France Orders ISPs to Block Polymarket as Illegal Gambling Site, Expanding 30+ Jurisdiction Crackdown
AI Market Summary
France's ANJ ordered ISPs to block Polymarket, treating prediction markets as illegal gambling and joining 30+ jurisdictions restricting access. The move underscores intensifying regulatory hostility toward onchain and crypto-adjacent betting/prediction products, increasing compliance and distribution risk for related protocols and user activity. Near-term, the headline can weigh on broader crypto sentiment via renewed focus on enforcement, consumer-protection framing, and operational fragility of permissionless markets.
Impact level
● Medium
Affected assets
BTC/USDT+1.15%
AI Insight · BTC/USDTAI Insight
▼ Bearish
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France's gambling regulator, the Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ), has instructed internet service providers to block access to Polymarket as of July 16, classifying the prediction-market platform as an unauthorized gambling service rather than a financial trading venue.
The ANJ said earlier measures failed to keep French users off the site. Despite a ban on financial transactions in place since November 2024, Polymarket logged 578,751 visits from 205,057 unique visitors in France in June, according to Similarweb figures cited by the regulator. The ANJ noted that a VPN was sufficient to bypass the transaction restrictions, while the homepage remained reachable and allowed users to view live markets and odds.
Regulators argued that the real-time odds display effectively promoted an illegal gambling offering. "The site's homepage, which dynamically displays realtime odds for various events open to betting, thus serves as a major channel for disseminating and promoting Polymarket's offerings, even though the site's operations are not authorized in France," the ANJ wrote. Administrative fines can reach 100,000 euros ($114,380).
Polymarket did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CoinDesk.
The ANJ also referenced a complaint from France's weather service, MétéoFrance, involving a tampered temperature sensor linked to weather-based bets. The Paris prosecutor's cybercrime unit opened an investigation on May 4.
Separately, the regulator pointed to a French trader known as "Fredi9999," who moved U.S. election odds with multimillion-dollar positions in 2024.
France's posture tightened in February 2026, when the ANJ formally reclassified prediction markets as illegal gambling, citing addictive design features and the lack of stake limits and self-exclusion tools.
France blocked 1,290 gambling-related URLs last year and has joined a growing list of countries restricting Polymarket, now limited in more than 30 jurisdictions. Switzerland blocked the site in November 2024, followed by Poland, Singapore and Belgium in early 2025. Portugal acted in January 2026, and Spain imposed a temporary block in May pending an investigation. Brazil, Argentina, India and Indonesia have also taken action, along with Italy, Germany, Romania, Hungary and Ukraine.
