If you ask me, it should be considered as gambling, but because of technicalities, they aren't considered as one(at least in the US), despite everything it does pointing to it being a gambling platform. As far as I know, there are already countries that banned Polymarket because they considered that Polymarket is violating the gambling laws in their country.
Some places in the United States have different gambling laws from state to state.
So when it comes to these markets it is obscured from where customers are placing bets from. But they can bypass these restrictions based on where they reside from using a VPN quite easily.
From my point of view, Polymarket is gambling because you stake some amount of money and it's either you make profits or lose it based on your prediction on the future event.
It mustn't be in a casino before it must be called gambling, provided money is involved and an agreement between two parties with a bet on an event or a game it's gambling. Let me burst your bubbles, do you know that there are events you can bet on in Polymarket that's not in casinos.
When government cannot benefit from a business that runs globally, they ban it.
Of course, that is the whole fundamental use of what Polymarket and such platforms such as Kalshi have been marketing their offering as a prediction or from the way they put it: the futures contract's market.
Even Coinbase will be starting their own prediction's markets on their platform soon.
https://www.coinbase.com/en/prediction-marketsYet they have blocked their customers who have tried using their services to transfer their own cryptocurrency to any gambling platforms in the past.
And still do to this day!
