It started with a battering ram. FBI agents kicked in CEO Shayne Coplan’s door. Then came the insider trading allegations. The Google guy. The special ops guy. Influencers getting paid from personal PayPal accounts. It was all over the news. Bonkers, sure. But while everyone was distracted by the drama, a quieter, weirder puzzle emerged. One nobody seemed to care about until now.
Where are the workers?
Why Polymarket Set Up Adventure One QSS
In 2022 the regulators said enough. Polymarket was an unlicensed derivatives exchange. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) slapped Blockratize, a key entity behind the platform, with a $1.4 million fine. The order was simple. Wind it down. Stop violating the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA). Stop taking money from US customers.
So what did they do?
They moved. Or rather, they said they moved. Enter Adventure One QSS. Registered in Panama in 2021. Officially based offshore. Its job was to take over the operations of Polymarket’s main platform. A different company, Polymarket US (oversighted by QCX LLC), launched in 2025. It’s the only arm that can legally serve Americans again.
But here’s the rub. The people running Adventure One QSS weren’t in Panama. They were in New York.
“We would have really liked to have known that the people purportedly in the Panama weren’t actually in the Panama,” one former CFTC lawyer said.
WIRED dug in. The evidence points to a disjointed reality. Staff listed under the Panamanian entity worked from Manhattan. Some lived in New York. None of them flew to Central America. None reported to bosses in Panama. Because there weren’t any. The Panamanian branch had no local colleagues. Just a paper trail.
Did Adventure One QSS Comply with Its Settlement Agreement?
This matters. Not because it’s neat, but because it might break the deal. The 2022 agreement wasn’t just a slap on the wrist. It demanded compliance with the CEA. Former employees describe a workplace where the lines blurred instantly. There was “no barrier” between the corporate arms. People who wrote code or set up event contracts for the offshore platform? They worked for Adventure One QSS on paper. They sat next to the Blockratize team. The bigger US-focused team handled marketing and the licensed US platform.
Nobody seemed sure why it was set up this way.
Panama is popular, obviously. Low taxes. High privacy. Easy to register. But Polymarket didn’t choose Panama for the tax break alone. They chose it to comply. Or at least, that was the plan.
Joseph Konizeski, a former chief trial attorney at the CFTC, explains what the settlement should have looked like. Hire offshore. Move the infrastructure offshore. Stop US funds. That’s the playbook. Polymarket allegedly hired offshore entities while keeping the humans onshore.
Was it legal? Maybe. Todd Phillips, a regulatory expert, called the setup odd. He admitted it might not violate any letter of the law, but he definitely raised an eyebrow.
The CFTC hasn’t accused them of anything yet. But that doesn’t mean the structure holds water.
Has the CFTC Changed Its Stance on Prediction Markets?
Let’s look at history. The regulators hate this stuff. They’ve chased companies like WorldWideMarkets, which claimed to be in the British Virgin Islands while operating out of New Jersey. They went after Binance. They charged Changpeng Zhao with running an illegal digital asset derivative exchange and failing at anti-money-laundering protocols. Zhao pleaded guilty. Big settlement.
But the world changes fast. Especially in politics.
In 2025, the landscape shifted. Donald Trump pardoned Zhao. The agency’s vibe changed from aggressive enforcement to… friendliness. By May 2025, a CFTC staff letter signaled a new approach to foreign futures and swap rules. Then, in July 2025, they dropped their investigation into Polymarket entirely. No charges. No fuss.
The Intercontinental Exchange even threw a $2 billion lifeboat at the situation. Well, technically at Blockratize. Not Adventure One QSS. That distinction matters to the lawyers, less to the workers who just want to know which desk to sit at.
So we’re left with a company that paid a fine to move offshore. Then stayed onshore. And the government decided not to look too closely. Why? Is it a loophole? Or is the regulation of prediction markets simply too complex for current enforcement strategies?
Nobody seems to have the final answer. Just a shell company, some New York employees, and a lot of unanswered questions hanging in the air.
