Polymarket, the world’s largest decentralized betting platform, has gone dark for users in India. The website says: “This site is not accessible. 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 continued to access “illegal and blocked online predictions market and betting platforms” despite “national bans.”
According to the directive, Internet service providers were required to end access to prediction markets, with Polymarket being one of the main targets.
Although Kalshi, a platform regulated by the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), is currently still accessible, it could soon face a similar fate. Local media, 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 early as Friday.”
CoinDesk has contacted 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 have seen growing popularity globally during the 2024 US presidential election, becoming a prime venue for investors to hedge or bet on political outcomes.
However, the Indian government classifies activity on these platforms as online gambling. As a result, they fall under a completely prohibited category under the Online Gaming Promotion and Regulation Act, 2025.
The Indian government has historically maintained a prohibitive and “risk-averse” stance towards the cryptocurrency sector, prioritizing financial stability and capital controls over the growth of the sector. New Delhi employed a “shadow ban” strategy via punitive taxation, including a flat tax of 30% on gains and a withholding tax (TDS) of 1% on all transactions, which effectively limited domestic trade volumes.
The Ministry of Finance has focused on placing the sector under strict surveillance in terms of anti-money laundering (AML) and anti-strike financing (CFT) via the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). This regulatory environment has pushed many local cryptocurrency startups to relocate to friendlier jurisdictions like Dubai or Singapore, as the government and the Reserve Bank of India continue to signal that they view private cryptocurrencies more as speculative “gambling” than legitimate financial innovation.
India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance met crypto exchanges Binance, WazirX and Zebpay in Delhi on May 20 to discuss regulation and taxation of what it calls the virtual digital assets (VDA) industry.
The committee expressed concerns over mass outflows from the country via the crypto channel.
