Polymarket Comes Home — Sort Of
Jona Jaupi & Olivia Capozzalo
December 03, 2025
gm, Defiers!
Today’s big story:
- Polymarket officially launched its U.S. app with CFTC approval today, after the platform was banned from the U.S. since 2022
In other news:
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In the third episode of our Avalanche Ecosystems mini-series, we explore one of crypto’s biggest trends: real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. From land records to treasuries and equities, Avalanche enables institutions to create true on-chain assets and not just wrappers.
With insights from Ava Labs, Balcony, Grove, and Dinari, we explore how Avalanche is powering the next wave of RWA innovation.
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📈 Markets in the Past 24 Hours
| TICKER | VALUE | 24H | |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Bitcoin | $92,360 | 1.42 % |
 | Ethereum | $3,099.58 | 3.33 % |
 | XRP | $2.17 | 1.02 % |
 | BNB | $900.18 | 3.01 % |
 | Solana | $140.86 | 0.97 % |
Today’s Big Story
Polymarket Kicks Off Its Official US Launch as a Regulated Platform
Polymarket has officially made its U.S. comeback — at least for some users. The blockchain-based prediction market, founded in 2020, launched its app in the U.S. App Store today to waitlisted users, marking the platform’s official comeback in the country, after receiving approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) last week.
The launch means soon Americans will be able to legally place real-money prediction bets from their phones on one of the world’s largest on-chain prediction markets — on everything from sports to politics to global events. The app is initially being rolled out just to users who signed up for its waitlist, and starting with sports markets before expanding to other categories.
At the time of writing, Polymarket’s app ranks number four in the U.S. App Store’s Sports category.
Interestingly, however, the platform’s market for “Will Polymarket US go live in 2025?” has yet to resolve, though bets on “Yes” spiked to 99% today on the U.S. app rollout news, with over $21 million in trades on the question.
Polymarket US launch market. Source: Polymarket.com
The market’s description notes that it will resolve when a trade is “publicly placed on a Polymarket-operated Designated Contract Market (DCM)” — presumably meaning once the app and web version are broadly available to U.S. users, not just the waitlist.
Polymarket’s Rise
Polymarket, which saw nearly 500,000 monthly active users in November, and has a post-money valuation of $9 billion, was barred from the U.S. in January 2022 after settling with the CFTC over operating without proper regulatory licenses. The platform’s first major victory toward returning to the U.S. was its July acquisition of a small, but CFTC-regulated derivatives exchange and clearinghouse, QCX LLC, which now operates as Polymarket US.
Despite that ban, the platform has continued to grow globally, and rose to mainstream prominence during the U.S. presidential elections last year, as traders around the world bet on the outcome, and those markets showed stronger — and what turned out to be more accurate — chances for Donald Trump’s win than traditional polls.
Last month, Polymarket hit a record $4.3 billion in spot volume, up nearly 5% from October. Its main rival, Kalshi — which launched in the U.S. with CFTC approval as a centralized, off-chain platform in 2020, but has recently begun to integrate blockchain infra — recorded $5.8 billion over the same period and briefly topped the App Store’s free sports category. But with Polymarket’s return as a regulated platform, Kalshi faces strong competition in its niche.
In recent weeks, Polymarket and Kalshi have been neck and neck in terms of trading volumes, both regularly recording over $1 billion in weekly spot volume since late October, according to Artemis data.
Polymarket vs. Kalshi weekly spot volumes. Source: Artemis
In an interview with 60 Minutes earlier this week, Polymarket founder and CEO Shayne Coplan — a now 27-year old New Yorker, who Forbes named the world’s youngest self-made billionaire — called prediction markets the most “accurate thing we have as mankind right now, until someone else creates some sort of a super crystal ball.”
“You make money if you're right. You lose money if you're wrong. And as a result it creates this information that's really useful for people,” Coplan told Anderson Cooper. “The percentages next to the questions are the odds, determined by all the other bets that have already been made. As more people wager, and news breaks, the odds change.”
Last month, Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, announced a $2 billion strategic investment in Polymarket. That move loudly showed how quickly the decentralized predictions sector is gaining traction.
Meanwhile, Nasdaq-listed Enlivex Therapeutics Ltd. announced last week that it would raise $212 million and shift part of its corporate treasury into RAIN, the token that powers the decentralized prediction and options protocol of the same name. The move marked the first time a publicly traded U.S. company wanted to take a direct treasury position in a prediction-market token.
With these new developments in play, all signs point to one thing: prediction markets aren’t a niche corner of crypto anymore.
Xx, Jona, staff reporter at The Defiant
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🎬WATCH
More than wrappers | RWAs on Avalanche | Ecosystems, Ep. 3
In our third episode of the Avalanche Ecosystems mini-series, we dive into one of the most important trends in crypto: tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs). From land records to treasuries, private credit, and publicly traded equities, Avalanche is enabling institutions to not just issue onchain wrappers, but to create the real thing. It's tokenization the right way.
With interviews from Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo and Morgan Krupetsky (Ava Labs), Dan Silverman (Balcony), Kevin Chan (Grove) and Gabriel Otte (Dinari), we explore how Avalanche’s architecture is powering a new wave of RWAs across finance, government infrastructure, and consumer applications.
Watch the mini doc here:
This content is part of a media partnership between The Defiant and Ava Labs
Top News in the Past 24 Hours
- Kraken Acquires Backed Finance Kraken, the third-largest centralized exchange by volume in the United States, announced today the acquisition of Backed Finance to further develop its tokenized stock offering. Why it matters: Backed was Kraken’s partner behind the tokenized equities platform xStocks.
- Chainlink’s LINK Jumps 13% as Grayscale ETF Goes Live Chainlink’s native token, LINK, surged following the launch of Grayscale’s LINK exchange-traded fund (ETF) yesterday. Why it matters: This marks the first U.S. ETF focused solely on Chainlink, which powers decentralized oracles.
- Terminal Finance Shuts Down After Ethena’s Converge Chain Fails to Launch Terminal Finance, a highly anticipated decentralized exchange (DEX) incubated by Ethena Labs, is canceling its launch after the Converge blockchain, its intended base layer, co-developed by Ethena and Securitize, failed to go live. Why it matters: Ethena Labs has faced heightened attention in recent weeks after the supply of its synthetic dollar USDe has continued to crater following the 10/10 crash.
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