Singapore officially classified the prediction market platform Polymarket as an unlicensed gambling website in December 2024 and implemented a ban, with visitors receiving warnings for violating the Gambling Regulatory Authority's regulations, facing fines of up to ten thousand Singapore dollars, six months of imprisonment, or both. However, the ban did not cut off the local bettors' enthusiasm. Regulatory authorities found that since this year, the betting volume related to Singapore on Polymarket has not decreased but increased, extending from regular events like the Singapore Grand Prix and the 2025 general elections to daily trivial matters such as local weather. Since this month, the average daily betting amount on Singapore's daily temperature alone has reached about 127,000 Singapore dollars (approximately 100,000 US dollars), and on April 17, the funds bet on the temperature reaching 33 degrees Celsius nearly approached 159,000 Singapore dollars. The reminder from the Gambling Regulatory Authority is quite helpless: those who deliberately bypass government blocking measures do so at their own risk. According to industry insiders, this ban, in the face of technical detours, is more like a door that cannot be tightly closed.
From weather to geopolitics, the targets of prediction markets are becoming daily
Polymarket's experience in Singapore is not an isolated case. Hong Kong also urgently halted its planned legal basketball gambling program set to launch later this year due to a surge in prediction market trading volume this month. The Hong Kong government disclosed in a statement on April 14 that the prediction market trading volume for 2025 had reached 64 billion US dollars, a 200% increase year-on-year, and clearly stated the need for deeper dissection and research on these emerging platforms and models. From Singapore's daily temperature to Hong Kong's regulatory emergency brake, the tentacles of prediction markets are penetrating from traditional sports and political events to highly localized, high-frequency daily scenarios. This trend of daily targets is making regulatory geographical boundaries increasingly blurred—when a Singapore resident can bet on tomorrow's local temperature, the jurisdiction of the platform's servers becomes less important.
Insider trading suspicions and connections with the Trump family
The ethical controversy of prediction markets is also continuously fermenting. A trader using the pseudonym Magamyman bet hours before the assassination of Iran's supreme leader Khamenei that he would be removed, earning 550,000 US dollars; another bet about the US bombing Iran was precisely entered shortly before the attack began. These highly suspicious trading timings have pushed the question of insider trading to the forefront. What makes regulators even more nervous is that Polymarket and another prediction market platform, Kalshi, both have connections with the Trump family—Donald Trump Jr., the son of the US president, serves as an advisor to both platforms. This background has elevated the regulatory game around prediction markets from a purely technical compliance issue to a multi-dimensional chess game involving political sensitivity.
PASA official website continues to track global prediction market regulation and illegal betting governance dynamics, noting that the cases of Singapore and Hong Kong sketch out a clear trend. When prediction markets shift from geopolitics and sports events to local weather, traffic flow, election results, and other daily events, the regulatory toolbox is being forced to transition from banning websites and cutting off payments to cross-border judicial cooperation and transaction traceability upgrades. For gambling regulatory authorities, the opponent is no longer individual websites but a set of liquidity pools and user groups that can flexibly migrate across multiple jurisdictions. The encounter of Polymarket's ban in Singapore may just be the beginning of a larger story.
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This article is from "PASA-Global iGaming Leader" gambling industry news channel: https://t.me/pasa_news
Original in-depth gambling channel: https://t.me/gamblingdeep
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PASA official website: https://www.pasa.news
