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Today in crypto, France ordered internet service providers to block access to Polymarket, European regulators added 14 crypto firms to the MiCA register in the second post-deadline licensing update and Balaji Srinivasan sought legal assurances from Malaysia following a government probe into Network School.
French gambling regulator orders ISPs to block Polymarket
France’s Autorité nationale des jeux (ANJ), or the National Gambling Authority, has ordered internet service providers to block access to Polymarket.
Prediction websites are considered illegal gambling, the ANJ said in a Friday press release.
The regulator said that Polymarket’s operations are not authorized in France and that advertising unauthorized gambling sites constitutes a criminal offense with fines of up to 100,000 euros ($114,000).
Prediction markets allow users to buy and sell contracts tied to the outcomes of future events, from elections and sporting events to economic data and geopolitical developments. Polymarket has surged in popularity over the past two years, with billions of dollars in trading volume, while drawing scrutiny from regulators over whether its event contracts constitute illegal gambling or unlicensed financial products.
Countries that blocked access to Polymarket include Singapore, Poland, Portugal, Hungary, Ukraine, Brazil and Indonesia. At press time, Polymarket said it was geoblocked in 36 regions.
France’s gambling regulator first shared plans to block the platform in November 2024 for failing to comply with national gambling laws.
ESMA adds 14 new CASPs to MiCA register as licensing slows
European authorities added 14 crypto companies to the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework register in the second post-deadline update, signaling a slower licensing pace after an initial surge.
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) updated its interim MiCA register on Thursday, bringing the total number of licensed crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) to 294.
The new entries include Ripple Payments Europe, the European payments arm of blockchain company Ripple, as well as Portugal-based Bison Bank and Croatia’s state-owned bank, Hrvatska poštanska banka (HPB).
The update follows ESMA’s previous register expansion on July 3, when the regulator added 37 CASPs in the first major post-deadline update after MiCA’s transitional period ended.
ESMA reported no changes to its registers for electronic money tokens (EMTs), a category of crypto-assets designed to maintain a stable value against a single official currency, or asset-referenced tokens (ARTs), which are linked to multiple assets such as currencies or commodities.
Balaji seeks Malaysia deal, threatens exit after Network School probe
Network School founder Balaji Srinivasan is seeking a memorandum of understanding with Malaysia after authorities probed his Forest City tech community over allegations it was hosting Israeli citizens using second passports.
Malaysia’s Home Affairs Ministry said Tuesday it was investigating Srinivasan’s start-up community in Johor following claims it included Israelis in violation of immigration laws. Initial checks found all 266 foreigners held valid documents.
Srinivasan said the agreement would give Network School legal certainty to continue investing in Malaysia. Without it, he said, the community could take its capital to countries that are more welcoming.
“I’d like to have a document which says not just abstractly that tech is welcome … but rather that we’re personally welcome,” Srinivasan said in a video directed at Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on Thursday.
Facts Only
* France’s Autorité nationale des jeux (ANJ) ordered internet service providers to block access to Polymarket.
* The ANJ stated that prediction websites are considered illegal gambling in France.
* Advertising unauthorized gambling sites constitutes a criminal offense with fines up to 100,000 euros ($114,000).
* Prediction markets allow users to trade contracts based on future events.
* Countries that blocked access to Polymarket include Singapore, Poland, Portugal, Hungary, Ukraine, Brazil, and Indonesia.
* The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) added 14 crypto companies to the MiCA register in a post-deadline update.
* The ESMA interim MiCA register total reached 294 licensed crypto-asset service providers (CASPs).
* New CASPs added included Ripple Payments Europe, Bison Bank, and Hrvatska poštanska banka (HPB).
* Balaji Srinivasan sought a memorandum of understanding with Malaysia following a government probe into Network School.
Executive Summary
Full Take
The sequence of regulatory actions demonstrates a friction point between rapidly evolving decentralized financial structures, cross-border digital markets, and established national legal frameworks. The blocking of Polymarket by France highlights the difficulty regulators face in categorizing novel prediction market activities—situations that exist within decentralized systems but fall outside traditional definitions of licensed financial products or gambling. This suggests a systemic challenge in applying existing jurisdiction to borderless digital asset trading mechanisms.
The concurrent regulatory activity within the EU, characterized by the addition of CASPs under MiCA, indicates an administrative lag where technological proliferation outpaces legislative capacity for formal oversight. The slow pace of licensing suggests that establishing coherent regulatory structures for crypto assets remains a contested process rather than a completed one. Furthermore, Srinivasan’s pursuit of legal certainty in Malaysia underscores how personal and community-level operations are now subject to geopolitical scrutiny layered atop digital identity concerns, linking technology's spread directly to international immigration law.
The underlying pattern suggests that the narrative of "crypto" is being managed through localized legal enforcement actions targeting specific perceived harms (gambling, financial product licensing, immigration status). The implication for cognitive sovereignty is that understanding these fragmented jurisdictional struggles is crucial; recognizing where regulatory authority resides and where it fails provides insight into the true boundaries of digital agency. What mechanisms exist to harmonize these disparate national views on decentralized activity? How should we assess the impact when platform governance operates outside state control?
Sentinel — Human
The text functions as an aggregation of separate news briefs concerning cryptocurrency regulation and related legal/immigration matters, exhibiting characteristics consistent with standard journalistic reporting rather than pure synthetic generation.