What you have to prove about yourself to trade

Ten venues sit in prediction market venues, and every one of them wants something from you before it will let you take a position. What they want has almost nothing in common. One wants a signature from a browser extension and no name at all. One wants a passport photographed live through its own camera, and may come back afterwards for a utility bill and an explanation of where the money came from.

All of it gets called "KYC", and the most expensive misunderstanding in this category is that connecting a wallet is a lightweight version of the same thing. It is not a lightweight version. It is a different act, it proves a different fact, and the two are not points on one scale.

This page is what the ten venues actually ask, at which step they ask it, and what the absence of the question costs you — because that second half is the part that is usually left out.

How it works

A connected wallet proves control of a key

When a self-custody venue says you are "signed in", what happened is that your wallet produced a signature over a message and the site checked it against an address. That proves one fact: whoever was at the keyboard held the private key for that address. It does not carry a name, a date of birth, a country or an age, and nothing was verified by anybody — there is no issuer, no record and no counterparty to the claim. The address is the account, which is also why losing the key is losing the account. Where your key lives is the page for what that means once software is holding it for you.

A venue built this way can still refuse you, and three of the four that ask for no documents do. What it refuses on is location and a set of statements you make about yourself by clicking, not on anything it checked.

A regulated venue runs a customer identification program, and the list is in a rule

On the US side the list is not a product decision. Commission Regulation 17 CFR 42.2 requires every futures commission merchant and introducing broker to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act and with the identification rule the Commission and the Treasury issued jointly at 31 CFR 1026.220, which says a customer identification program must be part of the firm's anti-money-laundering program. That rule is where the familiar four items come from. Before opening an account the firm must obtain, at a minimum:

1. Name.
2. Date of birth, for an individual.
3. Address — for an individual, a residential or business street address, with a narrow carve-out for APO and FPO boxes and for someone with no street address of their own.
4. An identification number — for a US person, a taxpayer identification number; for a non-US person, a taxpayer identification number, or a passport number and country of issuance, or an alien identification card number, or another government-issued document evidencing nationality or residence and bearing a photograph.

The rule then requires the firm to verify those items within a reasonable time before or after the account is opened, either through documents — for an individual, "an unexpired government-issued identification evidencing nationality or residence and bearing a photograph or similar safeguard, such as a driver's license or passport" — or through non-documentary methods such as checking the information against a consumer reporting agency or a public database, or through both. It also requires written procedures for what happens when the firm cannot form a reasonable belief that it knows who you are: when an account should not be opened, what you may do while verification is pending, and when the account should be closed.

This matters here because it names precisely who is bound. Robinhood's event-contract page carries the disclosure that event contracts are offered by Robinhood Derivatives, LLC, "a registered futures commission merchant with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and Member of National Futures Association (NFA)", routed to KalshiEX LLC, ForecastEX, LLC or Rothera Exchange and Clearing LLC. The rule above is therefore the floor for that route, whichever exchange the order ends up on. It is also the floor for every broker that reaches ForecastEx, because ForecastEx does not let you have an account at all: Rule 301(a)(4) of its rulebook, version date 17 September 2026, says membership "is not offered for personal accounts of natural persons", and Rule 301(a)(1) requires an applicant transacting for customers to be an FCM registered with the NFA.

And then there is the layer above the rule

The four items are a floor, not a ceiling, and every venue that asks for them asks for more. Kalshi's help centre article on verification, dated 30 June 2026 and read on 21 September 2026, is the most specific published example in the category: a driver's licence or a passport; a live photo of the physical ID taken through the app, with an upload from the camera roll or a picture of a screen explicitly rejected; name and date of birth matching the ID exactly; official documentation for a legal name change before verification can proceed; and no commercial addresses and no PO boxes. The same article says Kalshi "is regulated by the CFTC, which may require additional documents such as proof of address, employment information, or source of funds."

