Americans were responsible for up to $34 billion in offshore prediction market trading volumes during the 12-month period ending in April 2026, according to a new study commissioned by the Coalition for Prediction Markets, an industry group that includes regulated prediction…
rket operators like Kalshi, Crypto.com, and Coinbase. The study, which was conducted by Rutgers professor and CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee member Harry Crane, compared data from offshore platforms—or those that do not allow U.S. users and are not regulated by the CFTC—with platforms that have exclusively U.S. users, or exclusively non-U.S. users. “As a share of all U.S. prediction market activity (including regulated and offshore platforms), we estimate 12.5–31.5% of U.S. prediction market volume occurs on offshore platforms,” the study says. “Based on current third-party estimates of industry growth, U.S.-based activity on offshore prediction markets could grow to an estimated $133 billion in annual volume by 2030, assuming constant relative market shares of regulated and offshore markets,” it added
The findings highlighted Polymarket, the largest offshore platform, estimating that around $10.6-$26.7 billion of its $55.6 billion trailing 12 months trading volume was attributable to U.S. users, even though they are technically disallowed on the platform. The firm, which was pushed offshore by the CFTC in 2022, said it was given the “green light” to go live in the U.S. last fall. Since that time, it’s slowly rolled out its regulated Polymarket U.S. platform, but volumes were not separated by the study, due to unreliable data.
Data from a Dune dashboard notes that the regulated U.S. version of Polymarket has posted around $5 billion in notional volumes to date. A representative for Polymarket did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment. Though Polymarket was the largest offshore market evaluated, the study also investigated data from other unregulated markets like…