Polymarket, the prediction market platform, paid mostly college-age creators to stage fake winning bets on copycat versions of its website, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation published this month. The report found that none of the roughly $1.9 million in bets shown across 1,105 videos were real. The clips were pushed past 140 million views by a hired marketing firm, targeting American users who can still reach the offshore Polymarket site through a VPN.
The fake campaign
Creators earned between $2,000 and $3,000 per month to film themselves hitting big wins on sites like "poiymarket.com" — dummy URLs that looked real but weren't. Real Polymarket trades run on the Polygon blockchain, settle in USDC, and use UMA's permissionless oracle. None of that was happening in the videos. The creators were told not to disclose the payments.
Regulatory backdrop
This isn't Polymarket's first run-in with regulators. US authorities fined the platform $1.4 million in 2022 for operating an unregistered market. After that, the company reincorporated in Panama, with its headquarters reportedly a shared law office that also worked with FTX. But the platform has since won a regulated US market entry and wants to bring its exchange onshore — making the timing of this fake-ad campaign especially awkward.
A separate WSJ analysis found that most users lose money on Polymarket. That's not unusual for betting platforms, but it raises questions about how the company promotes itself to retail traders.
What Polymarket says
Polymarket said it will audit its promotional content. No timeline was given, and the company didn't comment on whether any creators or the marketing firm will be cut. The fake campaign specifically targeted American users, who can still access the offshore site via VPN — a workaround that regulators have struggled to shut down.
