A Buenos Aires court has delivered a landmark ruling ordering a complete nationwide block of the cryptocurrency-based prediction market platform Polymarket throughout Argentina. The decision, issued on Tuesday, directs the national telecommunications regulator ENACOM to coordinate with internet service providers across all provinces to implement immediate access restrictions.
The court also served formal notices to technology giants Google and Apple, compelling them to remove the Polymarket application from their Argentine app stores. This represents one of the most comprehensive regulatory actions against a decentralized prediction market in Latin America, establishing a significant precedent for national jurisdictions dealing with cross-border DeFi applications.
The judicial intervention leverages Argentina's existing telecommunications and consumer protection laws. ENACOM now possesses the legal authority to enforce the block, which experts anticipate will involve DNS blocking, IP address filtering, and deep packet inspection. The ruling aligns with broader governmental efforts to assert control over digital asset markets, as Argentina's Central Bank and National Securities Commission have recently issued warnings about unregulated crypto platforms.
This action mirrors increasing global scrutiny of prediction markets, following the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission's 2022 settlement with Polymarket over unregistered event-based binary options and similar regulatory moves in the UK and Australia. The Argentine case is particularly notable for its cross-border enforcement mechanism, involving multinational technology corporations to implement a national ban.
The decision comes amid Argentina's ongoing economic challenges and high cryptocurrency adoption as an inflation hedge. Regulators appear to distinguish between asset storage platforms and prediction markets facilitating event-based speculation, which was central to the court's reasoning for targeting Polymarket specifically.
