Portugal gives Polymarket 48 hours to shut off access

In its statement, the agency said, first, betting on political events is prohibited in Portugal and, second, Polymarket does not hold a local license.

The order follows a sharp jump in wagering tied to Portugal’s presidential election. Estimates suggest users placed more than €100 million on outcome contracts. To the regulator, it looks like a standard online bet, except settlement happens in a stablecoin rather than through a traditional sportsbook.

On Polymarket, participants buy “yes” or “no” on a specific question. Once the event is resolved, the contract settles at 1 USDC or zero. Trades run on Polygon, and users keep control of their own wallets.

If the service does leave the country, Portuguese traders will likely face the same setup users have seen in other “restricted” markets: existing positions can be closed, but opening new trades becomes impossible. In practice, these orders are often paired with ISP-level blocks and warnings about fines for operators.

Portugal is not the first jurisdiction trying to pull prediction markets into its gambling rulebook. Polymarket already has a long list of countries where access is limited, and in some places it operates in close-only mode: you can close a position, but you can’t open a new one. Regulators keep returning to the same point: without a license, it’s illegal gambling, even if the interface looks like an order book.

Interest in prediction markets continues to grow. Weekly volumes across the sector recently topped $2 billion for the first time, and more than half of that turnover reportedly came from Polymarket. More money brings closer scrutiny. The recent “Maduro trade” controversy has also fueled worries about insider trading and about large bets being used to manufacture the appearance of higher odds.

For Polymarket, the clash with SRIJ is one more potential fight with regulators and another market it may have to exit. For the industry as a whole, it suggests that bigger liquidity does not answer the core question: are these contracts a financial product, or gambling packaged to look like trading?