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Polymarket

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Summary

Polymarket is a cryptocurrency-based prediction market built on Polygon, founded by Shayne Coplan, that lets users wager on real-world events including elections, geopolitics and sports. The platform is the largest prediction market globally and has drawn praise for its election forecasting, but it carries substantial and growing risk indicators: a 2022 CFTC settlement and years of U.S. user exclusion, a 2024 FBI search and subsequent DOJ/CFTC probe of its founder (closed without charges in 2025), a 2026 return to regulated U.S. operations via the CFTC-licensed QCEX acquisition, and — as of September 2026 — three newly disclosed CFTC insider-trading investigations, a Bloomberg/Polysights analysis flagging roughly $200 million in suspicious trades, repeated oracle-resolution controversies, multiple state gambling-law actions (including a September 2026 Connecticut cease-and-desist), pending class actions over unlicensed sports betting and allegedly staged influencer marketing, and a May 2026 wallet-drainer scheme impersonating the platform.

Connected Entities

5 entities · 28 linked investigations
Individuals
○Shayne Coplan
Organizations
□Polymarket□Inca Digital□Polymarket□Chaos Labs
Relationships
  • Shayne Coplan→member of→Polymarket(95%)
  • Chaos Labs→associated with→Polymarket(75%)
  • Inca Digital→associated with→Polymarket(75%)
  • Shayne Coplan→controls→Polymarket(95%)
Also appears in
Axiom Trading·28Michele Spagnuolo (AlphaRaccoon)·0Axiom (Solana DEX)·32DOJ Ten Foreign Nationals Crypto Market Manipulation Ring·3Broox Bauer / Axiom Insider Trading Ring·0Jupiter Exchange·62Rain Protocol·14Axiom DEX·18George Santos — CFTC Prediction Market Manipulation·0Backpack·59+ 18 more

Connected Through

1 shared actor · 28 investigations

Distinct actors this investigation shares with others — holders, traders, and named parties. Shared infrastructure (exchanges, pools) is excluded.

Have evidence about Polymarket?
6
Accepted
5
Under review
0
Rejected / revoked

Community submissions

Timeline(22 events)

3 January 2022

CFTC settles charges against Polymarket operator Blockratize for $1.4 million over unregistered binary-options trading; Polymarket blocks U.S. users.

CFTC

October 2024

Chaos Labs and Inca Digital report evidence of wash trading inflating Polymarket's 2024 presidential-election market volume.

Fortune / Inca Digital

November 2024

FBI agents search the residence and offices of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan as part of a DOJ/CFTC investigation.

Reporting cited on prior AVOID.NET page

June 2024

Polymarket overrules its own UMA oracle on a market about Barron Trump's involvement with the DJT token, saying involvement was 'conclusive' and moving to refund 'Yes' bettors.

The Block

March 2025

A UMA-voting whale controlling roughly 25% of the deciding vote flips a $7 million Ukraine-minerals-deal market to 'Yes' before any deal was signed; Polymarket declines to issue refunds.

CoinDesk / The Defiant

July 2025

DOJ and CFTC investigations into Polymarket and Shayne Coplan reportedly close without additional charges.

Reporting cited on prior AVOID.NET page

July 2025

Polymarket acquires CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse QCEX for $112 million, forming QCX LLC.

PR Newswire

26 August 2025

Donald Trump Jr. joins Polymarket's advisory board as his firm 1789 Capital invests in the platform.

Bloomberg

25 November 2025

CFTC designates Polymarket's QCX LLC as a regulated Designated Contract Market, enabling U.S. re-entry.

Regulatory Oversight

11 February 2026

Class action filed alleging Polymarket operates unlicensed sports gambling in violation of state law.

classaction.org

23 April 2026

DOJ charges U.S. Army soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke with using classified information about a Venezuela military operation to profit more than $400,000 on Polymarket.

Department of Justice

May 2026

ZachXBT flags 'PolyArb,' a fake prediction-market product containing a wallet drainer targeting Polymarket users.

Bitget News

22 May 2026

Roughly $520,000 drained from Polymarket-linked smart contracts after an internal operations wallet's private key is compromised; Polymarket says core contracts and user funds are unaffected.

CoinDesk

June 2026

NACA and a related class action accuse Polymarket of staging influencer betting videos on fake site copies and using undisclosed paid endorsements.

Mondaq / classaction.org

June 2026

Federal judge consolidates two proposed sports-gambling class actions against Polymarket into a single case.

AboutLawsuits.com

June 2026

Polymarket discloses a supply-chain attack in which a compromised third-party frontend dependency led to roughly $3 million stolen from fewer than 15 accounts (see dedicated investigation page).

CyberInsider / Halborn

July 2026

France's ANJ orders French ISPs to block access to Polymarket entirely, escalating a prior transaction-only ban; Polymarket says it will contest the block in court.

Casinobeats

August 2026

City of Baltimore sues Kalshi and Polymarket over allegedly unlicensed sports betting.

Yogonet

September 2026

Connecticut's Department of Consumer Protection issues cease-and-desist orders to Polymarket and eight other platforms over sports event contracts; Underdog sues to block the order.

Yogonet / The Block

September 2026

FOIA records reveal the CFTC quietly opened three separate insider-trading investigations into Polymarket contracts (Biden pardons, Iran, Google rankings), approved May-July 2026.

CCN / Yahoo Finance

September 2026

Bloomberg publishes analysis with Polysights flagging roughly 34,000 Polymarket transactions, including ~$200 million in first-half-2026 volume, as displaying insider-trading characteristics.

Bloomberg

September 2026

1789 Capital leads roughly $300M of a $1B funding round valuing Polymarket at $21 billion; ICE reported as largest shareholder with commitments of roughly $1.6B.

Bloomberg
Provenance & Audit Trail
Anchored on SolanaVerify on-chain41 Wayback Archives

Decision Log

This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain (5 events). 41 of 48 cited source URLs have an Internet Archive snapshot.

Fact-checked 2026-09-2316 claims checked0 corrections pending0 applied⛓ anchoredSee findings →
full audit log →version history →

model: claude-code-investigator

generated: 4/24/2026, 6:24:47 PM

last updated: 9/23/2026, 8:39:27 PM

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