Shayne Coplan

The Polymarket founder built a $9bn empire on bets on politics and war

- writes Fred Harter

In November 2024, eight days after Donald Trump won the US presidential election, the FBI battered down the door of Shayne Coplan’s New York City apartment and seized his electronic devices. The raid was part of a criminal investigation into whether Coplan’s company, Polymarket, was allowing American users to place bets without a licence.

Less than a year later, Polymarket secured a $2bn investment from the owners of the New York Stock Exchange, valuing it at $9bn. Aged 27, Coplan became the youngest self-made billionaire. The company had been catapulted “from a writeoff” into the heart of Wall Street.

Polymarket is a prediction market – platforms that allow punters to bet on practically anything, from the sartorial choices of Volodymyr Zelensky to the Oscars. They are surging in popularity, tapping into the intersection of viral social media trends, cryptocurrency and the seemingly endless appetite of contemporary online culture for gamifying every possible aspect of reality. In the last week of February, $2.4bn was wagered on the site, up from $1.8bn a week earlier.

A large chunk of this money is being staked on geopolitics. Before Delta Force commandos snatched Nicolds Maduro in January, an account made bets on Polymarket worth $34,000 on whether the Venezuelan leader would be ousted. It pocketed $400,000. The pattern repeated this month, when someone made $553,000 on bets about Iran just before its supreme leader, ‘Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed by an Israeli airstrike.

These well-timed bets have raised questions about insider trading. It is possible that these users got incredibly lucky. But many suspect that officials cashed in on their knowledge of top-secret war plans. The fact that Polymarket accepts only crypto, which offers a layer of anonymity, would seem to make it particularly appealing for this purpose. Democratic congressman.

Ritchie Torres has called these markets a “cesspool of corruption”.