NEW YORK (AP) — After four years in exile, the prediction market platform Polymarket has begun a well-funded campaign to sell a new version of itself to the American public.
To do so, the company is trying to convince policymakers, regulators, the public and prospective customers that the business it is building onshore is a more disciplined operation than the freewheeling offshore exchange that has at times been the subject of unfavorable headlines.
Polymarket has hired social media influencers to produce viral marketing on TikTok and other platforms. Its account on X, formerly known as Twitter, is now followed by millions and posts about current events throughout the day. It has signed partnership deals with major sports teams and Major League Baseball, as well as news organizations ranging from CNBC to CNN. It's all part of a pitch that its real-time markets are a more accurate read on the future than traditional polling or punditry.
The campaign is, effectively, an effort to sell Polymarket as something different from the Polymarket people know today.
What the American public knows as Polymarket has, at least by the letter of the law, been unavailable to Americans. In 2022, it was pushed offshore after settling federal charges that it operated an unregistered derivatives market. But Americans have regularly found ways around the prohibition, and the offshore business faced criticism over allegations of insider trading and allowing wagers tied to war and other violence.
Polymarket's push into the U.S. means Americans now have legal access to Polymarket through their U.S. platform, albeit it will be limited access. It adds another competitor to the U.S. prediction market industry, now dominated by Kalshi, and also featuring Robinhood and others offering similar services.
Polymarket began operating again in the U.S. at the end of 2025 after buying the derivatives exchange QCEX to get the regulatory license to operate in the country. Executives say the U.S. exchange is walled off from the international platform, and they have hired a slate of compliance, surveillance and regulatory specialists in recent weeks to keep it that way.
“Trust is the product we are building here,” said Dan Lee, head of U.S. operations at Polymarket, in an interview. Lee started with Polymarket in February from Coinbase.
Among the hires, the company added Megan McGrath from Robinhood as its new chief compliance officer. Lee and another executive, Natalie Oblazny, were hired from Coinbase. It’s also hired former Department of Justice and FBI officials as the platform’s head of enforcement and new surveillance head. Lee said Polymarket’s successful reentry into the U.S. depends almost entirely on whether it can convince people that Polymarket U.S. can be a trusted prediction market platform, and the new hires are key to that effort.
Both Polymarket International and Polymarket U.S. provide the same service: trading on the likelihood of events, such as weather, sports, politics or news. But the underlying structures differ. Polymarket’s international platform is built on blockchain technology and requires users to trade with cryptocurrency, while Polymarket U.S. operates through a more centralized structure regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and funded with traditional U.S. dollars.
Customers using Polymarket U.S. versus Polymarket International won't notice the difference, with the exception of how they fund their accounts. Also Polymarket U.S. is going to have a much narrower number of contracts, and more regulations, than its international counterpart.
“Polymarket U.S. is supposed to comply with U.S. law and regulations. Polymarket International is where anything goes,” said Todd Phillips, who has written extensively on prediction markets at the Roosevelt Institute.
The stakes are high for Polymarket. Between its departure in 2022 and return six months ago, the prediction market industry has changed and grown in popularity. The trading volume across the platforms for Polymarket and rival Kalshi is now $26.6 billion, according to blockchain analytics firm Dune. That’s up from $9.75 billion in volume across the platforms in October last year. About two-thirds of that activity is on Kalshi, which dominates the U.S. market on the strength of sports wagering. Kalshi was valued at $22 billion in its most recent funding round.
Both platforms are also benefiting from a more favorable treatment of the industry in Washington. The Trump Administration has been generally supportive of prediction markets. The CFTC has sued states to argue that federal law should preempt any regulations that state politicians have wanted to place on the prediction market industry. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., is also an investor in Polymarket through his venture capital firm 1789 Capital.
Even so, it’s been a rough start for Polymarket’s reintroduction to American audiences. The Wall Street Journal found evidence that Polymarket’s advertising and marketing campaigns used allegedly deceptive strategies that showed hired influencers making money trading on Polymarket when the trades were fake.
Politico reported in June that a Polymarket executive paid at least 20 political content creators, many of which did not disclose those partnerships to the public. Both projects have been part of the campaign Polymarket was using to reintroduce to American audiences.
In response to the WSJ and Politico reports, the company says it is investigating its marketing and promotional campaigns.
It's too soon to tell whether Polymarket U.S. will be able to differentiate itself from its international counterpart. Polymarket’s international platform has made headlines, often to public and political outrage.
When a U.S. Army sergeant was indicted earlier this year over bets on the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, he was trading on Polymarket’s international platform. The Associated Press reported in April that 50 brand new accounts on Polymarket’s international platform placed substantial bets on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the hours, even minutes, before President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire on social media, raising concerns of insider trading.
Lee said he believes the steps the U.S. business is taking will help further legitimize it, despite the issues the international platform has faced.
“I think having the international business being the bulk of the volume, it often sort of masks the progress we are making here in the U.S. to broaden Polymarket’s acceptance,” Lee said.
FILE - The prediction market app Polymarket is displayed on a mobile phone, April 16, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley, File)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian drones and missiles killed four people across Ukraine on Wednesday in attacks before dawn and at midday, as Moscow kept up its pressure on the capital of Kyiv in the latest phase of the over 4-year-old war.
Ukraine struck oil refineries in Russia's Saratov and Tatarstan regions, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who met with U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Turkey. Trump said the U.S. would give a license to Ukraine so it could manufacture Patriot air defense systems to counter Russia.
