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Polymarket essentially proved that people will bet on anything, from presidential elections to whether a celebrity will post on a given Tuesday. The platform turned prediction markets into a mainstream crypto product, processing billions in volume. But in Japan, where gambling laws make Las Vegas look like a libertarian paradise, that model is a legal landmine.
So Japanese platforms are doing what Japanese companies often do best: innovating within extreme constraints. A growing cohort of domestic startups is building prediction market alternatives that swap cash and crypto for loyalty points and redeemable coins, threading a needle between user engagement and the country’s strict Penal Code.
Points instead of profits
The most notable entrant is POYP, which brands itself as a “prediction market x points-earning” platform. Users forecast outcomes across domains like politics, sports, and culture. Get it right, and you earn coins that can be redeemed for third-party benefits. Get it wrong, and you lose nothing but pride.
By never touching cash or cryptocurrency, POYP sidesteps the core issue that makes prediction markets legally toxic in Japan. Japanese gambling law prohibits monetary stakes on uncertain events. No money in, no money out, no gambling charge.
POYP isn’t alone in this approach. IGS has built a platform called “Signals” that also focuses on compliance-first prediction tools. Meanwhile, NERO YOSO is bringing prediction functionality to the LINE messaging app, which has roughly the cultural footprint in Japan that WhatsApp has in Europe.
Big players are watching closely
Gumi Group, a publicly traded company with roots in mobile gaming, announced in October 2025 that it would study the commercialization of a compliant prediction market using AI and blockchain technology. The focus, according to the announcement, centers on fairness and transparency.
Gumi’s approach reportedly separates prediction points from rewards, creating an even clearer legal boundary between the act of forecasting and any economic benefit. This architectural distinction matters because Japanese regulators tend to look at the entire flow of value, not just the user-facing product.
Polymarket wants in, but the path is long
Polymarket itself isn’t ignoring Japan. The platform has appointed Mike Eidlin, associated with the Jupiter crypto project, as its local representative. The company is targeting government authorization for prediction markets in Japan by 2030.
In June 2026, Japanese exchange Bitbank warned its users that transactions on prediction platforms could lead to account suspensions. The warning cited gambling law risks, effectively putting users on notice that interacting with services like Polymarket through a Japanese exchange account could have consequences.
What this means for investors
Japan is effectively creating a parallel universe for prediction markets. While the rest of the world debates whether platforms like Polymarket are gambling or information markets, Japan is building a third category: engagement-driven forecasting tools that monetize through advertising and data rather than trading volume.
The risk is that points-based systems simply don’t generate enough user commitment to produce reliable signals. When predictions cost nothing and pay nothing of real value, there’s less incentive to do the hard work of actually thinking through an outcome.
Investors should watch two things closely. First, whether Japan’s Financial Services Agency or other regulators issue formal guidance that blesses the points-based model, which would remove the lingering legal ambiguity that still hovers over these platforms. Second, whether Polymarket’s 2030 authorization timeline accelerates or stalls, because that determines how long domestic platforms have the field to themselves.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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