A few years ago, Shane Coplan, a young man who dropped out of New York University to pursue his dream of becoming a crypto investor, was struggling financially. He had to inventory the contents of his Lower East Side apartment and sell what he could to pay the rent.
But today, after a blockbuster deal with the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, Coplan, 27, has become the youngest self-made billionaire on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The story began in 2019, when Coplan, fed up with crypto fraud, began exploring economist Robin Hanson’s ideas about prediction markets and their role in improving society’s ability to anticipate the future.
With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Koplan saw the perfect opportunity to develop an app that would allow people, from the comfort of their homes, to bet on the outcomes of real-life events.
From his apartment bathroom, he launched the Polymarket platform in June 2020, according to Bloomberg, as seen by Bitcosat.
Problems with the authorities
But the road wasn’t paved with roses. The company’s quick and unorthodox approach to dealing with regulators led to its US users being banned for years, due to its failure to register as an official trading platform.
After the 2024 presidential election, which saw over $3 billion in trades on the platform, FBI agents raided Coplan’s apartment and confiscated his electronic devices.
Despite these setbacks, Intercontinental Exchange, owner of the New York Stock Exchange, announced it would invest approximately $2 billion in Polymarket, with a pre-investment market value of $8 billion, effectively catapulting Coplan into the billionaires’ club.
Polymarket allows users to bet on the outcomes of various events, from elections to Federal Reserve decisions, and even who will be Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
The platform has also begun attracting a new audience of sports fans by offering financial products tied to match results, allowing it to circumvent restrictions on sports betting in some US states.
Last August, the competing platform Kalshi entered the fray through a partnership with Robinhood, trading over two billion prediction contracts in the third quarter alone.
The deal raised concerns among traditional gaming companies, with shares of Caesars Entertainment and DraftKings falling by more than 5% immediately after the announcement.
From confrontation to legitimacy
In 2022, Polymarket paid a $1.4 million fine to settle a case with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) after it was accused of providing illegal trading services.
Despite its pledge to block American users, regulators suspected it was continuing its operations in the United States, leading to a post-election raid on Koplan’s apartment.
But last July, the Department of Justice and the CFTC dropped their investigations, and that same month, Polymarket acquired a licensed trading platform called QCEX for $112 million, enabling it to legally resume its operations in the United States.
The company had raised over $255 million before the ICE deal, from prominent investors such as Peter Thiel, founder of Founders Fund, Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, and Blockchain Capital.
Also among the backers is 1789 Capital, which invested in Polymarket ahead of the 2024 election and then reinvested this year.
As part of the deal, Donald Trump Jr., the son of the US president and a partner in 1789, joined the company as an advisor in August. He is also an advisor to the Kalshi platform.
These political connections could bolster the company’s future, especially since ICE CEO Jeffrey Sprecher is married to Kelly Loeffler, a former senator, head of the Small Business Administration, and a member of the Trump administration.
