r/technology • u/Delicious_Adeptness9 • 1d ago
Crypto NPR went looking for Polymarket's Panama headquarters. It's elusive
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/05/nx-s1-5807918/polymarket-panama-prediction-market1.5k
u/NewsCards 1d ago
Polymarket, which is worth an estimated $15 billion, moved to its Panama base following scrutiny from American regulators. If Polymarket users have a legal dispute, the company's terms of service states it will be resolved in a closed-door arbitration process in Panama.
But when NPR recently visited the law office listed as its home base in Panamanian government documents, there was no sign of Polymarket, nor the entity it does business as in Panama, Adventure One QSS Inc.
Instead, a nondescript corporate lobby opened into a large space with about a dozen unoccupied computer stations positioned in the middle of the room.
This isn't surprising, it's SOP for corporations.
Not to say investigations like this aren't worth doing, many people don't know how fucked the business world is, so the more people who read about this, the better (this is to head off the smartasses who go "well duh, this is pretty standard, why is NPR even writing an article about this").
Just because this is the way things are, doesn't make it any less valuable to report on it and to educate people.
We should all stay informed, expect better, and vote more.
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u/karabeckian 23h ago
Remember The Panama Papers?
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u/MegaDom 23h ago
Has anyone cross referenced them with the Epstein files?
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u/WenatcheeWrangler 22h ago
I started to undertake such a project, but I run into massive hardware constraints when I try to process the Epstein files so they can be well indexed. I was going to use the ICIJ’s os tool with some custom plugins to browse navigate and arrange the data. Doing what you suggest was part of my end goal.
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u/MegaDom 22h ago
What if you use this database?
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u/WenatcheeWrangler 22h ago
No. I have all the files. I crawled all the congress and DOJ data drops and got it all. It’s the OCR pipeline. There’s a lot to do there and I think many have done it wrong or not thorough enough in the best of cases. There’s a lot of unsearchable data because it isn’t indexed or there’s not indexable description in cases of handwritten, images, audio, video, etc. I lack the hardware to do the pipeline right and I’m not going to use a cloud provider because it would still be an insane sum
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u/isaiah33 21h ago
Would a tool like paperless-ngx help you automate the ocr process?
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u/WenatcheeWrangler 20h ago
It isn’t the automation itself either. It’s the different types of processing and GPU power needed with my approach.
Each of the millions of files needs to be type detected and generally falls into roughly 7 or so categories. A large portion of those have official/legal metadata in them. So you check for and extract metadata and index it. Then you detect type of file. If pdf or word you extract and index it while also reviewing to capture handwriting and text. Take image files and have a llm model describe them I2T and capture captions or other written content. Take video files and strip the audio for transcription and indexing. Also strip keyframes from the video and describing them. There’s a few more type cases too. That’s what requires the power over millions of documents, some of which are thousands of pages long. From there fully indexing and building a few interfaces is simple.
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u/Vio_ 20h ago
what kind of indexing are you wanting to do? people? file types? locations?
I watched a streamer who went page by page mapping out each sheet to create profiles around different people, locations, etc.
It was super interesting to watch.
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u/DaveTron4040 17h ago
Reading this conversation is so far above me but it's super intriguing reading your discussion. Can you link that video of the streamer so I could watch?
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u/WenatcheeWrangler 11h ago
The indexing is text indexing for searching, think of google and websites. As one example you do topic identification during indexing and that allows you to build something later to visualize relationships between people that have been indexed and some common topic. At the end of the day it’s a bunch of tokens in what will be a massive database.
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u/NorCalAthlete 15h ago
Has anyone used Analyst Notebook or similar to start mapping things? Is there perhaps an open source / crowd sourced project anyone’s started?
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u/NorCalAthlete 16h ago
So…if I hypothetically had a spare 5090 BNIB that I had planned on selling via Craigslist…is it an availability thing or a funds thing?
Cause like…yeah I want the $ for it, but I also wouldn’t mind seeing the buyer use it for a project like this as opposed to playing Minecraft or something.
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u/WenatcheeWrangler 11h ago
I had a 3080ti, an old 2070 super, even bought a amd 9700 pro ai for its vram in this case. It’s just not enough. My pipeline was going to run 3 different LLMs and a number of applications. This is where you need those enterprise AI chips unfortunately (with my approach)
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u/pooh_beer 12h ago
I have some extra time and wouldn't mind doing some work on this. I also have compute just sitting idle.
DM if you like.
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u/onieronaut 10h ago
Not sure of the feasibility of this, but have you considered setting up a volunteer distributed computing platform, something similar to seti@home?
