an offshore platform serving non-US users on Polygon, and a years-long effort to find a path back into the US that did not require pretending the settlement had not happened. The path the company eventually took, buying a registered exchange rather than trying to register the existing operation, tells you something about how hard the alternative would have been.
Why the QCEX acquisition mattered
QCEX held two specific CFTC registrations that are difficult to get and even more difficult to build from scratch. The first was designated contract market status, which is what lets a venue list event contracts and futures to US persons. The second was derivatives clearing organisation status, which handles the post-trade clearing and settlement. Kalshi, by comparison, spent years working through the registration process before listing its first contract in 2021.
Buying QCEX was a shortcut, and an expensive one. Polymarket acquired QCEX for $112 million in July 2025, and the company also closed a separate funding round in 2025 that valued it in the multi-billion-dollar range. The structural payoff is that Polymarket can now offer event contracts to US residents on a venue that the CFTC has already blessed, while keeping the offshore product running for the rest of the world. For a broader sense of how the regulated US category works, our guide to event contracts as the regulated US term for prediction markets covers the terminology.
What US users can actually trade
The US version of Polymarket lists a narrower set of contracts than the offshore site, and the differences are not random. CFTC-registered venues operate under self-certification rules that constrain what events they can list, and a separate, ongoing debate about whether election contracts belong on regulated US exchanges has produced a careful patchwork of what is and is not on offer at any given moment. Sports markets, which Kalshi began listing in early 2025 after a regulatory back-and-forth, are now standard fare on regulated US event-contract venues, including Polymarket's US entity.
Crypto price markets, macroeconomic contracts (Fed decisions, CPI prints, jobs reports), and a growing slate of political and cultural events fill most of the order books. What you will not find on the US version is the full unfiltered breadth of the offshore site, which historically listed contracts on everything from celebrity weddings to geopolitical flashpoints with looser editorial discipline. The trade-off is straightforward. You get a venue that is legal to use, with USD funding rails, in exchange for a curated rather than open-ended set of contracts.
How funding works on the US version
The offshore Polymarket runs on USDC on Polygon, which requires a self-custodied wallet and a way to acquire stablecoins. The US version does not. It accepts ACH transfers, debit cards, and the standard payment rails US derivatives traders are already used to from brokerages and other CFTC-regulated venues. There is no crypto wallet step, no Polygon bridge, no need to figure out where to source USDC.
That matters for two reasons. The first is practical: most US retail traders are not crypto-native, and removing the wallet step removes the biggest barrier to entry. The second is regulatory. Funding rails are part of what the CFTC scrutinises in a registered venue, and USD on-ramps that pass through US banks are easier to fit inside the existing rules than stablecoin flows on a public blockchain. Tax treatment is a separate question, and one our prediction markets tax guide for UK and US users covers in more depth.
Where the geo-blocking still bites
The offshore Polymarket continues to geo-block US IP addresses. Polymarket's terms of service prohibit using a VPN to access the platform from the US, and accounts identified as US-resident on the offshore product can be closed with positions force-liquidated. The settlement that produced the geo-block is still in force, and the company has both regulatory and commercial reasons to enforce it strictly now that the US business depends on the CFTC viewing it as a separate, compliant operation.
There is a real cost to that separation for users who want it both ways. The offshore site has deeper liquidity on long-tail markets, a wider catalogue, and resolution practices that have evolved over five years of running unrestricted. The US version is shallower in places, more curated, and operates under disclosure and dispute rules that are different from the offshore product's UMA-based resolution. The two Polymarkets are, for now, genuinely two different products with the same brand.
What the direction of travel looks like
The regulated US prediction market category is growing fast, and the rule-making around it is unfinished. The CFTC's posture on election contracts has shifted through several positions since 2023, with court cases (notably KalshiEX v. CFTC) pushing the regulator toward allowing more event types rather than fewer. State-level pushback exists, with several state gaming regulators arguing that some event contracts are functionally sports betting and should be regulated as such, but the federal preemption argument has so far held in court.
