Shayne Coplan, the founder of prediction market platform Polymarket, has joined the ranks of the world’s wealthiest individuals after a large funding deal.
Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange, invested $2 billion in Polymarket.
This decision has pushed the company’s value to an estimated $9 billion and placed Coplan on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, where he is now listed as the youngest self-made billionaire.
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Coplan’s journey began in 2020 when he launched Polymarket at the age of 21. He had previously left New York University and, by his own account, worked on the platform from his bathroom while living in a small apartment.
Before creating Polymarket, Coplan had experimented with other crypto projects, including a staking platform named Union, which had attracted venture funding. He also worked on several smaller blockchain ideas during his time as a student.
His decision to build a platform for forecasting real-world events was influenced by economist Robin Hanson’s work on prediction markets. Coplan has said that reading Hanson’s research helped him understand the value of structured markets for public opinion and truth discovery.
Reflecting on his early challenges, Coplan shared on X that the early pandemic days left him with limited resources and no major accomplishments, but he felt a strong need to build something that could help surface reliable information.
Meanwhile, on October 6, Michael Saylor announced that Strategy did not purchase Bitcoin
