A new industry-commissioned study finds U.S. residents may be fueling as much as $34 billion in trading on offshore prediction markets over the 12 months ending April 2026 — a level of activity that regulators and regulated operators say poses both market and safety risks.
The research was commissioned by the Coalition for Prediction Markets — an industry group that includes regulated operators such as Kalshi, Crypto.com, and Coinbase — and was conducted by Rutgers professor and CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee member Harry Crane. Crane compared trading on offshore platforms (those that block U.S. users and sit outside CFTC supervision) with platforms that serve exclusively U.S. or non-U.S. customers.
Key findings
- U.S. users accounted for an estimated $11 billion to $34 billion of offshore prediction market volume in the trailing 12 months. The study calls that a conservative estimate.
- That represents roughly 12.5%–31.5% of all U.S. prediction-market activity when regulated and offshore venues are combined.
- If current industry growth continues and the split between regulated and offshore markets holds, U.S.-based trading on offshore platforms could expand to about $133 billion in annual volume by 2030, the paper says.
Polymarket and other offshore venues
Polymarket — the largest offshore exchange in the study — recorded $55.6 billion in trailing 12-month volume, and Crane’s analysis attributes roughly $10.6 billion–$26.7 billion of that to U.S. users, despite the platform formally disallowing U.S. customers. Polymarket was forced offshore by the CFTC in 2022 but said it received a “green light” last fall to launch a regulated U.S. product; it has been rolling that out slowly. The study did not separate volumes between Polymarket’s offshore and U.S. platforms due to data reliability issues. Separately, a Dune dashboard indicates Polymarket’s regulated U.S. product has posted about $5 billion in notional volume to date. A Polymarket spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Crane’s analysis also examined other unregulated markets including Opinion, Predict, Limitless, and Myriad (the latter is a product of Decrypt’s parent company, Dastan), underscoring that U.S. participation in offshore venues is not limited to a single platform.
Regulatory and safety concerns
The Coalition argues the flow of U.S. users to offshore exchanges is worrying because those venues are not subject to U.S. customer verification, anti-money-laundering controls, or market-integrity oversight. In social posts, the group warned Americans are using VPNs to access unregulated platforms that trade on sensitive outcomes such as death and war, and said the study finally quantifies how large that market is.
Regulators are already moving. On Wednesday the CFTC proposed new rules that would bar market outcomes tied to war or assassination. But the agency’s authority and capacity have been contested: states and lawmakers have pushed back against CFTC moves to regulate prediction markets, and new CFTC Chair Mike Selig has publicly pledged to defend the agency’s jurisdiction — saying in February, “see you in court” as legal challenges mounted. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has also sought briefings, questioning whether the CFTC can effectively oversee prediction markets amid recent staff cuts.
What this means for crypto markets
The study spotlights a growing disconnect: regulated U.S. platforms argue they are constrained by compliance and oversight, while offshore venues — often nominally inaccessible to Americans — appear to continue drawing significant U.S. trading volume. For traders, that raises questions about counterparty safety, transparency, and legal exposure. For policymakers, it raises hard choices about enforcement, cross-border coordination, and rulemaking at a rapidly expanding corner of the crypto and fintech landscape.
The findings are based on available on-chain and market-data analyses and the authors describe the U.S. estimates as conservative. As regulators, platforms and lawmakers continue to jockey for control, the debate over how to police and structure prediction markets looks set to intensify.
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