Polymarket has taken a formal step toward offering margin trading in the U.S., filing three registration applications with the National Futures Association (NFA).
According to the NFA’s BASIC database, Coming Home GBA LLC — an entity Bloomberg has tied to Polymarket — submitted the applications through PM Derivatives LLC on July 3. The filings request registration as a futures commission merchant (FCM), membership in the NFA, and registration as a swap firm. Approval as an FCM would allow Polymarket to support trades where users post only part of a contract’s value up front (margin), though the platform would still need Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sign-off before offering leveraged event contracts to U.S. customers.
The move follows a precedent set by rival prediction market Kalshi. NFA records show Kalshi’s affiliate, Kinetic Markets LLC, received approval as a registered FCM and swap firm in March 2026 — putting Kalshi ahead in the regulatory process for U.S. institutional-style market access.
Polymarket’s regulatory push arrives amid heightened scrutiny. Bloomberg has reported the CFTC is probing several aspects of the company’s operations, including its social media activities. One reported strand of that inquiry alleges Polymarket paid content creators to post promotional videos that used staged trades and fictional winnings; Polymarket has not publicly responded to those reports.
Legal trouble has followed as well. On July 3, two New York users sued Polymarket over the resolution of a market tied to whether an entity called Strategy would sell Bitcoin by May 31, 2026. The plaintiffs say the platform denied payouts to “Yes” holders even though Strategy disclosed a sale of 32 BTC in an SEC filing. The complaint alleges Polymarket altered the market’s clarification language after the event and used the timing of the disclosure — rather than the sale itself — to mark the contract as “No.” Those claims are still unproven in court.
On the product front, Polymarket also rolled out instant, self-custodial Bitcoin deposits via the Lightning Network this week. Payment protocol Spark said the integration credits deposits within seconds after checking for double-spend risk, fee levels, and replace-by-fee signals — a move likely aimed at smoothing fiat on-ramps and improving user convenience as Polymarket pursues broader U.S. offerings.
Bottom line: Polymarket is pushing into a more regulated U.S. market with FCM and swap registration applications, while contending with regulatory inquiries and litigation — even as it upgrades product features like Lightning deposits.
Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news
