France Orders ISPs to Block Polymarket After French Traffic Surges to 578,000 Visits

Polymarket Traffic from French IP Addresses Surges

France’s nationalist gaming regulator announced Friday it has ordered net work providers to wholly artifact entree to Polymarket, escalating a crackdown connected the prediction level implicit fears of rampant marketplace manipulation and amerciable gambling.

According to a France 24 report, the determination by the Autorité nationale des jeux (ANJ) adds teeth to a transaction prohibition archetypal implemented successful November 2024. Despite past fiscal restrictions, the regulator noted that French postulation to the level continued to climb, surmounting 578,000 visits from French IP addresses past period alone.

Under French law, the ANJ determined that the site’s real-time likelihood updates operated arsenic a signifier of amerciable advertising.

“Advertising, by immoderate means whatsoever, successful favour of an unauthorized betting oregon gambling tract is simply a transgression offense,” the regulator stated, informing that violations could output firm fines reaching astir $114,000.

Central to the regulator’s assertive involution are rising concerns implicit information integrity and rigged wagers. In April, France’s nationalist upwind agency, Meteo-France, filed a ailment against the prediction level pursuing a breach.

According to officials, hackers breached 1 of Meteo-France’s integer upwind probes to intentionally change biology information readings. The cyber-tampering was designed to artificially trigger circumstantial outcomes connected Polymarket’s weather-related prediction pools, allowing rogue traders to unafraid guaranteed payouts connected skewed bets.

Global Insider Trading Concerns

The incidental exposed terrible structural vulnerabilities successful however prediction platforms validate outer information inputs. The breach triggered a ceremonial probe by the cybercrime portion of the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office. Investigators discovered that the level lacked indispensable protective mechanisms and foundational safeguards—such arsenic modular individuality verification and know-your-customer compliance—making it an appealing people for blase data-rigging schemes.

The French upwind probe manipulation is portion of a broader drawstring of information and insider trading scandals plaguing the prediction market assemblage globally.

In the U.S., a worker is facing national charges aft helium allegedly utilized classified subject quality to wager connected the result of a January cognition aimed astatine capturing erstwhile Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The worker reportedly netted much than $400,000 from the insider bets.

On July 16, the White House suspended a teleprompter relation implicit allegations that helium placed targeted bets connected the circumstantial wording and contented of upcoming speeches by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Regulators person besides pointed to idiosyncratic traders susceptible of swinging full markets single-handedly, citing a French trader known arsenic “Fredi9999” who reportedly moved governmental betting likelihood via multimillion-dollar wagers, yet walking distant with astir $50 cardinal successful profits.

While France permits heavy regulated online sports betting, the authorities maintains a strict prohibition against unregulated prediction frameworks that connection addictive features without user extortion laws. France present joins respective different European nations, including Germany, Italy and Spain, that person moved to systematically restrict oregon prohibition decentralized prediction markets.