U.S. wallets traded $571M on Polymarket's political markets — despite being banned from the platform

Americans are legally shut out of Polymarket. Over the past 12 months they were still, by one measure, its largest national political-betting crowd.

U.S.-linked wallets traded roughly $571 million in notional value across Polymarket's political markets in the trailing year — more than any other country, and ahead of Hong Kong's $422 million — according to a report from on-chain analysis firm Allium, reported by CoinDesk (July 3). Polymarket blocks U.S. users by IP address because it cannot legally serve them. Allium's argument is that the block does little: the platform runs on a crypto wallet and stablecoins with no bank or broker in the middle, so a VPN plus an existing wallet is enough to get past it. Because Allium tags countries from on-chain wallet behavior rather than IP, a VPN that fools Polymarket's block does not hide a U.S. wallet from the data.

That mechanism cuts both ways as a caveat, and it's the key one: Allium can tie only about 6% of Polymarket's political-market wallets to any country, and says its own figures should be read as directional, not exact.

What Americans bet on is the sharper finding. Geopolitics made up 46% of U.S. notional versus 36% platform-wide, while elections drew just 16% from U.S. wallets against 32% for everyone else — U.S. traders backed foreign-war markets at nearly three times the rate they backed elections. Five of the U.S. cohort's twelve biggest markets were bets on the Iran war; its single largest, at $20.8 million, was a novelty market on whether Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy would wear a suit. Those are largely the markets regulated U.S. venues don't carry — Kalshi and Polymarket's compliant U.S. arm stick mostly to economic data, rate decisions and elections.

Key facts

• ~$571M U.S.-linked notional on Polymarket political markets, trailing 12 months; $422M from Hong Kong (Allium, via CoinDesk).
• Only ~6% of political-market wallets are country-tagged; Allium calls the numbers directional (Allium).
• Geopolitics 46% of U.S. notional vs 36% platform-wide; elections 16% vs 32% (Allium).
• Largest single U.S. market: $20.8M on a Zelenskyy-suit novelty bet (Allium, via CoinDesk).
• U.S. wallets backed winners 81.9% of the time vs 80.3% for others — no edge (Allium).

The real-world read

The eye-catching number is one on-chain firm's estimate built on tagging just 6% of wallets — Allium says so itself, and the $571M should be read as an order-of-magnitude signal, not a ledger figure. The headline "biggest national crowd" rests on that thin base. Note what the data undercuts, not just what it shows: the fear that offshore access lets insiders or savvy Americans clean up isn't visible here — U.S. wallets picked winners at 81.9% versus 80.3% for everyone, effectively no edge, and even bet more boldly (53% on a U.S. invasion of Iran when the market sat at 26%) without doing better. Polymarket did not respond to CoinDesk's request for comment. And this is a single secondary source relaying one vendor's analysis; the primary on-chain dataset was not independently reviewed here.

Opinion, and whose

CoinDesk frames the finding as a "policy dilemma" for regulators — whether to bring such markets onshore or leave the largest single political market offshore, visible on-chain but beyond U.S. oversight. That read is the outlet's, not an established fact.

Sources

• CoinDesk (Tier 2, secondary), July 3, 2026 — reporting on Allium's figures, the U.S./Hong Kong split, category breakdowns and win rates. Not marketing.
• Allium (on-chain analysis firm, cited by CoinDesk) — the underlying wallet-tagging data; a vendor whose own report flags its 6%-coverage limitation.

This is news coverage, not financial or legal advice. Prediction-market access varies by jurisdiction.