Cryptocurrency infrastructure turned prediction markets into borderless products, letting anyone with a wallet bet on elections, economic data, or world events from nearly anywhere. Now, gambling regulators in multiple countries are pushing back, and the result could fragment these markets along national lines.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Crypto wallets and onchain settlement removed banking friction, giving prediction markets a global user base.
- Spain, South Korea, and Brazil have each moved to restrict or investigate prediction market access in 2026.
- Localization could fragment liquidity without necessarily removing crypto from the underlying infrastructure.
How Crypto Rails Turned Prediction Markets Into a Global Product
“Crypto rails” refers to the combination of blockchain-based payments, self-custodial wallets, and onchain settlement that prediction platforms use instead of traditional banking. This stack lets a user in Lagos fund the same contract as a user in London, with no intermediary bank deciding whether the transaction is allowed.
That infrastructure mattered because prediction markets live or die on liquidity. The more participants across more regions, the tighter the spreads and the more useful the price signals. Platforms like Polymarket built on this premise, attracting cross-border participation that would have been impossible through conventional payment processors.
The model worked. In the United States, regulated competitor Kalshi controls 89% of the domestic prediction market as of April 2026, showing that demand for event-based trading is substantial even in a single jurisdiction. Globally, crypto-native platforms captured the rest by sidestepping the local banking relationships that regulated operators need.
Why Gambling Laws Could Push These Markets Back Behind National Walls
The tension is straightforward: crypto networks are borderless, but gambling law is territorial. Whether a prediction market is classified as gambling, a financial instrument, or something else entirely depends on each country’s legal framework.
Spain moved to block access to Polymarket and Kalshi in May 2026, with regulators investigating whether the platforms need a gambling licence to serve Spanish users. The action marked one of the first European enforcement moves against prediction markets specifically.
South Korea followed a different path. Police there opened investigations into local Polymarket users, treating participation itself as a potential violation of domestic gambling statutes rather than targeting the platform’s infrastructure.
Brazil took the broadest step, prohibiting prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket in April 2026. The ban applies to both crypto-native and regulated platforms, suggesting the issue is the product category itself rather than the payment method.
Enforcement tools are familiar: geofencing, mandatory KYC checks, and licensing requirements. Each one reintroduces the geographic friction that crypto rails were designed to remove. The regulatory landscape is shifting rapidly, much like the evolving stablecoin rules under the GENIUS Act in the United States, where lawmakers are also drawing new lines around crypto products.
What Localization Means for Crypto Prediction Markets Next
If platforms must comply country by country, the immediate casualty is liquidity. A Spanish user locked out of a global pool cannot contribute to price discovery on that platform. Multiply that across Brazil, South Korea, and potentially other jurisdictions, and the depth of any single market thins.
Operators would need separate compliance stacks, regional product variants, and localized marketing. That overhead favors well-capitalized regulated players like Kalshi over smaller crypto-native competitors, potentially consolidating the market around a few licensed hubs.
Crypto does not necessarily disappear from the product in this scenario. Onchain settlement, transparent order books, and wallet-based access still offer technical advantages over traditional infrastructure. The rails remain useful even if the on-ramps become jurisdiction-specific, similar to how large institutional players continue building crypto positions even as regulatory frameworks tighten around them.
The broader trajectory of institutional crypto products adapting to regional regulatory pressure suggests prediction markets may follow the same pattern. The likely outcome is not a binary between “global and unregulated” or “local and compliant.” Prediction markets will probably operate on a spectrum, with regulated versions serving accessible jurisdictions and crypto-native alternatives persisting in markets where enforcement is lighter.
Whether that fragmentation reduces the usefulness of prediction markets as information tools, or simply reshapes who can access them, depends on how many countries follow Spain and Brazil’s lead.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency and digital asset markets carry significant risk. Always do your own research before making decisions.