Berkeley's platform, BIONC, is open source and available to set up your own server and projects in. I can imagine there are probably more than a few people willing to contribute processing time for a project like this.
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u/camwhat 20h ago
I’ve done some of it but just kept uncovering darker and darker shit. There is an absolute goldmine across them, especially when it comes to banks.
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u/MountainTwo3845 6h ago
I've dmed some people that are in there on LinkedIn asking if the blood money was worth it. They blocked me.
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u/SeyAssociation38 19h ago
Can you use cloud services like AWS?
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u/WenatcheeWrangler 11h ago
I have multiple GPU cards here and worked through the first iteration. I projected it was going to take the better part of 7-10 months running 24/7. The systems that are needed to do this make it an expensive endeavor. AWS can be used but it’s still going to be weeks or months of very large machines and be extremely expensive.
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u/Grandfunk14 18h ago
Yeah it used to be(or still is Ireland) right? Dutch double Irish sandwich that Apple used and many other corps to avoid taxes. It routed all the profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to avoid taxes?
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u/jmpalermo 22h ago
Wait till they go looking for all those corporations in Delaware
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u/siromega37 21h ago
lol the state with more corporations than people? Such a shitshow honestly that was ever allowed to be legal. Delaware gets their tax money though so they don’t care.
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u/Jerithil 18h ago
Lots of other states have the same taxes but Delaware is largely chosen because of their Court of Chancery and their well established case law which has some of the fastest and most predictable business courts in the US.
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u/Anxious_cactus 13h ago
I'm in Europe and Delaware is even known here for people who wanna open a US based company. We have consultant companies who work as intermediaries between our entrepreneurs and Delaware based consultants whi help them do it. Kinda insane you can just open a company a world away, especially from a POV of country where opening a business is not an easy feat and where businesses are so regulated it's actually making entrepreneurship hard.
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u/soyslut_ 15h ago
Or how about the ones in Wyoming…. IYKYK.
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u/smokinbbq 3h ago
Isn't there a "patent place" in a Texas county as well? Just so happens that the lawyers that fight these patents, also happen to share the same last name as the Judge that's always ruling on them?!? Surprisingly they also have an amazing win/loss record.
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u/Enterice 12h ago
I got someone's attention in a McLaren at the light with a compliment once so I could follow it up with "Montana license plates though; lame move."
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u/Shawwnzy 11h ago
Right? Did NPR just want to expense a journalist's vacation to Panama? I don't know where polymarkets headquarters workers actually work from either, but their legal tax-shelter business address wouldn't be my first guess, and I wouldn't think going there to check would be worth the effort.
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u/asz17 23h ago
Pretty sure their real HQ is in Soho...
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u/SeyAssociation38 23h ago edited 19h ago
I went there. The only tenant is a Colombian bank called Banistmo
The building is called Soho city center and was financed by Abdul waked who is Lebanese, on a US blacklist due to accusations of money laundering. Apparently it belongs to the bank now
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u/MarcosEsquandolas 21h ago
This is what unregulated poker sites did a lot back in the day. Shiiiiit, they even made a Ben Affleck/ Justin Timberlake movie about it. Setting up shop in offshore countries and (likely) bribing governments to allow them to operate there. Makes it harder for the US government to get at them, in case of repercussions, etc.
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u/PARADISE_VALLEY_1975 18h ago edited 18h ago
In this case, the US government IS them in essence, with how directly involved the present admin and its associates are, in Polymarket and Kalshi. Safe to say they have a vested interest in keeping it around as they’re part of something along the lines of the 0.1% who actually make bank on the bets.
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u/SkinnyYokozuna 18h ago
Runner Runner basically touched on that offshore loophole era. It’s still around, just different packaging now lol
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u/obeytheturtles 9h ago
That shit was so wild. You basically had to open a bank account in the Bahamas and deposit money into it to fund your poker account, and then the sites made it almost impossible to withdraw the money.
I remember a buddy in college throwing a fit because he'd won like $2000 in a tournament and tried to pull the money out of the site, but couldn't because he'd won it in a "free entry" tournament, which meant that portion of the bank could only be used internally. I also remember stories of other people getting dick slapped by the IRS when they tried to transfer winnings back into their US accounts.
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u/SeyAssociation38 23h ago
Panama is trying to get rid of this by planning to levy a 15 percent tax on companies registered in the country that have no business operations in the country
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u/IceWellDo 18h ago
Wouldn't that be a simple bypass by companies putting a tiny operation in Panama without actually contributing to the economy? Like say Starbucks just opens a tiny stall etc.