For a US user trying to decide whether to engage now or wait, the practical reality is that the regulated venue is here, the rules are stable enough to trade on, and the catalogue will likely keep widening rather than narrowing. The bigger uncertainty is around state-level access (a handful of states have restricted or are reviewing event-contract access) rather than around the federal legality of the category itself. Our overview of the current legal status of prediction markets in the US goes deeper on the state and federal split.
The honest summary
Polymarket is available in the US, on a regulated US venue, with USD funding, a curated contract slate, and the same brand as the offshore product but a meaningfully different underlying business. The offshore site is still off-limits to US residents, and trying to access it through a VPN is both a terms-of-service violation and a way to get positions force-closed. The simplest way to think about it: the Polymarket a US user can legally trade is the QCEX-based one, and treating it as a separate platform that happens to share a name with the offshore version is closer to the truth than thinking of it as the old Polymarket finally letting US users in.
iPredicta tracks both regulated US event-contract venues and the offshore prediction-market landscape, surfacing where the same question is priced differently across platforms and helping readers understand which venue any given contract lives on. For US users navigating the post-settlement Polymarket, the practical work is figuring out which version of the product the answer to your question is sitting on, and what trading there actually involves.
Frequently asked questions
Is it legal to use Polymarket in the US?
Yes, using the regulated US version of Polymarket is legal for US residents, while accessing the offshore version from the US is not. As of spring 2026, that regulated US version is open to general signup for US residents aged 18 and over, after a December 2025 relaunch that began as an invite-only waitlist; it is currently led by the iOS app, with Android and web still rolling out. The US product operates on QCEX, a CFTC-registered designated contract market Polymarket acquired in 2025, and offers event contracts to US persons under the same regulatory framework Kalshi has used since 2021. The offshore site, which serves non-US users on the Polygon blockchain, remains geo-blocked for US residents under the 2022 CFTC settlement that ended Polymarket's unregistered US operations. Trying to bypass that geo-block with a VPN violates Polymarket's terms of service and can result in account closure and forced liquidation of positions.
What is the difference between Polymarket US and the offshore Polymarket?
The US version is a CFTC-regulated venue with USD funding, a curated contract slate, and standard derivatives-exchange disclosure and dispute rules. The offshore version runs on USDC on Polygon, has a much wider and less filtered catalogue, deeper liquidity on long-tail markets, and uses UMA-based resolution rather than a centralised exchange process. They share a brand and a lot of design DNA, but they are legally and operationally separate businesses. A US resident can only use the regulated US version. A non-US resident can only use the offshore version. The catalogue overlap on flagship markets is high, but the long tail differs significantly.
Can I use a VPN to access Polymarket from the US?
No, and trying is a worse idea now than it was before the QCEX acquisition. Polymarket's terms of service explicitly prohibit accessing the offshore platform from restricted jurisdictions including the US, and the company has both regulatory and commercial reasons to enforce that strictly given its new CFTC-registered US business. Accounts identified as US-resident on the offshore site can be closed and positions force-liquidated, meaning a winning trade is no use if the platform unwinds it before settlement. The regulated US version exists specifically so US residents do not need workarounds. If you are in the US, use that one.
What can I trade on the US version of Polymarket?
Sports event contracts, crypto price markets, macroeconomic outcomes like Fed rate decisions and CPI prints, and a growing slate of political and cultural events make up most of the US catalogue. Sports contracts became a standard category on regulated US event-contract venues after a 2025 regulatory back-and-forth around Kalshi's sports listings. What you will not find on the US version is the full unfiltered breadth of the offshore site, including some of the more speculative celebrity, geopolitical, and meme markets. The US venue lists contracts that have been self-certified under CFTC rules, which is a narrower filter than the offshore site's editorial process.
How do you fund a US Polymarket account?
Through standard USD rails, including ACH bank transfers and debit cards, in the same way you would fund a brokerage or a CFTC-regulated derivatives account. There is no crypto wallet, no USDC on-ramp, and no Polygon bridge involved, which is the biggest practical difference from the offshore experience. That simplicity is part of why the US version is plausibly the bigger commercial opportunity over time, even though it carries a narrower catalogue. US dollar funding through US banks also fits the regulatory model the CFTC supervises, which is why it is the funding model the registered venue uses rather than the stablecoin rails the offshore product runs on.