Polymarket?

lime · Mar 27, 2025

It looks very **fun** to **play**. Is it banned in the US? If so, how do USA residents access and fund it?
The legality of this "market" looks grey everywhere, but interesting.

ph1l · Mar 27, 2025

https://medium.com/@joearvis7/how-to-use-polymarket-in-the-united-states-8a891dde1a91

How to use Polymarket in the United States

Polymarket has taken the political world by storm, becoming the go-to source for U.S. election odds and probabilities. U.S. customers will need a VPN to actually trade on the platform, and all users need a crypto wallet to deposit and make trades.
Here are the steps.

Create a Polymarket account. It’s connected to your crypto wallet, so you don’t need to enter any personal info.

Get a VPN — NordVPN, Proton VPN, Express VPN are all fine. Just make sure it works on your phone, since it’s a bit easier to trade on Polymarket on mobile.

Download a crypto wallet, like MetaMask, and buy some cryptocurrency on an exchange like Coinbase if you don’t have it already.

Send USDC from the exchange (Coinbase) to your wallet (MetaMask).

Move money into your Polymarket account using USDC from your crypto wallet (MetaMask).

Start making trades.

Polymarket is a prediction market that allows users to “bet” on some of the world’s most highly-debated topics like crypto, politics, sports, current events, weather and more.

The emergence of prediction markets as a source-of-truth for events like political elections comes from, in part, a distrust of political polling over the last 10 years. It was clear in 2016 that polls underestimated Donald Trump. With a prediction market where users are wagering real money, everyone has skin in the game, so the probability will be closer to reality.

1. Create a Polymarket account
The first step is to sign up at Polymarket. Because it runs on the Polygon blockchain, you just need to connect a crypto wallet, like MetaMask or CoinBase Wallet. You don’t need to enter an email. If you don’t have a wallet, make sure to complete Step 3. If not, you can skip it.

2. Get a VPN
Polymarket is not available to U.S. users, though it’s not as restrictive as other online gambling apps like DraftKings and FanDuel, which run extensive KYC and location checks to make sure you’re in a legal betting state. A simple VPN will get you around the geo-restriction on Polymarket.

So download a VPN app onto your phone or computer, like Nord VPN or Proton VPN. Then login from a country that’s not the U.S. I’ll choose the Netherlands here.

3. Get a Crypto Wallet, or Login
If you’ve already used MetaMask, this should all feel pretty familiar. If you haven’t, you’ll need to setup an account.

MetaMask has a good tutorial on how to get started. You’ll also want to add Polygon as a blockchain in your wallet so that you can receive USDC from an exchange, if you don’t already have it in your wallet.

4. Fund Your Crypto Wallet Using USDC
Once the wallet is created, you’ll need to fund it. There are a number of different ways to do this. Some wallets let you buy right on the platform. Or you can send money from an exchange like Coinbase to your MetaMask address.

Buy USDC by searching it on Coinbase, then adding a payment method — credit card, bank transfer, etc. If you already own other cryptocurrencies on Coinbase, you can swap them for USDC.

Then, you’ll send USDC to your MetaMask wallet. Click “Receive Crypto” in Metamask to get the address, copy it, then click “Send Crypto” on Coinbase and enter that address you copied from Metamask.

It may ask you to confirm that the address you’re sending to can receive currencies on the Polygon network.

5. Send Money from Metamask to Polymarket
Since you signed up for Polymarket using your Metamask account, this step should be pretty straightforward (though at times, it can be a bit buggy). Click deposit, and it will walk you through the steps right on Polymarket.

During this step, you’ll be flipping back and forth between Polymarket and your crypto wallet. When Polymarket prompts you to “sign” a transaction, you’ll do that in your wallet.

6. Start Making Trades
Now that there’s money in your account, you can start making trades.

If you’re used to betting on sports, a prediction market may look a little different, but it functions in a similar way at the end of the day. There are no “odds” like +150 or -200. It’s all based around $1.

Every market is priced from 0 to $1 per share. The winner of the market will then be paid $1 and the loser gets $0 — so if I buy 10 shares of Donald Trump to win the presidential election at 71 cents, I’ll win $1 on each of those shares for a profit of 29 cents per share.

If I bet Joe Biden to win at 19 cents for 10 shares and he wins, I’ll have profited 81 cents per share if he wins (update since I published this in July: he’s not going to win).

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Polymarket?

lime

ph1l