Brazilian authorities moved to block 27 prediction market platforms on Friday, including Kalshi, Polymarket, PredictIt, and Robinhood’s forecasting feature. The shutdown was directed by the Ministry of Finance and enforced by the country’s national telecoms regulator, Anatel. Authorities said the platforms operate outside Brazil’s existing legal framework and therefore illegally.
The move came alongside Resolution 5.298, issued by Brazil’s National Monetary Council on Friday and taking effect in early May. The resolution draws a hard line between what it considers legitimate financial contracts and what it considers gambling. Contracts tied to economic indicators — inflation, interest rates, exchange rates, and commodity prices — will remain permitted under financial market oversight. Everything else, including contracts tied to sports, politics, entertainment, and social events, is banned outright. Finance Ministry executive secretary Dario Durigan also raised consumer protection concerns, arguing that prediction markets risked deepening household debt at a time when Brazil is actively trying to reduce borrowing levels among families and small businesses.
A Global Pattern Taking Shape
Brazil is not acting alone. France, Belgium, and the Netherlands have already blocked or penalised prediction market platforms operating without authorisation. Hungary and Portugal have moved against Polymarket specifically. In the United States, the picture is more fragmented — a running dispute between federal regulators and individual states over jurisdiction has left the legal status of these platforms unresolved, though Kalshi has continued operating under CFTC oversight after winning a significant court battle.
The platforms caught in Brazil’s crackdown span both major international names and local services. Alongside Kalshi and Polymarket, the blocked list includes ProphetX, Hedgehog Markets, Novig, Polyswipe, PRED Exchange, Stride, and several Brazil-focused platforms, including Palpita, Cravei, Previsao, and MercadoPred.
Regulation Was Always Coming — The Question Was Always the Shape of It
Prediction markets have existed in a legal grey area for most of their existence, tolerated in some jurisdictions, banned in others, and largely ignored until they became too large and too visible to overlook. The Iran war changed that calculus significantly, where platforms like Polymarket saw explosive growth in users trading on war outcomes, ceasefire probabilities, and oil price movements, drawing mainstream attention and regulatory scrutiny in equal measure.
Brazil’s approach is actually more considered than an outright ban. By preserving contracts tied to economic indicators while eliminating those tied to politics and sports, the government is making a distinction, however imperfect, between financial instruments and gambling products. That is a more sophisticated regulatory frame than simply shutting everything down, and it mirrors the direction the CFTC has been pushed toward in the US debate.
The harder question prediction market platforms now face is whether they can survive as purely financial tools stripped of the political event contracts that drove most of their user growth and media coverage over the past two years. From where I sit, that is not obvious. The retail audience that flooded into Polymarket to bet on elections and war outcomes is not the same audience that wants to trade inflation swaps. Building a compliant, financially focused prediction market may be the only path to operating legally in an increasing number of countries, but it may also be a significantly smaller business than the one these platforms were building before regulators started paying attention.