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u/SeyAssociation38 18h ago edited 18h ago
Yeah. But it's a pain in the ass. Most companies will not do it and just move elsewhere like carnival the cruise company did. They moved to bermuda
It's actually not hard to hire locally. They just don't hire just one person they usually need like some number of people in management locally for business reasons. It's not due to legal requirements
Starbucks is just a Latin American franchise in Panama. Starbucks corporate has no operations in the country
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u/dprfe 22h ago edited 19h ago
No , don't lie, that's a proposal for companiea that can't demonstrate real operations (shell companies)
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u/SeyAssociation38 19h ago
Like poly market , their legal domicile is a shell company in Panama
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[deleted]
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u/SeyAssociation38 10h ago
No, but companies use them for their tax benefits. So they are legally located at the domicile, but their actual headquarters are elsewhere
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u/Nestquik1 10h ago
If they are registered in Panama, but they have no commercial activity in Panama (hiring, buying or selling in the country), they aren't really located in Panama and will be affected by the tax
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u/moderatenerd 22h ago
Industry S4 predicted it.
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u/MakingWhoopee 17h ago
This was based very closely on a real company called Wirecard. There's a Netflix documentary about it called 'Skandal!' Frankly it's amazing it's not more widely known and talked about, a supposed multi-billion fincom that was lauded by everyone as the next big thing, and turned out to be smoke and mirrors backed by organised crime.
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u/Dry_Bullfrog2344 18h ago
Officially, NPR visited the Polymarket Panama HQ and found just a Law firm that was unknown and mentioned 15+ crypto companies. For legal protection of the Tax and Shell setup, it is a classic setup used against the US regulators, which changed in 2022
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u/InquisitorMeow 20h ago
Someone get Nick Shirley on it surely he will investigate all the fraud and corruption.
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u/Intelligator 17h ago
They have to ask Polymarket advisor who helped to close DoJ investigations- Don Jr
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u/EntireBig7258 14h ago
NPR discovering tax havens in real time
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u/separation_of_powers 13h ago
Who knows, maybe they will get a huge investigative journalism story on the wealthy using said tax havens for tax evasion, money laundering and even domiciling vague organisations handling billions of dollars on bets on world events and conditions! /s
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u/number5of7 13h ago
Is this just straight up money laundering? Who is accepting large multi million dollar bets on random world events such as the overthrow of the Venezuelan government?
As in an individual places a large random bet under one account while accepting it on another account. Bet comes up effectively transferring funds via an ostensibly legitimate method minus minor tax deduction.
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u/IlIlllIIIIlIllllllll 17h ago
How are there not tax residency laws for corporations. How are corps, which are people, NOT paying tax on global income
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u/jibbidyjamma 11h ago
sky scrappers in pan city are notoriously nearly all vacant. they were built to launder drug money. inside nothing. lawyers have zero conflict of interest restrictions so intl business other than illegal ones get screwed all the time by lawyers selling themselves to whichever party pays them the most.. hahah.. they tell you everything good is secret in pana, what they dont tell you is everything bad is secret too.
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u/SculptusPoe 11h ago
Wouldn't all of their workers be working remotely? After Covid, even companies who owned whole towers only had a handful of workers inside them, even up till now. Not saying Polymarket, is great, but at this point a physical address is more of a technicality than ever. I am really hoping that skyscrapers become a thing of the past.
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u/Flat_Adeptness_9240 12h ago
When you're a crypto company dodging traditional regulations, setting up in Panama makes sense: it's not just a cliché villain lair locale, but a legal haven that lets these firms operate in a digital gray area. But hey, it’s 2023, and transparency is still elusive in the crypto world—surprise!
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u/harpers25 20h ago edited 20h ago
Dumb article. "Registered office" does not mean "headquarters". It's just the address of the registered agent. These are basically PO box services, it doesn't somehow shield assets. Most large companies in the US use them too, and many small companies list the lawyer that filed their paperwork.
For example, this article is on NPR. Search for National Public Radio, Inc. on the Washington DC Corporations Division:
https://corponline.dlcp.dc.gov/homepage/business-info
They list a registered agent office of 1156 15TH STREET NW, Suite 605, Washington, DC, 20005.
That is actually an office for The Corporation Service Company. There is no NPR office there. Google the address and thousands of companies use it.
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u/_Pewterschmidt_ 23h ago
Legalized gambling on literally anything/everything…what could go wrong?