Buenos Aires Puts Polymarket on the Regulatory Chopping Block

A court in Buenos Aires has told Argentina's telecom watchdog, ENACOM, to give crypto prediction platform Polymarket the full geo-block treatment. The ruling claims the site is running an unlicensed gambling operation, serving up betting-style risks to users—including, allegedly, minors—like a plate of questionable empanadas.

Now, internet providers have to wall off the Polymarket website and all its digital cousins. In a parallel move, Apple and Google have gotten the memo to boot or limit the platform's apps for anyone trying to access them from Argentine soil, proving that even app stores aren't immune to regulatory peer pressure.

This legal offensive was launched by the City of Buenos Aires Lottery (LOTBA), with a hearty cheer from the casino lobby group Câmara Argentina de Salas de Casinos, Bindos y Anexos (CASCBA). The prosecutors' argument is simple: call it a "prediction market" all you want, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a betting platform where you wager crypto or fiat on binary world events, it's probably a duck they want to regulate.

ENACOM really started paying attention after Polymarket's market on Argentina's February inflation did a dramatic pre-announcement pump, smelling suspiciously like someone might have had the inside track. But officials insist the real crime isn't potential alpha leaks; it's the platform's general lack of a legal blessing and proper user protections.

The authorities point out that you can spin up a Polymarket account faster than you can say "degen," fund it with crypto or a credit card, and face about as much identity or age verification as a kid buying a lottery ticket. Prosecutors say this is basically an open invitation for minors and other financially impressionable folks to start gambling, just with a crypto facade.

Argentina is now proudly adding its name to the growing roster of places that see Polymarket as an unlicensed casino in a trench coat. The platform is already persona non grata in over 30 countries, from France and Germany to Australia and Poland, building quite the collection of regulatory rejection letters.

A few regulators have really gone the extra mile. Take Ukraine, which earlier this year told ISPs to block Polymarket as part of a sweeping online betting purge, effectively ensuring there's no legal on-ramp for the service there—a definitive "nyet" from the country's digital-economy legal chief.

The Argentine order is being carried out by ENACOM, which has to either block the site itself or make the ISPs do the dirty work, all while reporting any technical difficulties back to the court or the specialized gambling prosecutor's office. Nothing says bureaucracy like filing a report about why you can't censor a website.