Note what that article does and does not do. It names the categories of extra document, and it does not name the rule it is acting under — it says only "our regulatory obligations under United States law". Kalshi is a designated contract market that clears through its own clearing house rather than a futures commission merchant taking your order, so 31 CFR 1026.220 is not the provision that reaches its direct members, and this page could not find the provision that does. Treat the published list as the venue's own description of what it will ask you for, which is what a reader needs anyway, and not as a citation to a rule.

The four moments a check can arrive

The step at which the question comes is a bigger practical difference than the contents of the question, because it decides whether your money is inside when you find out.

1. Before you can trade at all — at account approval, by somebody who is not the venue. Robinhood requires a separate Robinhood Derivatives account on top of the brokerage account, applied for and approved; its restrictions page, read on 21 September 2026, lists "No Robinhood Derivatives account: You must apply and be approved" first among the reasons event-contract trading is unavailable, and adds that a pending B-Notice or another restriction on the account blocks it too. ForecastEx is the same shape taken further: the rulebook forbids you from being a member, so the identity check is whatever your futures commission merchant runs, under that firm's onboarding, in the jurisdiction that firm is licensed in. This is the cleanest failure mode of the four — you find out before any money moves — and it is also the one where the venue cannot tell you why, because the venue did not decide.

2. Before your first deposit. Polymarket US documents the sequence explicitly: create an account with Google or Apple, choose a username, provide full name, date of birth and residential address, then verify. Most users are verified automatically; where the automatic check fails you are asked to upload a government-issued ID and complete a selfie check, and manual review is quoted at three to five business days. The documentation states plainly that KYC must be complete before you can deposit funds or trade. Kalshi sits here too. This is the honest arrangement: the wall is before the money, and if you fail it you have lost time and nothing else.

3. Only past a threshold, with the money already in. The worst of the four, and the one nobody warns you about at signup. Futuur states it in its own help centre, in a single sentence read on 21 September 2026: "if your cumulative lifetime deposits exceed the equivalent of 2000 US Dollars (USD), Futuur will require this as part of its legally mandated KYC requirements", where "this" is proof of identity and address. PredictIt has a different threshold with the same shape — its terms make you agree you are a US Person, and "when you have made more profit than the U.S. limit for reporting income, you must provide your valid Social Security Number (SSN) or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN)". The consequence for not doing so is spelled out and it is not a soft one: the account "being frozen for future investments and withdrawals, or other actions that may include forfeiture of your funds." A threshold check is a check you pass by being small, which means you meet it at the exact moment you stop being small. That second one is an identity question standing in for a tax question, and what each venue does with the number once it has it is a separate page: who sends you a tax form.

4. At withdrawal, or at any time the venue decides. The reserved right, which almost every venue holds whether or not it advertises one. PredictIt's terms say that before releasing funds it "has the right to require additional personal identification and/or financial information to verify your identity, age, location or other details". Futuur reserves proof of identity and address "at any time at its discretion", with no threshold attached in that direction. Limitless's terms of service, last updated 15 September 2026, reserve the right "to require You to provide proof of age, identity, and/or eligibility at any time", and run no identity check in the ordinary signup at all — the account is a wallet connection. Polymarket has the most concrete version of this, and it is not in its terms or its help centre: the site itself serves a panel headed "Self Certification Required" asking for a form of ID — "Passport, License, or Other" — and a "Recent utility bill, bank bill, or phone bill in a non-restricted jurisdiction", with the notice "Please respond within 14 days or your account will be put into close only mode." Read out of the site's own interface text on 21 September 2026; it is not published as an article, so there is no document date to give it.

Myriad is the one venue of the ten whose terms of use, updated 13 January 2026 and read on 21 September 2026, name no identity check anywhere in the sections governing access and eligibility. What they carry instead is a list of nineteen prohibited territories, a VPN prohibition, and representations you make that you are not a resident, national or agent of any of them.

Being refused is not the same as being asked

These two get merged constantly, and they fail in different places for different reasons.

