Just five years ago, Shayne Coplan was selling his belongings in a cramped New York apartment to make rent.
Today, at 27, he’s the youngest billionaire on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, thanks to a blockbuster deal that values his creation – Polymarket – at $8 billion.
The transformation came after Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, announced plans to invest up to $2 billion in Polymarket, the fast-growing prediction platform Coplan built from scratch during the pandemic.
A Startup Born From Frustration
Polymarket’s origins are as unconventional as its founder’s story. Disillusioned by crypto’s scams and hype, Coplan became fascinated with the economic concept of prediction markets – systems that crowdsource probabilities by letting people trade on real-world outcomes.
When the world shut down in 2020, he coded the first version of Polymarket in his bathroom. Within months, users were betting on everything from presidential elections to whether the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates.
Controversy, Raids, and a Comeback
Regulators didn’t share his enthusiasm. Polymarket’s “move fast” mentality soon collided with U.S. law. In 2022, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined the company $1.4 million and banned American users for operating without a license.
The tension escalated dramatically a week after the 2024 U.S. election, when FBI agents raided Coplan’s home, seizing his electronics in an investigation the company later called “politically motivated.” By mid-2025, however, the Justice Department and CFTC dropped their cases. The company reentered the U.S. legally after acquiring the licensed exchange QCEX for $112 million.
From Outlaw to Wall Street Partner
ICE’s investment marks Polymarket’s transition from regulatory outcast to institutional powerhouse. With the deal, the exchange operator joins a roster of high-profile investors including Peter Thiel, Vitalik Buterin, and Blockchain Capital.
The partnership also carries political undertones: ICE CEO Jeffrey Sprecher is married to Kelly Loeffler, head of the Small Business Administration and a member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet, while Donald Trump Jr. joined Polymarket as an adviser through 1789 Capital, one of its early backers.
Redefining What “Trading” Means
Polymarket’s growth has been explosive. During the 2024 election, it processed more than $3 billion in bets, blurring the line between investing and speculation. Users now trade contracts on topics ranging from sports to macroeconomics – an innovation supporters claim improves market forecasting, not just gambling.
Rival platform Kalshi, which recently partnered with Robinhood, reported 2 billion contracts traded last quarter, suggesting a broader shift toward prediction-based finance.
Traditional gaming firms like DraftKings and Caesars Entertainment saw their shares plunge over 5% after ICE’s investment was announced – a sign that markets are taking this new model seriously.
For Coplan, the journey from broke college dropout to billionaire entrepreneur has been anything but predictable. He once built Polymarket as an experiment in truth discovery. Now, it’s become a multi-billion-dollar bridge between Wall Street and the next generation of digital finance.
Source: Bloomberg
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