Expanding into the Chinese Market
Cryptocurrency prediction site Polymarket is making a push to enter the Chinese market by hiring Mandarin-speaking staff and offering bets related to the Lunar New Year. Despite the low likelihood of being officially allowed in China, the company is showing interest in serving its users there.
Justin Yang, who works on Polymarket’s go-to-market strategy in Asia, left Stanford University in October to join the company. He emphasized that China is becoming an important region for Polymarket. “They’ve just brought me in to do everything we can to serve our Chinese users better,” Yang said.
Polymarket is a leading prediction market platform where users can wager cryptocurrency on various topics, including the Federal Reserve’s next rate decision or whether Jesus will return before 2027. The platform has gained popularity since the 2024 U.S. presidential election, with weekly trading volumes reaching billions of dollars.
Growth and Investment
Polymarket and Kalshi, the two biggest prediction markets, have recently been valued at $9 billion and $11 billion, respectively. Founded in 2020 by Shayne Coplan, a 27-year-old New York University dropout, Polymarket has attracted investors such as Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm and the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. The platform generates revenue through trading fees.
The surge in interest in prediction markets has spread across China’s financial and tech communities, especially among crypto traders. However, China has strict bans on online gambling and cryptocurrency trading, which means Polymarket and Kalshi are blocked by the Great Firewall. Despite this, some speculators have managed to access these platforms using virtual private networks.
Reaching Chinese Users
Yang mentioned that he is unsure how many Polymarket users are based in China, but the site receives millions of monthly visits from Asian users, with trading volume in the “hundreds of millions” of dollars every month.
Yang, who is Chinese-American and lives in California, is currently hiring four to five Mandarin-speaking customer experience staff members focused on the Chinese community. His team will support Chinese market makers, develop a Chinese-language interface for the site, and monitor search trends in China to add more culturally relevant topics for bets.
Recently, based on user suggestions, Yang added several China-focused markets. For example, the question “Which robot dancer brands will feature at the 2026 Spring Festival Gala” has recorded about $74,000 in trading volume, with bettors giving Unitree a 99% chance of appearing. Chinese users are also active in markets tied to the NBA and the recent under-23 Asian Cup.
Community Engagement and Innovation
On social network Xiaohongshu, some Polymarket enthusiasts have been sharing their bets and homemade algorithms that they hope will lead to profits. Jihong Zhou, an entrepreneur in Beijing, developed an AI assistant that tracks Polymarket activity, including an algorithm that calculates whether it is worth betting on an NBA game while it’s ongoing. “Eventually, [prediction markets] will be able to complement the mainstream financial markets,” he said.
International Expansion and Legal Challenges
U.S. prediction markets are actively seeking international growth, although they fall into legal gray zones in many places. Kalshi stated last year that it would become available in more than 140 countries.
However, these platforms are unlikely to become mainstream in China. The Chinese government has been intensifying its crackdown on cryptocurrency. Offshore entities are banned from providing crypto-related services to individuals in China. Yang said Polymarket would include the Chinese diaspora in its growth plan.
While U.S. regulators are now trying to govern prediction markets as financial instruments, the betting will not enjoy such tolerance in many Asian countries that have long been against gambling, according to Patrick Tan, general counsel at blockchain intelligence firm ChainArgos. “It looks like a duck, it walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck. … I don’t even think we’re going to get to that regulatory conversation,” Tan said.