An identity check is a question about who you are, run by a firm that is obliged to ask and that keeps the answer. A geographic restriction is a question about where you are or where you live, and it can be enforced by a location check, by a clause you agreed to, by a payment rail that will not reach you, or by a single state declining the product. The two are independent in both directions:

• Polymarket asks for no documents at signup and refuses 39 countries outright, plus four Canadian provinces and three regions of Ukraine, on a help-centre page dated 14 August 2026 — a thorough refusal with no identity check behind it.
• Polymarket US verifies every customer before a first deposit and serves only the United States — a thorough identity check with a narrow map.
• Futuur asks nothing under 2,000 US dollars of cumulative deposits and still bars residents of a long list from using real money at all.

Four separate restriction mechanisms, each with its own document and its own remedy, are set out on the prediction market venues page and traced through the primary sources in why a venue is unavailable where you are. If what stopped you was a map rather than a document request, that is the page you want; nothing on this one will move it.

What you give up when nobody asks

This is the half that gets dropped, and dropping it turns a page like this into an advertisement for anonymity. The trade is real in both directions and it is worth naming the second side precisely.

There is usually no regulated intermediary, because the absence of the check and the absence of the intermediary are the same fact. The identity question exists because a firm is obliged to ask it. A venue that is not obliged to ask is a venue that is not the kind of firm the obligation attaches to — and the obligations that come in the same bundle are the ones you would want if something went wrong. Polymarket's terms of use, effective 11 August 2026, say it about as plainly as a document can: neither the company nor the software's developer "operates a cryptoasset or derivatives exchange platform or offer trade execution or clearing services and, therefore, neither has control concerning your transactions", the company "has no authority over and does not take possession or custody of your cryptoassets at any time", and it "is unable to assist with transactions". Compare the other end of the category, where ForecastEx's rulebook makes the exchange the counterparty to both legs of every pairing and its clearing house stands behind the position.

There is no addressee for a complaint. On a venue where nobody verified who you are, nobody verified who anybody else is either, and the dispute path is whatever the protocol provides. Which matters most at resolution, where the money is actually decided: who decides the outcome is four completely different answers across these ten venues, and the venues that ask you for nothing are largely the ones where the answer is a bonded proposal and a token-holder vote rather than a named team at a firm with a regulator above it.

Recovery runs through a key you hold, and only through it. A custodial venue that knows who you are can restore your access when you lose a phone, because it has an identity to match you against — that identity is the thing the check produced. A wallet-based venue cannot, because it never held one. The absence of a custodian is the absence of an appeal, and where your key lives is where that plays out in practice.

None of this makes a no-check venue the wrong choice. It makes it a choice with a different set of things that can go wrong, and the things that can go wrong on it are concentrated in the moments after something has already gone wrong.

Why this is a page and not a filter

The obvious thing to build instead of this page is a listing — "venues with no identity check" — and the numbers say it does not exist at either size.

Measured across the whole catalogue on 21 September 2026: 52 of 60 cards carry availability.kyc_required: false, which is 87% of the corpus. This site's rule for a collection is that it must discriminate — at least eight cards and at most half the corpus — and 87% is not a selection, it is the catalogue with a handful of cards removed. The flag reads that way because most of the corpus is not a venue at all: an API, a client library, a dashboard and an MCP server grant no access and block none, and their flag describes the software rather than a door.

Narrow it to the door, and it fails the other bound. Among the ten cards in prediction market venues, four carry kyc_required: false — Polymarket, Limitless, Myriad and Futuur — against six that carry true. Four is below the eight-card minimum, so there is no listing at that scale either. That result is not specific to this flag: measured across this catalogue, no category-by-flag pair passes both bounds, because inside a category a flag is usually close to universal.

