Less than 10 years after dropping out of New York University and launching what would become the Polymarket prediction market in the bathroom of his Lower East Side apartment, Shayne Coplan was crowned the youngest self-made billionaire by capitalizing on Gen Z’s willingness to bet on anything.
On Tuesday, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, Intercontinental Exchange, invested $2 billion in cash in Polymarket, skyrocketing the company’s valuation to $9 billion after investment and making CEO and founder Coplan a billionaire at the age of 27, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Through this partnership, the NYSE will distribute Polymarket data and the two companies will work together on tokenization initiatives, according to a press release.
Polymarket starts from a simple principle: markets are the best way to find the truth. By giving users the ability to predict literally everything from the 2025 World Series champion to the end of the government shutdown (both bets are currently available on its website), Polymarket aims to “harness the power of free markets to demystify the real events that matter most to you,” Coplan said in an article on X.
Polymarket matches users to opposing bets and pays $1 per “share” for each correct guess using a US dollar-backed stablecoin and a blockchain built on Ethereum infrastructure. This means that if you bet “yes” on a 37 cent outcome and it turns out to be true, you will make a net profit of 63 cents. You can also sell your stake in an outcome before the event occurs, which can also net you a profit if the price of your shares rises as your chosen outcome becomes more likely.
Aleksandar Tomic, an economist and associate dean for strategy, innovation and technology at Boston College, said prediction markets like Polymarket have existed before. A similar platform, Intrade, received widespread media attention for its success in predicting the 2008 and 2012 US elections, before closing its doors in 2013. Polymarket and its competitors appear to be succeeding where others have failed. Polymarket, for its part, has attracted younger users with a better platform and by leveraging the pandemic-era gaming trend especially prevalent among Gen Z men, not to mention help from a newly supportive regulatory environment.
“I think these types of markets are just another place to make a bet,” Tomic said. Fortune.
Polymarket did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Until last month, Polymarket was banned in the United States, largely because of federal regulators’ objections to its “speed of control” business model. In 2022, the company paid a $1.4 million fine after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said it allegedly operated an unregistered event market. The platform was then banned from accessing the country. As betting on the 2024 election increased last year, the CFTC renewed its scrutiny and the FBI raided founder Shayne Coplan’s home in November. A little less than a year later, after President Trump returned to office and with Donald Trump Jr. now serving as an advisor to the company, the CFTC and Department of Justice closed their investigations without filing charges, clearing the way for Polymarket’s return to the United States.
Despite the many headwinds Polymarket has encountered over the years, Coplan has previously highlighted some of the company’s notable successes on multi-million dollar against-the-odds bet on President Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office.
With this week’s announcement of the merger and investment from the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, Coplan is on the right track, while reflecting on its upward journey.
“At the start of the pandemic, I literally had nothing to lose: 21 years old, no money, 2 1/2 years since dropping out of college, and nothing to show for it,” he wrote on »
On Sunday, he plans to watch football and beta test the new Polymarket US app, he wrote on X.
