Indonesia has blocked online prediction market Polymarket, just days after the site set up a betting market on whether President Prabowo Subianto would be removed from office before the end of his term.
In a statement released Friday, the Ministry of Communications and Digital said it had restricted access to the platform, which constituted a form of unregulated online gaming, the Jakarta Post reported.
“The government will not provide any space for any form of online gaming in Indonesia,” Alexander Sabar, director general of digital space supervision at the ministry, said in a statement. It said Polymarket and similar prediction markets “contain elements of monetary betting and speculation on uncertain events, which makes them violate current laws and regulations in Indonesia.”
Sabar added that the ban was imposed in order to protect citizens, referring to similar bans imposed by authorities in Singapore, Brazil and India.
Gambling is not legal in Indonesia, but online gambling sites, many of which are based overseas, have become a serious problem in recent years. Indonesians are estimated to have lost an estimated 327 trillion rupiah ($18.4 billion) gambling online in 2023, and authorities have struggled to block access to the sites.
Polymarket gained attention on social media in Indonesia last week after it began offering a prediction market on when Prabowo would be “president”. At press time, the site had bet $51,530 on the issue and predicted there’s an 11% chance he won’t survive the year. Prabowo took office in October 2024 and his presidential term expires in 2029.
Predictions of Prabowo’s departure appear to have been prompted by his announcement of a major plan for the government to take control of the country’s main raw materials exports, with the aim of increasing public revenue. This project has shaken international investors, many of whom are already unsettled by the unpredictable and unorthodox nature of Prabowo’s economic policies.
Created in 2020, Polymarket allows users to trade on the outcomes of future events, with prices reflecting the perceived probability of those outcomes. The site and its various clones have generated considerable controversy.
The site’s cryptocurrency-based betting model often violates local online gaming laws and financial regulations, but the concerns go deeper. One of the main concerns is that players on Polymarket could impact or manipulate larger financial markets. There have also been suspected cases of insider trading, in which government officials took advantage of their access to confidential information to obtain windfall profits in prediction markets. For example, nine connected Polymarket accounts reportedly recently won more than $2.4 million betting on the timing of U.S. military actions in the Middle East, with a barely believable 98% win rate.
For these reasons, more than 30 other countries have banned Polymarket so far. Indonesia became the second site in Southeast Asia to do so, after Singapore added the site to the Gambling Regulatory Authority’s blacklist in January 2025, as part of a crackdown on unlicensed online gaming. The site is also unavailable in Myanmar due to current US sanctions against the country.