So the question a reader asks constantly has no page anywhere in the listing structure of the site, which is exactly the gap a guide is for. The narrow form of the query is still a link — the venues listing filtered on the flag — and the reason that link is not enough is everything above: the flag is a boolean, and what a reader needs to know is when the question arrives.

What it costs

In time, on the venues that ask up front. Polymarket US quotes most verifications as instant and manual review at three to five business days, during which you cannot deposit or trade. Kalshi publishes no turnaround figure. The expensive case in both is not the wait, it is the rejection loop: a mismatch between your typed name and your ID, a middle name in the wrong field, a legal name change without documentation, or a photo of a screen rather than a live capture, each of which sends you back to the start.

In data, and the retention is longer than the account. The identification rule requires the firm to keep all the identifying information it obtained for five years after the account is closed, and to keep its description of the document it relied on — type, number, place of issuance, dates — plus its record of how it verified you and how it resolved each discrepancy, for five years after each record was made. Closing the account does not end the record; it starts the clock on it.

In capital that cannot move, on the venues that ask late. This is the number that makes step three of the four worth avoiding. A threshold check catches you with the deposits already made: Futuur's fires past the equivalent of 2,000 US dollars in cumulative lifetime deposits, PredictIt's past the US income-reporting threshold, and PredictIt's stated consequence covers withdrawals as well as new positions, with forfeiture named as possible. Polymarket's self-certification notice gives 14 days before the account goes close-only, which means open positions can be closed and nothing new opened. In each case the cost is denominated in locked capital and time, not in fees — and it is invisible right up to the moment it applies.

In who you can complain to, on the venues that never ask. No fee is charged for this and it is the largest number on the page when it lands. See the section above; the counterparty documentation is the place to read it, not the marketing.

Nothing, for reading. Every venue in this category publishes prices without an account, and the public market-data endpoints answer unauthenticated. If the question is what something is trading at, none of this applies to you.

What you can do about it

Work out which of the four moments you are facing before you fund anything. If you cannot apply, it is an account-approval decision at a broker. If you can see the deposit screen but not use it, it is a pre-deposit check. If you are funded and trading and a request arrives, it is a threshold or a reserved right. The first is somebody else's decision, the second costs time, and the last two cost access to money you have already committed.

Read the reserved-rights clause, not the signup flow. The signup flow tells you what is being asked today. The clause tells you what can be asked tomorrow, and on three of the four no-check venues in this catalogue that clause exists and is unbounded. Search the terms for "identity", "verification", "proof of" and "at any time"; it is two minutes and it is the whole difference between "does not ask" and "has not asked yet."

Find the threshold, in both directions. Ask two questions of any venue that does not verify at signup: at what cumulative deposit, balance or profit does a check trigger, and is there a separate rule for withdrawals? Futuur publishes the first (2,000 US dollars of cumulative lifetime deposits) and states that the second has no threshold at all. Where the venue publishes neither, assume the withdrawal is where you find out.

Assemble the documents before you need them, not during a hold. For the regulated venues that is a government photo ID that has not expired, a residential address that is neither commercial nor a PO box, a name that matches the ID exactly, and — for a US person — a taxpayer identification number. For the reactive checks, add a recent utility, bank or phone bill in your own name and in a jurisdiction the venue serves. A 14-day clock is not long enough to order a replacement document.

Match the venue to what you can actually prove, before the fee schedule. If you can complete a US identity check, the venues that run one are open to you and the rest of the decision is fees, resolution and depth. If you cannot — no taxpayer identification number, no address in a served jurisdiction, a document your name no longer matches — then the no-check venues are the ones to read, and the section above on what you give up is the part of that reading that matters. What a trade actually costs is the next page either way.

Re-check on the documents, and expect them to move without notice. Three of the sources underneath this page changed within the last eight months: Limitless's terms on 15 September 2026, Polymarket's on 11 August 2026, Kalshi's verification article on 30 June 2026. None of those generated an email to users. The dates on each card in this category record when we last read the venue's own terms, and re-reading them is the only check that works.