Polymarket Caught Paying Creators for Deceptive Betting Ads
WSJ investigation reveals Polymarket funded misleading social media videos targeting US users where it's banned.
Polymarket has a deceptive marketing problem. A Wall Street Journal investigation found the crypto prediction market has been paying content creators to produce misleading videos about winning bets — and pushing them directly at US audiences.
That's a big deal, because Polymarket's primary crypto platform is banned in the United States. The paid videos flooded social media, painting a rosy picture of easy betting wins to lure users in a market they technically can't legally access.
The scheme amounts to a coordinated influencer campaign built on deception. Creators were compensated to fabricate or exaggerate their betting success stories, turning social feeds into a pipeline for a platform operating outside US regulatory boundaries.
For a company that built its reputation on transparent prediction markets, the irony is thick. Deceptive marketing to dodge geographic restrictions is a fast track to regulatory heat.