Polymarket, the prediction market platform with ties to Donald Trump Jr., has an unusually convoluted corporate structure that may have violated the terms of a federal settlement. According to a WIRED investigation, the company’s offshore entity Adventure One QSS, based in Panama, had employees working from the United States—directly contradicting the offshore compliance arrangement designed to satisfy regulators.
The Offshore Structure
In 2022, federal regulators said Polymarket was operating as an unlicensed derivatives exchange. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined the associated corporate entity Blockratize $1.4 million and ordered it to “wind down” offering markets that violated the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA). Prior to the ban, Adventure One QSS was established in Panama to take over operational responsibilities for Polymarket’s flagship platform, as first reported by Sportico. A separate US-based company, Polymarket US, was formed in 2025 and is overseen by QCX LLC.
Regulatory Settlement and Compliance Questions
Under the settlement, the company was required to stop violating CFTC regulations. The location of Adventure One’s staff became relevant to that agreement. “We would have really liked to know that the people purportedly in Panama weren’t actually in Panama,” a former CFTC lawyer told WIRED. NPR had previously reported that Polymarket’s Panama City office in a skyscraper was empty and the company had no Panama-based staff.
Employee Accounts and Corporate Reality
Former Polymarket employees told WIRED that some Adventure One QSS staffers resided in New York, including some who worked from the company’s Manhattan-based headquarters. These employees did not travel to Panama, report to anyone in Panama, or interact with Panama-based colleagues—because, they say, there were no colleagues there. Instead, the Adventure One QSS staff was spread across several countries, including the US.
One former staffer said that workers in New York who “touched code,” set up event contracts, or otherwise dealt with the offshore platform were all technically working for Adventure One QSS, “but there was no barrier” dividing the corporate arms in practice. The initial incorporation papers in 2021 did name Panama residents, including lawyer Mario Ernesto García de Paredes as “resident agent,” Diana Munoz as president (for two months, replaced by Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, based in New York), and Omar Camargo as secretary. But their roles are now unclear.
| Entity | Claimed Location | Actual Staff Location (per WIRED/NPR) |
|---|---|---|
| Adventure One QSS | Panama | US (New York), other countries |
| Polymarket US | US | US |
| Blockratize | US | US |
This structure raises serious questions about compliance with the CFTC settlement and the company’s broader governance. For enterprise technology leaders, the case highlights the risks of offshore entities that are not operationally separate—a lesson applicable to any company using complex legal structures in regulated industries.
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