In the last year, political contracts worth $571 million were traded by U.S.-linked wallets on Polymarket, exceeding the activity of any other nation, even though the platform is legally prohibited from serving American users. Much of this trading is focused on markets related to foreign conflicts that are not typically available on U.S. platforms.
By Shaurya Malwa|Edited by Jamie Crawley Jul 5, 2026, 3:00 p.m. 2 min readMake preferred on ShareShare this articleCopy linkX (Twitter)LinkedInFacebookEmailMake preferred on SummaryShow- Although U.S. users are prohibited from using Polymarket, U.S.-linked wallets engaged in trades amounting to $571 million in political markets over the last year, as reported by on-chain analysis firm Allium.
- Allium's analysis reveals that American traders are more inclined to wager on geopolitical issues rather than domestic elections, with U.S. wallets significantly investing in markets regarding foreign wars and unique events that are not typically offered by regulated U.S. platforms.
- The findings indicate that U.S. traders have no advantage in predicting outcomes compared to their international counterparts, yet their ongoing offshore participation raises regulatory challenges about whether to allow such markets within U.S. jurisdiction or to keep them offshore.
Despite restrictions on Polymarket, U.S.-linked wallets have emerged as the largest group of political bettors on the platform in the past year.
According to a recent report from the on-chain analysis firm Allium, wallets associated with the U.S. engaged in trades totaling $571 million in political contracts on Polymarket over the last year, surpassing Hong Kong's $422 million.
Polymarket enforces a block on U.S. users via IP address due to legal constraints, but Allium suggests that this measure is largely ineffective since the platform operates on cryptocurrency infrastructure, allowing access through a crypto wallet and stablecoins without any intermediary bank or broker. Consequently, a user can circumvent the block using a VPN along with a crypto wallet.
Allium's data on country identification is derived from wallet behavior rather than IP addresses, meaning that a VPN can bypass Polymarket's restrictions but not obscure the wallet's origin in the analysis.
Due to this methodology, Allium can only associate about 6% of wallets involved in Polymarket's political markets with a specific country, implying that these statistics should be interpreted as indicative rather than precise.
Polymarket has not provided a comment in response to inquiries made ahead of U.S. market hours.
Interestingly, the types of markets that U.S. traders are engaging with reveal a preference for geopolitical events. Approximately 46% of the notional trading volume from U.S. wallets was focused on geopolitical issues, as opposed to 36% across the entire platform. In contrast, U.S. wallets allocated only 16% of their trades to elections, compared to 32% platform-wide, indicating that American users are betting on foreign conflicts nearly three times more than the elections favored by others.
Among the twelve largest markets for U.S. traders, five were centered around the Iran war. The most significant market, attracting $20.8 million, was a novelty bet regarding whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would don a suit.
These markets typically fall outside the purview of U.S. regulatory frameworks. Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket's compliant U.S. segment mainly focus on economic indicators, interest rate decisions, and elections, leading to a migration of demand to offshore markets that offer predictions on regime changes and ceasefires.
Regulators may be concerned about a trend that the data does not fully reveal.
For markets that have concluded, U.S. wallets correctly predicted outcomes 81.9% of the time, compared to 80.3% for all users, indicating no significant advantage. The returns on held positions were also nearly identical. Although Americans tend to bet more aggressively—placing 53% of their volume on a hypothetical U.S. invasion of Iran compared to just 26% from the rest of the market—they did not demonstrate superior predictive skills.
Overall, the report suggests that despite efforts to restrict access, U.S. participation has not diminished; instead, it has shifted the largest political betting markets offshore, which, while visible on-chain, operates beyond U.S. regulatory control and is inclined towards markets that U.S. regulations prohibit.