New York-based decentralized prediction market Polymarket has come below investigations from the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
According to an Oct. 23 report from Bloomberg citing nameless sources, the CFTC is investigating whether or not Polymarket is permitting its clients to commerce binary choices and swaps that ought to be registered with the monetary regulator. The CFTC is but to verify whether or not it is investigating Polymarket.
A spokesperson for the platform said: “Polymarket is firmly committed to complying with applicable laws and regulations and to providing information to regulators that will assist them with any inquiry.”
The report claims that the corporate has engaged the previous director of the CFTC’s enforcement division and present companion at authorized agency Sullivan & Cromwell, James McDonald, to handle the probe.
Polymarket hosts quite a lot of novelty predictive markets that enable customers to speculate on the end result of future occasions utilizing the USD Coin secure token. Polymarket doesn’t take positions in opposition to its clients and hosts the good contract interface permitting customers to work together with the protocol.
The report asserts the investigation comes as Polymarket is in talks to safe a brand new spherical of funding, with nameless sources claiming the elevate might see the agency valued at shut to $1 billion.
In October 2020, Polymarket secured a $4 million funding spherical led by Polychain Capital that additionally noticed participation from CoinShares CSO Meltem Demirors, former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, and AngelList CEO Naval Ravikant.
Related: Crypto within the crosshairs: US regulators eye the cryptocurrency sector
Polymarket is not alone in providing decentralized prediction markets, with Augur launching a Polygon deployment of its platform firstly of October.
While Polymarket provides an eclectic vary of markets together with hypothesis on covid case numbers, CryptoPunks ground costs and Donald Trump’s presidential prospects, Augur markets are at the moment focussed on sporting occasions and crypto worth forecasting.
