The collaboration is designed to support dollar-denominated settlement infrastructure for Polymarket users, the companies said in a Thursday (Feb. 5) news release.
Polymarket now uses Bridged USDC (USDC.e) on Polygon as collateral for its trades. Under this partnership, the company will shift to USDC in the coming months.
“Native USDC is issued by Circle’s regulated affiliates and is redeemable 1:1 for US dollars, providing a more capital efficient, scalable, and institutionally aligned settlement standard as Polymarket’s platform continues to grow,” the release said.
Shayne Coplan, founder and CEO of Polymarket, added that using USDC “supports a consistent, dollar-denominated settlement standard” that strengthens market integrity and reliability as participation on the platform grows.
According to the release, Circle is part of a growing group of financial and market infrastructure players working with Polymarket as it works to create a “transparent, institutional-grade” prediction market.
“This collaboration reflects broader momentum across the digital asset ecosystem toward integrating payment stablecoins into trusted, onchain financial systems, bringing traditional financial standards of transparency and settlement efficiency to internet-native markets,” the release added.
The partnership is happening as prediction markets are growing in popularity and facing regulatory pushback, as PYMNTS wrote earlier this week.
“From the perspective of states, sports betting is a lucrative, tightly regulated industry that generates tax revenue,” that report said. “Allowing parallel markets to operate under a different legal framework risks undermining that system. From this perspective, prediction markets can look less like innovative information platforms and more like regulatory arbitrage. For context, 39 U.S. states allow sports betting, while seven states allow online casinos.”
Nevada, that report added, has taken one of the hardest stances, temporarily banning Polymarket from offering sports and event contracts to residents outright, including during the Super Bowl. Other states are testing similar theories via litigation and administrative actions, with “Massachusetts emerging as a bellwether.”
“Still, despite regulatory tremors, the events contract market is enjoying a relative period of growth and attention,” PYMNTS noted in a separate report last month. “Robinhood Chairman and CEO Vlad Tenev said in November that since launching prediction markets on its platform in 2024, the company had doubled its volume of contracts each quarter, reaching north of 2 billion.”
