According to Engadget, France's gambling regulator ANJ ordered ISPs to block Polymarket after an earlier 2026 move barred financial transactions from French users. The first restriction failed. The platform logged 578,751 visits and 205,057 unique visitors from France in June alone. Paris responded by moving the choke point upstream.
Prediction markets are being reclassified as gambling, not finance. Polymarket's entire pitch rests on regulatory ambiguity—the idea that it operates in a gray zone online even when local law says otherwise. France just closed that gap. When payment blocking didn't work, regulators went straight to the ISP layer. Borderless platforms still answer to boring infrastructure: banks, internet providers, and licensed market access.
Payment blocking failed, so Paris escalated to network-level friction. That tells every platform selling itself as borderless that regulators still control the choke points. Bad news for Polymarket. It's also a warning for any crypto app that mistakes demand for permission.
Filed to the Technology desk · Jul 18