UK regulators plan to explore relaxing the ban on prediction markets.

TechFlow reports that on Sept. 8, according to Cointelegraph, the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has recently contacted several prediction market companies to discuss easing the ban on related services for retail investors. Since the regulatory directive took effect in April 2019, UK authorities have strictly prohibited companies from selling, marketing, or distributing binary option products to retail consumers.

In a statement that year, the FCA emphasized that binary options are substantively classified as gambling, likening them to “gambling products disguised as financial instruments.” Because most cryptocurrency prediction platforms (such as Polymarket) rely on this type of binary options structure to attract users to place bets on various real-world events, this development indicates that regulators may be reevaluating existing restrictive policies.