A year ago, the FBI had raided the apartment of Polymarket founder Shiny Coplan. Now, the college dropout is a billionaire at the age of 27.
In july, Jeffrey Sprecher, the 70-year-old billionaire CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, was sitting at the Manhattan, an upscale restaurant in the Financial District overlooking New York City’s vast skyline from the 60th floor. As a sommelier poured wine through the tables, Shayne Coplan walked over – in a T-shirt and jeans, holding a plastic water bottle and a paper bag with a bagel he’d picked up on the way. Sprecher laughs as he recalls his first impression of that boyish, eccentric entrepreneur: “An old bald guy who works at the New York Stock Exchange, where we require you wear a suit and tie, next to him is a bald-headed guy in a T-shirt who’s 27.” But Sprecher was attracted to PolyMarket, Coplan’s blockchain-based prediction market, and after dinner, he made his move: “I asked Shainy if he would consider selling us his company.”
Prediction markets like Polymarket let thousands of ordinary people bet on future events – like the unemployment rate, or when Bitcoin will reach an all-time high. Overall, prediction market betting has proven to be like a crystal ball, with the wisdom of the crowd often proving itself to be more scientific than expert opinion. For example, Polymarket bookmakers predicted that Trump would win the 2024 presidential election, while many national pundits were convinced that Kamala Harris would win.
Coplan initially rejected Sprecher’s buyout offer. But after discussions, talks took place and eventually a compromise was reached. In October, Intercontinental announced it had invested $2 billion in the company for a stake of up to 25%, giving the young solo founder the balance he was looking for. “We are the consumer, we are the viral, we are the culture. They are finance, they are leadership and they are infrastructure,” explains Coplan. forbes In a recent interview.
Thanks to the deals, Polymarket’s valuation quickly reached $9 billion, making the 2025 Under 30 alumnus the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, with his 11% stake worth an estimated $1 billion. His reign was short: twenty days later, he was overtaken by the youngest of the three 22-year-old founders of AI startup Mercor.
Young entrepreneurs are amassing ten-figure wealth faster than ever before. In addition to the Mercor trio and Coplan, 15 other Under 30 alumni became billionaires this year, including ScaleAI co-founder Lucy Guo, Reddit’s Steve Huffman, and Cursor co-founders, while Guo’s co-founders Alexander Wang and Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev (both former Under 30 honorees) regained their billionaire status after falling out of the ranks. Have achieved.
TeaThe budding billionaire has long been fascinated by markets and technology. When he was only 14 years old, Coplan emailed a regional Securities and Exchange Commission office asking how to create new markets. “I didn’t get a response, but it’s a really funny email,” he says, smiling playfully as he thinks of his younger self. “This shows that this stuff takes more than a decade to sink into your brain.”
Two years later, Coplan arrived uninvited at the office of Internet startup Genius after his numerous emails asking for an internship had been ignored. At the age of 16 – at least a decade younger than anyone in that office – he landed his first job after making a memorable impression with his “wild curls” and “encyclopedic knowledge of billionaire tech entrepreneurs.” “If he chooses to become a tech entrepreneur, which seems likely, I have no doubt that we will see his name in the press again soon,” Chris Glazek, his manager at the time, wrote in Coplan’s college recommendation letter.
Coplan studied computer science at NYU, but dropped out in 2017 to work on various crypto projects that never took off. In 2020, he founded PolyMarkets to create a solution to the “massive misinformation” he saw in the world: the company’s first market allowed users to bet on when New York City would reopen amid the pandemic. They soon expanded to include election and pop culture programs, among other programs.
