Polymarket, the world’s largest decentralized betting platform, has stopped working for users in India. The website says: “This site cannot be accessed. Please check polymarket.com for a typo.”
Refreshing the page does not resolve the connection issue.
The outage follows an April 25 advisory from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to VPN service providers. The notice warned that local users were still accessing “illegal and blocked online betting platforms and prediction markets” despite “national bans.”
According to the directive, Internet service providers were to end access to prediction markets, with Polymarket being one of the main targets.
While Kalshi, a platform regulated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), is still accessible, it could soon face a similar fate. Local media reports, citing an anonymous source within MeitY, claim that the agency “has already issued a blocking order to Polymarket and is in the process of issuing an order to Kalshi as soon as Friday.”
CoinDesk has reached out to Polymarket and Kalshi for comment.
Prediction markets allow users to bet real money on the outcomes of binary events, such as referendums, financial asset price movements, and election results. These platforms saw a massive surge in global popularity during the 2024 US presidential election, becoming a prime place for investors to cover or bet on political outcomes.
However, the Indian government classifies activity on these platforms as online gambling. As a result, they fall into a category that is completely prohibited under the Online Gambling Promotion and Regulation Act 2025.
The Indian government has maintained a consistently prohibitive and “risk-averse” stance towards the cryptocurrency sector, prioritizing financial stability and capital control over industry growth. New Delhi has used a “shadow ban” strategy through punitive taxes, including a flat 30% tax on profits and a 1% tax deducted at source (TDS) on all transactions, which has effectively strangled domestic trade volumes.
The Ministry of Finance has focused on bringing the sector under strict anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-financing (CFT) supervision through the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). This regulatory environment has pushed many local crypto startups to relocate to friendlier jurisdictions like Dubai or Singapore, while the government and the Reserve Bank of India continue to signal that it views private cryptocurrencies more as speculative “money plays” than a legitimate financial innovation.
India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance met with cryptocurrency exchanges Binance, WazirX and Zebpay in Delhi on May 20 to discuss regulations and taxes for what it calls a virtual digital asset (VDA) industry.
The committee expressed concern over mass departures from the country through the crypto channel.
