Polymarket’s expansion into US stocks raises regulatory concerns

Polymarket has pushed into one of the most exclusive corners of finance: private company valuations. The prediction market platform launched contracts tied to unicorn milestones in May 2026, covering roughly 1,600 private companies with a combined valuation north of $5 trillion. The new contracts let users wager on outcomes like IPO timing, valuation thresholds, and secondary share activity for some of the world’s most prominent privately held companies. Resolution data for these markets comes exclusively from Nasdaq Private Market. The equity-linked markets are only available on Polymarket’s offshore platform, which US residents cannot access. A regulated footprint with an offshore edge Polymarket’s US operations run through QCX LLC, a CFTC-regulated subsidiary the company acquired in July 2025. That acquisition came three years after Polymarket settled with the CFTC for $1.4 million over previous unregistered activity. The domestic platform already hosts prediction markets on public stock metrics, including S&P 500 daily direction and market cap rankings. Legal experts have flagged that equity-tied contracts could qualify as security-based swaps, a classification that would p...