Czech authorities order Polymarket, a prediction market platform, to cut off access to users in the country within 15 days

On July 13, the Czech Ministry of Finance added the crypto prediction market platform Polymarket to a list of unauthorized online gambling games, making it the latest European country to take blocking action against the platform.

According to an announcement from the Czech Gambling Regulatory Authority, internet service providers now have 15 days to cut off access to the platform. The country’s current blocklist already covers thousands of websites, and Polymarket’s addition further expands the scope of that list.

The Czech regulator’s decision reflects a unified stance across European countries on prediction markets: regardless of how prediction markets position themselves, their nature is essentially gambling.

Jan Řehola, director of the Czech Gambling Regulatory Authority, also stated explicitly that legal gambling must meet the national requirements to know who is operating the games, who is participating, which betting activities are suspicious, and whether there are mechanisms to protect players and market order;

While prediction markets allow betting on nearly any kind of event, such as weather, political decisions, and even military actions, they lack comparable regulatory oversight. Therefore, this is not innovation, but a gambling product that exists outside the rules.

In addition, because contracts are settled based on real-world events, this also creates incentives to influence those events or to trade using non-public information, which amounts to insider trading in prediction markets.

Unlike the stance of a number of European countries that have imposed full bans on prediction markets, Gibraltar this week implemented the world’s first dedicated regulatory framework for prediction markets globally. The regulation replaces a blanket ban with a licensing-based compliance operating model; meanwhile, Malta has also said it will explore a similar regulatory approach.

Overall, global regulatory policies for prediction markets are now showing a diverging pattern. Most countries categorize them as unlicensed gambling and ban them, while a few jurisdictions seek to secure industry deployment resources for prediction markets by proactively pursuing compliance regulation and improving industry rules.

#PredictionMarketRegulation