Argentina moved decisively against Polymarket, after a Buenos Aires criminal court ordered internet providers to block access to the platform nationwide. The ruling treated Polymarket as an unlicensed betting service rather than a permissible prediction market, turning a local regulatory dispute into a national enforcement action.
The court’s decision came after regulators pointed to a sharp burst of activity on Polymarket shortly before INDEC released February inflation at 2.9%. Authorities argued that the timing of those trades exposed operational and integrity risks serious enough to justify immediate intervention.
Court Order Turns Regulatory Pressure Into Direct Enforcement
Judge Susana Parada of the Juzgado Penal, Contravencional y de Faltas No. 31 issued the order following complaints from the Lotería de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires and the Asociación de Loterías Estatales de Argentina. The case was built around the view that Polymarket was operating in Argentina without the licenses required for gambling activity.
According to the court record, regulators identified several concrete deficiencies in the platform’s operation. The ruling cited missing gambling licenses, weak identity and age verification, and the acceptance of cryptocurrency and credit-card payments without adequate controls.
The enforcement order went beyond a warning. The court instructed ENACOM to implement network-level blocks through internet service providers and also ordered Google and Apple to remove Polymarket from their app stores for users in Argentina.
Trading Activity Before Inflation Data Became a Key Trigger
One of the most sensitive elements in the case was the trading pattern observed just before the official inflation release. Regulators said the surge in contract activity immediately before the February CPI print was consistent with the possible misuse of privileged information.
That concern appears to have strengthened the broader argument that Polymarket’s structure created misaligned incentives. Argentine authorities framed the platform as a product that presented itself as a prediction market while functioning in practice like a betting venue without local authorization or sufficiently robust controls.
The ruling also drew on Polymarket’s wider regulatory history. The court referenced the platform’s earlier bans in several European countries and its prior U.S. enforcement history, including a regulatory fine in 2022, to place the Argentine action in a broader international context.
The decision removes a distinct national pool of users and liquidity from the platform. That loss of Argentine participation can change how contracts absorb information, redistribute influence toward other jurisdictions, and reduce the value of Polymarket data for counterparties that used it in research or hedging.
Authorities also acknowledged the limits of enforcement at the network level, warning that some users may try to bypass the restrictions through VPNs. Even so, the order signals a tougher phase of scrutiny for crypto-linked products in Argentina, especially when regulators believe they combine financial speculation, weak controls, and unauthorized market access.
