Written by: Thejaswini M A
Translated by: Saoirse, Foresight News
June 2020: A 21-year-old poor kid launched a betting platform from his own bathroom during the pandemic.
November 2024: FBI agents raided his apartment, confiscated his phone, but left without pressing any charges.
October 2025: The parent company of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) invested $2 billion in his company.
This is the five-year trajectory of Shayne Coplan’s life—from counting the items in his Lower East Side apartment in New York, calculating what to sell to pay rent, to becoming the youngest self-made billionaire tracked by Bloomberg.
How did someone with “nothing to lose” build a business that even regulators wanted to destroy?
Why did a platform banned in its home country attract the favor of Wall Street’s most powerful institutions?
These details are crucial because they reveal the real operational logic behind what seems “impossible.” For this reason, Coplan’s story shouldn’t be reduced to just a timeline—which is also why we wrote this article.
The Epiphany from a White Paper
In 2019, Shayne Coplan was completely disillusioned with cryptocurrency.
Two and a half years after dropping out of New York University (NYU), all his entrepreneurial attempts had ended in failure. The once-promising “cryptocurrency revolution” had, in his eyes, become a “crypto scam”—these projects weren’t about creating value, but about extracting money.
Penniless and frustrated, he watched as the industry he once believed in turned into a “casino” for scammers.
So, he stopped his “busy but fruitless” entrepreneurial pace and began to read deeply: academic papers, obscure research reports, and especially economist Robin Hanson’s work on “prediction markets.”
The core theory of prediction markets is that the market’s ability to aggregate information surpasses that of experts, polls, or any traditional forecasting method. When people put money behind their opinions, collective wisdom reveals the truth.
This theory has been validated academically: since 1988, the Iowa Electronic Markets have consistently outperformed traditional polls in prediction accuracy. But such platforms have always been limited to niche circles, full of academic flavor, and hard for the general public to access.
Coplan keenly spotted this market gap.
“Such a good idea shouldn’t just stay in a white paper,” he wrote in an article.
Over the next year, he devoted himself to studying the operational mechanisms of prediction markets, the reasons they hadn’t scaled, and the conditions needed for mass adoption. Even as his bank account balance dwindled, he persisted with a full year of research.
Most people would have found a job to make a living by then.
At that moment, the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe.
The Entrepreneurial Starting Point in a “Bathroom Office”
March 2020, the world went into lockdown.
People were trapped at home, glued to their screens, desperate to know what the future held: Would schools reopen? Would a vaccine be developed? How long would the pandemic last?
Traditional institutions like governments, health agencies, and the media struggled to provide reliable answers. Everyone had their own opinions, but no one could be sure of the truth.
Coplan clearly seized this opportunity.
At 21, broke and two and a half years out of school with nothing to show for it, he began building a platform—what he later called a project started in a “makeshift bathroom office” in his Lower East Side apartment in New York.
In June 2020, the prediction market platform Polymarket officially launched.
@Shayne Coplan
The logic of the platform is simple: users bet with cryptocurrency on the outcomes of real-world events. Each question corresponds to a “market,” where users can buy shares representing “yes” or “no”—if the prediction is correct, each share can be redeemed for $1; if wrong, it’s worth $0. The market price itself reflects the collective judgment of the probability of the event.
For example, if a share trades at 65 cents, it means the public believes there’s a 65% chance the event will occur.
Pure information aggregation, no expert interpretation, no media manipulation—just “opinions backed by money.”
Building a prediction market requires solving a series of technical problems: data feeds, market outcome resolution, user experience, and establishing trust among strangers—after all, users bet on everything from elections to pop culture.
More importantly, it needs to find a survival space in the regulatory “gray area.”
To some regulators, prediction markets look like “gambling”; to others, they resemble “financial derivatives.” Their legal status remains ambiguous.
Coplan’s coping strategy: build the platform first, then seek regulatory approval.
This strategy worked for the first two years.
In 2022, Polymarket began to attract widespread attention.
The platform’s trading volume kept growing, and users were making predictions on everything from Oscar winners to economic indicators, gradually becoming a “credible alternative” to traditional forecasting methods.
Soon after, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) came knocking.
Regulators accused Polymarket of “offering illegal trading contracts” and “operating an unregistered exchange.” Ultimately, the platform settled for $1.4 million (without admitting or denying the allegations).
More crucially: Polymarket agreed to block all U.S. domestic users.
This restriction created a paradoxical situation: the platform could operate globally, but not in the U.S.; international users could bet on the U.S. election, but American citizens couldn’t participate in predictions about their own country’s politics.
But regulators suspected that Polymarket was still secretly allowing U.S. users to access the platform.
2024 Election: Validation of Predictive Power and Regulatory Turmoil
In 2024, the U.S. presidential election approached.
Polymarket became impossible to ignore: users bet over $3.5 billion on the election outcome. The platform consistently showed Trump in the lead, while traditional polls showed a close race.
A French trader reportedly wagered tens of millions of dollars on Trump’s victory. When Trump ultimately won, this trader reportedly netted $85 million.
Polymarket’s prediction accuracy ultimately surpassed that of traditional polls.
@defillama.com
Then, a raid occurred.
November 2024, one week after the election ended.
Before dawn, FBI agents raided Coplan’s New York apartment, confiscating his phone and electronic devices. At the time, 26-year-old Coplan was neither arrested nor charged.
He responded on X (formerly Twitter): “New phone, who dis?” (implying his old phone was confiscated)
Polymarket issued a statement calling it “an obvious act of political retaliation by an outgoing administration.”
