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France Blocked Polymarket at the ISP Level. The Weather Bets Were Part of the Problem

By Isaac • July 18, 2026 10:21 am • Comments

France has escalated its fight with Polymarket from regulatory warnings to a nationwide internet block.

On July 16, the country’s gambling regulator ordered French internet service providers to cut off access to the prediction-market site. The order followed an earlier transaction geoblock that users found ways around.

The dispute sits at the messy intersection of crypto, gambling law and real-world data. French officials are also pointing to suspicious weather markets as evidence that the platform’s risks extend beyond licensing paperwork.

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France’s National Gambling Authority, known as the ANJ, said Polymarket was promoting an unauthorized gambling offering to people in France. The order was issued by the ANJ’s president and applies to French internet service providers.

The regulator has been pursuing Polymarket operator Adventure One QSS Incorporated since November 2024. Its first intervention led to a geoblock that prevented financial transactions from French territory, but the ANJ said users found ways around those restrictions.

France’s June traffic figures help explain the escalation. The ANJ counted 578,751 visits to Polymarket during the month, including 205,057 unique visitors, despite the earlier attempt to fence French users off from the platform.

The ANJ also cited the absence of user identification and know-your-customer checks for a service available to French and European users. It said some weather bets appeared distorted after weather probes may have been hacked, while a Paris prosecutor’s cybercrime unit opened an investigation on May 4 that was assigned to France’s anti-cybercrime office.

The weather allegation is an especially uncomfortable one for prediction markets. A contract can be traded transparently on crypto rails and still settle against a corrupted or manipulated real-world input.

That vulnerability is often described as an oracle problem, but the human stakes are easier to understand. If a market’s winning outcome depends on a temperature reading, a compromised measuring device can turn the supposed source of truth into the weakest point in the entire trade.

The ANJ did not frame the weather issue as a theoretical concern. It included the suspected interference in its explanation of why French users could face financial losses on an unregulated platform.

Polymarket’s live odds created another legal problem. The regulator said the changing probabilities displayed on the site amounted to promotion of an illegal gambling service, conduct that can carry a fine of up to 100,000 euros in France.

French authorities have plenty of experience with this enforcement tool. The ANJ said 1,290 URLs were blocked during 2025, placing Polymarket inside a much broader campaign against gambling sites that operate without French authorization.

Reuters reported that the ISP restrictions will remain in place for as long as the regulator considers Polymarket noncompliant. Polymarket did not immediately respond to the news organization’s request for comment.

France is also part of a growing international push to define where prediction markets fit. Spain temporarily barred Polymarket and rival Kalshi in May, while the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission released draft event-contract rules in June.

The legal answers are diverging from one country to the next. Some governments treat these contracts as gambling, others regulate them as financial products, and a platform serving users across borders can run into both systems at once.

An ISP-level order raises the cost of reaching French customers, although it does not erase the underlying blockchain activity. The earlier financial geoblock and the workarounds that followed show why regulators are now targeting the website and its distribution channels directly.

A market can run on crypto infrastructure and still rely on ordinary chokepoints. Its domain, user interface, advertising, data feeds and relationship with internet providers all remain exposed to local law.

The block does not settle the broader argument over whether prediction markets can produce useful forecasts. It does show that a compelling market price will not excuse weak controls, questionable access or doubts about the data used to resolve a bet.

Identity checks are likely to become a bigger part of that debate. Wallet-based access may feel natural to crypto users, but regulators see anonymous or lightly verified participation as a warning sign when money is being wagered on real-world events.

Any route back into France would likely involve stronger verification, tighter geographic controls and changes to the way markets are promoted. Polymarket has to decide how much localization it is willing to accept.

The French audience is meaningful even if it represents a fraction of Polymarket’s global reach. More than 200,000 unique visitors in one month gives other European regulators a concrete picture of how quickly a prediction platform can build a local user base without local approval.

The suspected weather interference adds pressure from a different direction. Regulators can argue that even an accurately priced market becomes dangerous when the measurement underneath it can be tampered with.

For Polymarket, the immediate loss is access to French users. The longer-term risk is a regulatory playbook that other countries can copy: document local traffic, identify weak controls, order an ISP block and leave the door closed until the platform changes.

Crypto made it possible to build a global prediction market at extraordinary speed. France is reminding the industry that global reach can also produce a country-by-country compliance fight, one internet provider at a time.

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