But it didn’t take long for the company to run into trouble with regulators. In January 2022, Polymarket paid a $1.4 million fine to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for offering unregistered markets. All US users were also ordered to be blocked, but activity on Polymarket particularly skyrocketed during the 2024 US presidential election, with bets totaling $3.6 billion. A week after the election, the FBI raided Coplan’s apartment and seized his devices as part of an investigation into possible violations of this agreement. Shortly after, Coplan posted on his
In July, the Justice Department and the CFTC closed the investigation – after which Sprecher approached Coplan over dinner – and less than a week later, Polymarket announced it had acquired CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange QCX in preparation for a compliant US launch. QCX had applied to become a federally-registered exchange in 2022 – an application that was left dormant for three years before receiving approval less than two weeks before the acquisition was announced. Asked about the timing of the deal, Coplan points to CFTC Acting Chairwoman Caroline Pham, whom President Trump chose to lead the agency in January. “Caroline deserves a lot of credit for getting every single license that was put on hold without reason approved in less than a year as acting chair,” he says. A source familiar with the deal said Coplan had realized that the acquisition might be the only way for Polymarket to operate legally in the US by early 2021 due to the lengthy federal approval process. forbes,
Just two months after the acquisition and days after Donald Trump Jr. joined Polymarket’s advisory board, the company received federal approval to launch in the U.S. (Trump Jr. has also served as a strategic advisor to Polymarket’s main rival Kalshi since January.)
Polymarket’s rapid growth has attracted critics. Dennis Kelleher, co-founder and CEO of Better Markets, a Washington-based financial advocacy group, told forbes in an email The current administration’s regulation around prediction markets has opened a regulatory “loophole” to enable “unregulated gambling” under the CFTC, “which has zero expertise, capacity, or resources to regulate and police these markets.” Kelleher said that with the support of the Trump family “who are directly trying to profit from this new gambling den…massive regulation and crypto mania will almost certainly end badly for the American people.”
“If you look at the photo of Shayne and me standing next to each other, the scene itself tells the story of American innovation,” Sprecher says.
intercontinental exchange
IInvestors and businesses are scrambling to take advantage of the deregulation moment. “We had opportunities to invest in event markets before, but there was a lot of risk,” says Sprecher, listing regulatory changes favoring crypto and prediction markets under the current administration. “If we still want to get into this area quickly now is the time to invest.”
Over the past few months, Trump’s Truth Social and sportsbook FanDuel, as well as cryptocurrency exchanges Crypto.com, Coinbase and Gemini all announced their plans to offer prediction markets. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said prediction markets, which were integrated into its platform in March, were helping drive record activity for the retail brokerage in its third-quarter earnings call.
“People are just starting to realize that the opportunities are endless,” says Dubin, a billionaire hedge fund veteran who invested in Polymarket earlier this year. He points to sports betting companies, which are regulated by states as a gambling activity and taxed accordingly. States like New York can tax up to 51% of sportsbooks’ revenues, but federally-regulated prediction markets can circumvent state laws, avoid taxes and operate in all 50 states. With the realization that prediction markets could upend the sports betting industry – which brought in $13.7 billion in revenue in 2024 – businesses are increasingly getting involved despite pressure from state gambling regulators. In October, both Polymarket and Kalshi secured partnerships with sportsbooks PrizePicks and the National Hockey League, and Polymarket announced exclusive partnerships with sportsbooks DraftKings and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
there will be no disruption Limited to sports betting. As well as their own investments, thousands of Intercontinental’s institutional clients, including large hedge funds and more than 750 third-party data providers, will soon have access to PolyMarket data as it integrates into Intercontinental’s products like indices to better inform investment decisions. Sprecher says it also hopes to work with Polymarket on initiatives like tokenization – or converting financial assets into digital tokens on blockchain technology – to allow traders to trade more flexibly at all hours of the day on intercontinental exchanges. Also, in November, Google Finance announced it would integrate Polymarket and Kalshi data into its search results, while Yahoo Finance also announced an exclusive partnership with Polymarket.
Despite attracting investors, partnerships, and a record $2.4 billion trading volume in November, Polymarket has yet to launch in the US or turn a profit. Coplan and his investors have hinted at ways the company might one day make money — selling its data, charging users fees, launching a cryptocurrency token (similar to Ethereum or Bitcoin) — but declined to confirm any details. For now, the only thing that is certain is that Coplan is betting on himself. “Going for it and not finishing it is a much better outcome than living your life as a what-if,” he says.
Standing in front of the New York Stock Exchange building, Coplan tilts his head up and sees a huge banner bearing the Polymarket logo fluttering over the building’s exterior. It has been five years since its establishment. It’s been a year since the FBI raid. He is taking everything. “Despite all odds,” reads the bright blue banner, which flutters in the wind along with three American flags protruding from the building.
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