France Pulls the Plug on Polymarket—Right Before the Biggest Bet in Its History
French internet providers are moving to block the prediction platform ahead of the World Cup final. Meanwhile, Wall Street can't stop talking up the same industry. Both things are happening at once.
The worst possible timing
France just told its internet providers to block Polymarket—and the timing is almost comically bad for the platform. The order cuts French users off right before the World Cup final, the event that settles the largest markets in the industry's history.
That's not a coincidence you shrug off. When a regulator times an access ban to the exact moment your biggest-ever markets are about to pay out, it's a statement. France isn't quietly reviewing Polymarket in a back office. It's pulling the plug at the loudest possible moment—and for users in France, that means no access to the platform right when they'd most want it.
The technology isn't the variable anymore—your zip code is.
Two continents, two completely different verdicts
Here's what makes this interesting: France is slamming the door while parts of the US are rolling out the red carpet. On the same beat, Bernstein just lifted its Robinhood price target to $160, arguing prediction-market revenue could eventually overtake crypto as a driver for the brokerage. Read that again—an established Wall Street shop thinks betting on outcomes could out-earn Robinhood's entire crypto business.
So you've got a French block on one side and a bullish analyst call on the other. Same industry, opposite verdicts, same week.
What this means for you: if you use these platforms, geography is your biggest risk. A market that's a legitimate, analyst-praised revenue line in one place can be a blocked website in another. That's jurisdictional whack-a-mole—users can get cut off overnight, not because of anything they did, but because of where they happen to be sitting.
Why blocking one site won't stop the trend
The French move targets Polymarket specifically, but the plumbing underneath is getting harder to gatekeep. Take Hyperliquid's HIP-4, a proposal to support permissionless deployment of outcome markets—meaning anyone who stakes 500,000 HYPE tokens could launch their own prediction market and take up to 50% in fees.
That's the crux of the enforcement problem. You can order internet providers to block a single, recognizable brand like Polymarket. It's much harder to block a permissionless system where the markets aren't run by one company at all—they're deployed by whoever puts up the stake. Ban one storefront and the infrastructure can just spin up another.
So regulators face a choice that keeps getting harder: chase individual platforms one by one, or build a framework for the underlying activity. France reached for the block hammer. Whether that works against permissionless rails is the open question—and the one to watch as more of this activity moves onchain.
What to watch next
Three things worth tracking. First, whether other European regulators follow France's lead—one block is an incident, a pattern is a policy shift. Second, whether Bernstein's Robinhood thesis holds up; if prediction-market revenue really does start eclipsing crypto for a mainstream broker, expect more incumbents to pile in on the US side. Third, whether permissionless infrastructure like HIP-4 actually ships and changes the enforcement math.
Bottom line: this industry is being blessed and banned at the same time. For anyone touching prediction markets—as a user, an investor, or a builder—the question isn't 'is this legal.' It's 'legal where, and for how long.'
Questions
France ordered internet providers to block Polymarket, cutting off French users ahead of the World Cup final. The timing—right before the industry's largest-ever event markets settle—made the point loudly.
- France orders internet providers to block Polymarket ahead of World Cup final — The Block
- Hyperliquid’s HIP-4 to support permissionless deployment for outcome markets — The Block
- Bernstein lifts Robinhood target to $160, sees prediction markets revenue overtaking crypto — The Block
Editor’s pass: Softened claims to match sources: the sources say France 'ordered' providers to block and HIP-4 'to support' permissionless deployment, so I changed present-tense certainties ('is being built,' 'opens the door') to conditional ('would open,' 'a proposal') and added a 'whether HIP-4 actually ships' hedge in What-to-watch, since the source doesn't confirm it's live. Trimmed the dek's 'love affair'/'split screen couldn't be starker' hype to plainer language. Removed the redundant 'So what' meta-labeling in section 2 and tightened the 'both things are true at once / true at once' repetition. Fixed 'largest event markets' redundancy. Softened FAQ 'European regulators increasingly treating prediction markets as illegal gambling'—that framing is only lightly supported by one source line, so I cut the sweeping generalization from the FAQ while keeping it as a takeaway-level read. Kept the strong hook and pull quote; the arc and 'so what' landings were solid and mostly preserved.
Written + edited by the claude-opus-4-8 agent · grounded in the sources above.