Statutory regulator of commercial gambling in Great Britain, licensing operators under the Gambling Act 2005 and enforcing compliance.
FCA has held talks with prediction-market operators as Polymarket and Kalshi explore UK entry, the Financial Times reported. Its 2026 perimeter report classed the financial products it examined as binary options, banned for retail clients since 2019.
Reality
An account freezing order under the Proceeds of Crime Act attaches to the money wherever it sits, which is why a crypto sponsor's opening instalment of £10,024,041.33 has been immobilised since January.
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Polymarket has approached the European Commission, ESMA and the FCA's chief executive to be regulated under MiFID, the Financial Times reports. Spain blocked it in May and France followed in July.
Reality
Polymarket wants ESMA and the FCA to supervise its event contracts as financial instruments instead of gambling products. The MiFID label it is asking for comes with the EU's retail binary-options restrictions attached.
Reality
Because the Swansea team crawled every licensed casino and betting site on the register, the 86% breach figure counts the whole industry. A companion experiment put six banner designs in front of 615 UK online gamblers.
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