In Kyiv, several explosions were heard shortly after midnight, even before authorities could issue an alert to give civilians time to find shelter.
The early morning Russian attacks killed one woman and injured two others in Kyiv, according to city administration head Tymur Tkachenko. The State Emergency Service said the attack damaged several administrative buildings and warehouses, as well as a garage complex and several trams.
Hours later, another Russian drone struck Kyiv’s Desnianskyi district, killing a second person and injuring six others, Tkachenko said. A total of eight people were injured in the attacks on the capital.
In Kharkiv, two people were killed and 20 others were injured in a series of overnight strikes, according to Mayor Ihor Terekhov. In Zaporizhzhia, a Russian guided bomb injured two people Tuesday night, regional head Ivan Fedorov said.
Ukraine’s air force says Russia fired 169 long-range strike drones and seven missiles, including five ballistic missiles. Air defenses shot down or jammed 139 drones, and two anti-radar missiles didn’t reach their targets, it said.
All five ballistic missiles and 20 drones struck targets at 15 locations, the air force said, underscoring the continued strain on Ukraine’s air defenses.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it struck an arms industry facilities in Kyiv, hitting a plant that manufactured components for Flamingo cruise missiles and a facility assembling mid- and long-range drones.
In Ankara, Trump said the U.S. will give a license to Ukraine to manufacture Patriot air defense systems to defend against Russian missile attacks like those that have been striking Kyiv in recent weeks.
It would be a huge coup for Ukraine, which badly needs the systems that are expensive, in high demand and take a long time to produce. Zelenskyy long has been asking for more Patriot systems, as well as the license to produce them.
“We’ll give them the right to make Patriots. We’ll show them how to do it,” Trump said, sitting next to Zelenskyy. “I think they can produce them pretty quickly.”
The tone of their meeting was a markedly different from an earlier, acrimonious encounter at the White House in February 2025 when Trump berated Zelenskyy. On Wednesday, he praised the Ukrainian leader's willingness to reach a deal to ending the war, saying he has “done an amazing job” and “been very effective.”
“We’ve actually developed a good relationship. It’s hard to believe,” Trump said, adding he believed a deal on ending the war was on the horizon and that the U.S. would “work on some kind of security package” for Ukraine.
Zelenskyy thanked Trump for his support and said he wanted to discuss weapons supplies, possible peace negotiations and a developing drone deal.
“Air defense is the priority,” Zelenskyy said, adding that Kyiv wanted to share details of its needs under the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, or PURL, in which European allies and Canada are buying American weapons to help his country.
Zelenskyy also said Ukrainian and U.S. officials had begun work on a drone deal, calling it “a very good beginning.”
Trump was expected to have another call with Putin following his meeting with Zelenskyy.
The ministry also said air defenses downed 415 Ukrainian drones from late Tuesday to early Wednesday. Gov. Roman Busargin of Russia's Saratov region said a Ukrainian drone attack killed one person, injured several others and damaged industrial facilities.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine's long-range attacks reached the Saratov, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan regions deep inside Russia, as well as the Voronezh region, closer to the border. The strikes hit refineries in Saratov and Tatarstan, the latest energy facilities struck by Ukraine that have worsened fuel shortages across Russia.
In the Tatarstan region, Nizhhnekamsk Mayor Radmir Belyayev said Ukrainian drones damaged industrial facilities in the city and injured several people. Belyayev didn’t identify the damaged facilities.
Sergei Aksyonov, the Moscow-installed head of the Crimean Peninsula that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, said restrictions on civilian fuel sales would continue and that gasoline would not be available “on certain days.”
Aksyonov said many of the decisions being made to resolve the crisis could not be disclosed publicly, adding that he was giving regular updates to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The fuel supply situation remains strained and will continue to be so for some time,” he said. “We are monitoring this issue closely in coordination with the federal government and are working on a solution.”
Following a meeting with Putin, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak announced all diesel exports will be halted until the end of July as Russia grapples with fuel shortages. Similar export bans are already in place for gasoline and jet fuel.
Putin told the meeting that Ukraine's attacks on energy infrastructure was an attempt to provoke anxiety and damage the economy -– goals he described as “unachievable.”
Russia’s Gazprom state-controlled gas company said Ukrainian drones attacked the Krasnodarskaya compressor station serving the Blue Stream natural gas pipeline to Turkey late Tuesday. It said the attack was intended to derail Russian gas shipments to Turkey, but there was no disruption of supplies.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called it another “dangerous” attack against “the critical international energy system” and voiced hope that Turkey and other nations would warn Kyiv against such action.
Rostov regional Gov. Yuri Slyusar said Ukrainian drones damaged two oil tankers in Taganrog Bay, injuring two crew members. The crew of one of the ships had to be evacuated.
He said there was no oil spill because the tankers heading to the port of Rostov-on-Don were empty.
——
Seung Min Kim in Ankara, Turkey, and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
People mourn over the coffin of Oleksandra Bardadym, 20, who was killed in Russia's recent missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Oleksandr Khomenko)
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, arrives for the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, Tuesday, July 7, 2026. (Metin Aktaş, Pool Photo via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, emergency services personnel work to extinguish a fire following a Russian air attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, emergency services personnel work to extinguish a fire following a Russian air attack in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, emergency services personnel work to extinguish a fire following a Russian air attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