The U.S. Department of Justice and the CFTC both launched investigations soon after.
This platform, which had just proven its predictive power, suddenly faced scrutiny from multiple federal agencies overnight.
But Coplan didn’t stop; he continued to push the platform forward.
And in the U.S., situations often change unexpectedly: the investigation launched during the Biden administration was abruptly halted after the Trump administration took office.
In July 2025, the Department of Justice and CFTC officially ended their investigations, bringing no charges or additional penalties.
That same month, Polymarket acquired QCEX—a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse—for $112 million. This acquisition allowed Coplan to achieve his core goal since the 2022 settlement: to find a framework for the platform’s legal operation in the U.S.
In August 2025, Donald Trump Jr., son of the former president, joined Polymarket as an advisor through his investment firm 1789 Capital. The company, once raided during one administration, now had the support of the next administration’s family members.
In September 2025, Polymarket’s parent company Blockratize filed documents with the U.S. SEC, mentioning “other warrants”—a phrase that usually signals a token launch in crypto projects.
Coplan posted “$POLY” on X, along with $BTC and $ETH icons. The hint was clear: the platform was about to launch a token.
@Shayne Coplan
In October 2025, the long-awaited news was finally announced: Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, invested $2 billion in Polymarket at a pre-money valuation of $8 billion.
ICE CEO Jeffrey Sprecher’s wife is Kelly Loeffler—a former senator, former head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, and a Trump cabinet member.
The partnership also included a plan: ICE would distribute Polymarket’s data globally and collaborate on financial tokenization projects.
A project started by a penniless dropout in a bathroom eventually became part of Wall Street’s mainstream system.
At 27, Shayne Coplan successfully entered the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, becoming the youngest self-made billionaire tracked by the index.
@Bloomberg
What Problem Did Polymarket Actually Solve?
Polymarket overcame the hurdles that previous prediction markets failed to break through.
Early prediction platforms (such as Intrade) had already proven the model’s feasibility—Intrade accurately predicted the 2008 and 2012 U.S. elections but shut down in 2013—yet these platforms remained niche, with complex mechanisms and an academic feel, making them hard to go mainstream.
Polymarket, on the other hand, made prediction markets as easy to understand as “entertainment.”
Its interface is simple, and its questions cover a wide range: from serious topics (Will the Fed cut rates?) to lighthearted ones (Will Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce get engaged in 2025?). This mix greatly increased user engagement.
More importantly, the platform precisely captured the shift in information consumption habits.
Traditional media tells you “what to think,” polls tell you “what others think,” but Polymarket tells you “the opinions people are willing to back with money.”
For users increasingly distrustful of traditional institutions, this distinction is crucial.
Today, Polymarket has over 1.3 million users, with a cumulative trading volume of about $20 billion and monthly trading volume consistently above $1 billion.
The 2024 election fully demonstrated the platform’s potential: when mainstream polls showed a close race, Polymarket users consistently leaned toward a Trump victory, and the final result validated this prediction.
Although some debate whether the platform aggregates “real wisdom” or merely reflects “the political preferences of the crypto user base,” the result undoubtedly confirms the core claim of prediction markets—opinions backed by money are often closer to the truth.
Of course, as a prediction market, Polymarket occasionally has to answer some “philosophical” questions, such as “What is a suit?” In June 2025, bettors wagered nearly $79 million on whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would wear a suit before July. When photos emerged of Zelenskyy at a NATO meeting—wearing a matching black jacket and trousers, a collared shirt, but sneakers—the internet exploded: do the shoes disqualify it as a suit? The fabric matches but the cut is casual—is it a suit? The platform invited fashion commentator Derek Guy as an expert, and his conclusion was “it both is and isn’t a suit,” which solved nothing. The outcome of this market ultimately sparked two rounds of controversy. This is the price of “trustless, decentralized verification of real-world events”: in the end, a “blockchain oracle” might be needed to arbitrate the semantics of clothing, with $79 million hanging in the balance.
The Future: Tokens, Challenges, and Greater Ambitions
At 27, Shayne Coplan has already proven his core belief—that prediction markets have significant value.
The token hints indicate that the platform’s next phase has begun. The launch of the $POLY token will push Polymarket from an “experimental prediction market” to a “complete crypto ecosystem.”
Token holders may gain governance rights, a share of fees, special platform access, and other benefits. Specific details have not yet been announced, but the direction is clear.
However, the token strategy also carries risks: it could once again attract regulatory attention just as Polymarket has gained legitimacy; it could also alienate users who see the platform as a “prediction tool” rather than a “crypto project.”
But from a strategic perspective, the decision is reasonable: crypto projects issue tokens to decentralize ownership, incentivize user participation, and align the interests of the platform and its users.
If prediction markets truly represent “the future of information discovery,” then tokens may accelerate their adoption and reward early supporters.
Coplan’s recent plans are quite pragmatic: every Sunday, he watches football games while testing the beta version of Polymarket’s new U.S. app.
The work continues, bets keep pouring in, and the market keeps revealing what people “truly believe.”
From a small project in a bathroom to a company valued at $9 billion, Coplan took five years.
The next five years will determine whether prediction markets can achieve an even greater breakthrough—becoming “the new infrastructure of collective wisdom,” or even “the marketplace for truth itself.”
For now, this 27-year-old billionaire is focused on “getting things right.”
The bathroom office is long gone, financial troubles are resolved, and regulatory disputes are temporarily settled.
What has carried him this far is still that original entrepreneurial spirit: prediction markets are a good idea and shouldn’t just stay in a white paper.
The market has proven him right.
What the future holds, only time will tell.
