Romania’s National Office for Gambling (ONJN) has officially blacklisted Polymarket, the blockchain-based prediction and event trading platform, after detecting a significant surge in unlicensed betting activity surrounding the country’s recent election period.
The regulatory action addresses what the ONJN described as an “explosive increase” in user activity, revealing a serious regulatory challenge posed by decentralized, blockchain-based wagering.
The ONJN’s detection focused heavily on the cumulative trading volumes facilitated by Polymarket during the recent political contests. The regulator estimated that transactions related to the presidential race surpassed $600 million, with an additional $15 million traded during the Bucharest local elections.
Although these figures represent overall trading volume and not individual stakes, they point to a substantial level of unregulated gambling taking place entirely outside state supervision and taxation.
The Romanian regulator firmly classified Polymarket as a counterparty betting operator, regardless of the platform’s self-description as an “event-trading” or “prediction” market.
The core issue is that the platform allows users to wager monetary value on uncertain future outcomes while charging a commission on those transactions—activities strictly defined as gambling under Romanian law and requiring a local license.
The ONJN emphasized that allowing such unlicensed operations undermines critical pillars of the regulated market, including player protection, essential anti-money laundering (AML) safeguards, and the country’s fiscal controls, thus violating Romania’s legal monopoly framework for gambling.
This move places Romania in a growing list of European jurisdictions taking enforcement action against Polymarket. It joins Belgium, France, and Poland, reflecting a unified regulatory position across the EU that prediction markets constitute gambling when monetary value is staked on uncertain outcomes.
The regulator issued a stern warning that the platform’s growing popularity poses significant risks, adding that participation in or promotion of unlicensed gambling activities is a misdemeanor under Government Emergency Ordinance 77/2009, potentially leading to fines for both players and promoters.
Romania’s National Office for Gambling (ONJN)
“It would be a reckless precedent to allow counterparty betting to be reclassified as trading.”
