Dune: since January 2021, wallets funded via US-regulated exchanges accounted for ~50% of all traceable trading volume on Polymarket's US-banned global platform
In early February, Caden Booth, a 21-year-old TikToker, flew from Cincinnati to San Francisco and headed for the stadium where Super Bowl LX was taking place.
Context & Ripple Effects
Prediction markets have moved from a niche activity to sustained, high-volume competition: combined monthly bets on Polymarket and Kalshi had already climbed sharply by late 2025 in the platforms’ expanding head-to-head market. Polymarket subsequently reported accelerating activity on its US platform, with Dune data showing a sharp rise in daily volume by June as US-facing trading ramped up.
This finding matters because it identifies a sizable, traceable connection between the global platform’s trading flow and wallets funded through regulated US exchanges, despite Polymarket’s US user prohibition. Funding-source data is not the same as verified user location, but it creates a concrete compliance and market-integrity question.
First-order effects
- Polymarket faces greater scrutiny of whether its access controls and transaction monitoring adequately separate its global venue from US-linked funding routes.
- Traders whose on-chain activity is traceable from US-regulated exchanges may face more attention from platforms and counterparties assessing jurisdictional exposure.
Second-order effects
- Kalshi and Polymarket’s competition may increasingly turn on compliance positioning as well as liquidity, especially after their trading volumes surpassed the prior election-period peak.
- US-regulated exchanges and crypto-payment intermediaries may have stronger incentives to review how transfers can reach geographically restricted prediction-market venues.
Third-order effects
- If funding-path analysis becomes a routine enforcement or diligence tool, prediction markets may need to compete on verifiable geographic segmentation rather than relying chiefly on stated user restrictions.
- The sector’s growth could widen the gap between globally accessible crypto-based markets and regulated domestic products, with liquidity, marketing, and compliance architecture becoming linked strategic choices.
The trend: Prediction-market platformization is pushing rapidly growing venues to reconcile global crypto liquidity with increasingly consequential jurisdictional and compliance boundaries.