Crypto-gambling site Polymarket had President Trump winning the 2024 election by a healthy margin for nearly a month before voters went to the polls.
The week after Trump’s election, President Biden’s FBI raided the home of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan. The Biden administration alleged that the Polymarket platform, operating under Adventure One QSS Inc. out of Panama, had allowed U.S.-based users to illegally bet on the election through its website.
Prosecution quickly became a running theme for the company, as not only did the Commodity Futures Trading Commission launch its own investigation, but other global jurisdictions piled on with similar claims about the $1.5 billion that was bet on Trump to win.
‘This is obvious political retribution by the outgoing administration.’
Just two weeks after the election, Swiss gambling authorities blocked the website in their country, followed by an investigation by authorities in France that resulted in Polymarket geoblocking its site in the country.
Poland followed suit by blocking the website in January, with Singapore not far behind.
Following the raid on Coplan, a Polymarket spokesperson reacted to the federal investigation, saying, “This is obvious political retribution by the outgoing administration against Polymarket for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election.”
The Trump administration, however, began singing a different tune before getting into office, a changing of the political guard now paying figurative dividends for the tech CEO.
Landmark appearances from Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Bitcoin conference last July paved the way for the new administration to immediately sign an executive order upon taking office.
The order not only directed the federal government to hold onto any seized digital assets as opposed to auctioning them off, as usual, but also effectively ended the regulatory war on cryptocurrency.
This softened attitude toward digital currency has certainly worked out in Coplan’s favor, as the Trump administration decided to end its probes into Polymarket.
The CFTC and DOJ reportedly sent formal notice to Polymarket earlier this month that the investigations had ended, according to Yahoo.
Coplan himself took to his X page on Tuesday, recalling the FBI raid and describing it as a “story of Polymarket’s accuracy and the ensuing resistance” that is now etched into the history of American politics.
“I’m happy to announce that this chapter of the story is over,” Coplan continued. “After cooperating and engaging, we’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing. Justice prevailed. God Bless America.”
A series of crypto-friendly bills are expected to pass through Congress this week, part of what has been coined as “Crypto Week” on Capitol Hill.
The bills will establish regulatory framework for stablecoins as well as provide a definition for when a cryptocurrency can be considered a commodity, according to Reuters.
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The post Trump DOJ ends battle with Polymarket after Biden’s FBI raided CEO following 2024 election appeared first on TheBlaze.
