Romanian regulator blacklists Polymarket as ‘licensable gambling’

Leading prediction market Polymarket was placed on the blacklist of unauthorized websites by the Romanian National Gambling Office (ONJN), the regulator announced on Thursday.

The company was banned for conducting unlicensed gambling activities in Romania.

“The decision to blacklist Polymarket does not concern the technology, but the law,” ONJN President Vlad-Cristian Soare said in a statement. “Regardless of whether you bet in lei or crypto, if you bet money on a future outcome, under the terms of a consideration, we are talking about gambling that requires a license.”

“ONJN will not allow the transformation of blockchain into a screen for illegal betting,” he added.

According to the regulator, although Polymarket is often characterized as an ‘event trading platform’, it meets the definition of ‘counterparty betting’ as users place a bet against other users and a future event determines the outcome.

“Accepting the idea that a ‘counterparty betting’ system can be called ‘trading’ would set a dangerous precedent, whereby any operator could ‘reinterpret’ the counterparty betting activity as a stock exchange activity – thus circumventing strict gambling or capital markets regulations,” the spokesperson said. supervisor wrote.

Of particular interest to the regulator was the increased activity in the prediction market during the Romanian local elections. For example, there is a market on Polymarket that asks users to predict what the mayor of the capital Bucharest has collected volume of over $16 million.

Earlier this year there was one election market generated a total of more than $370 million.

Declutter contacted Polymarket for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Polymarket has also gained attention in other parts of the world for similar reasons. Last year, the French National Gaming Authority planned to ban the prediction platform following an investigation into compliance with French gambling legislation.

The platform was effectively banned in the United States following a 2022 fine from the CFTC. But in July it acquired derivatives exchange QCX, which had done just that I have received a letter from the supervisor in which no action is being takenessentially allowing the market to resume operations in the United States.

Polymarket recently received a $2 billion investment from Intercontinental Exchange, owner of the New York Stock Exchange. The increase valued the company at approximately $9 billion.

In a Myriad prediction market, nearly four in five respondents did not expect Polymarket to officially announce a token this year, although an executive recently confirmed plans for a token. (Disclaimer: Myriad is part of Dastan, the parent company of an editorially independent company Declutter.)