Will Trump fire his Vice President JD Vance? How many posts will Elon Musk write on X this week? Will Russia attack NATO countries? When will the town of Myrnohrad fall, and will there be a ceasefire in Russia's war against Ukraine this year? Users of the Polymarket prediction platform place multi-million cryptocurrency bets on any events – from the harmless and humorous to the cynical and outright immoral.
Polymarket's popularity – and that of its founder, 27-year-old Shayne Coplan – was driven by last year's US presidential election, or more precisely by bets on Trump's triumph. While pollsters right up to the end showed the Republican holding only a slim lead over Democrat Kamala Harris, Polymarket traders were assigning a 62% probability to a Trump victory.
Trump's return to the White House also changed the platform's status. Whereas just a year ago Coplan was facing searches and regulators were accusing Polymarket of operating illegally on the US market, now all investigations have now been closed, and the project has even attracted investment from the president's son.
Moreover, the "green light" from the administration has allowed the platform to attract US$2 billion in investment from the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The service's market valuation has surged to US$9 billion, and Coplan has become the world's youngest self-made billionaire.
How did Shayne Coplan go from an improvised office in a bathroom and an FBI raid on his home to the status of a billionaire wunderkind? How has the Trump family begun making money on Polymarket? And why are bets on the dates of Russia's occupation of Ukrainian cities a "monetisation of cynicism"?
How it all began
Shayne Coplan was born and raised in New York. As a teenager, he became fascinated with technology and started experimenting with cryptocurrency mining. At the age of 14, Shayne wrote to a regional office of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He wanted to know how to create new trading platforms.
In 2014, when he turned 16, Coplan took part in the Ethereum token presale, buying them for 30 cents each. Today they trade at more than US$3,000. Later, the ambitious teenager showed up uninvited at the office of the startup Genius (an online database of song lyrics) after the company ignored his numerous emails requesting an internship. Such persistence and his "exceptional knowledge of billionaire tech entrepreneurs" impressed the managers: Coplan, 10 years younger than anyone else at Genius, landed his first job.
Shayne continued studying computer science at New York University, but in 2017 he realised the world of cryptocurrency interested him more and dropped out to fully immerse himself in learning about blockchain and decentralised technologies.
He began working on various crypto projects that never took off. As Coplan explains, "Back then, I lived an isolated lifestyle, constantly absorbing information about the crypto world and experimenting with something new." Around the same time, he was making an inventory of his belongings, preparing to sell them to pay rent for his Manhattan flat.
He calls 2019 a turning point. That was when, disillusioned with "one-day" crypto projects, Shayne came across the work of economist Robin Hanson on prediction markets. Hanson argued that they can help society better determine the likely outcomes of events – from political elections to scientific discoveries.
When the pandemic swept the world in early 2020, Coplan saw the perfect moment to launch his own prediction platform. Millions of people were sitting at home in isolation – why not give them the chance to bet on real-world events?
In March 2020, the ambitious startup founder set up an improvised office in his bathroom and began building Polymarket. The service launched in June that same year.
"I wanted to find out the probability that New York would lift the quarantine, whether a vaccine would be ready by then, whether restaurants would reopen. It was hard to find an answer in the existing digital noise. Forecasts, like nothing else, can help with this task," he explained.
As early as October 2020, Coplan secured an initial US$4 million in funding to develop the project – the investment round was led by another "crypto wunderkind", Olaf Carlson-Wee, founder of the hedge fund Polychain Capital.
How Polymarket works
Polymarket is a decentralised blockchain platform where users bet on the outcome of a real-world event and earn a profit if they guess correctly. The implied probability for each event is formed by the expectations of traders placing bets on it.
Blockchain technology is not essential for platforms of this type, but Polymarket uses the Polygon network, which runs on Ethereum and offers faster and cheaper transactions. Instead of dollars, Polymarket customers use the USDC stablecoin.
For example, if you want to take part in the bet "Will candidate Y win the election?", you need to buy either "yes shares" (they win) or "no shares" (they lose).
The price of a "share" reflects the assessed probability of the event. If other participants believe the candidate will win with a 60% probability, one "yes share" will cost 60 cents and one "no share" will cost 40 cents.
If the bet pays out, its holder receives one dollar for each share. Thus, if you bet on "yes" and win, the profit is 40 cents per share; if you bet on "no" and win, the profit is 60 cents. If the bet does not pay out, the user receives nothing.
Clashes with regulators
Prediction platforms similar to Polymarket existed before, but Coplan's startup pulled ahead thanks to a user-friendly interface, a low barrier to entry and the ability to bet on almost anything. The road to success, however, was far from smooth. Polymarket operated on the principle of "launch first, ask permission later", which led to clashes with regulators.
As early as the beginning of 2022, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined the platform US$1.4 million for operating an unregistered exchange and banned it from serving users in the US. Polymarket agreed to pay the fine without admitting or denying wrongdoing. Similar issues with regulators also arose in other countries, including France, Thailand and Singapore.
Although Polymarket paid the CFTC fine, US regulators suspected the service was still serving US customers by circumventing the ban. The peak of both the pressure and the platform's growing popularity came during the 2024 US presidential election.
On election day alone, 5 November 2024, the volume of bets on Polymarket related to the outcome reached US$1.8 billion, and overall users placed more than US$3 billion. In particular, a trader with the nickname Theo, using multiple accounts, placed a combined US$30 million on Trump's victory and ultimately earned US$85 million. By comparison, in 2023 Polymarket's total annual trading volume was only US$73 million.
The "hype" around the platform was also fuelled by a post from Elon Musk on X linking to election bets in the key swing state of Pennsylvania (where Trump was shot in the ear).
A week after Trump's victory, FBI agents searched Coplan's flat and seized electronic devices. Polymarket was not supposed to allow Americans onto its platform after the CFTC fine and ban. But its user base largely operates via cryptocurrency, which makes it possible to remain anonymous. As a result, 25% of Polymarket's traffic at the time came from the US.
Coplan responded to the raid by stating that his project was "nonpartisan" and by accusing the Biden administration of "retaliation" for its electoral defeat.
"Green light" from Trump, and billionaire status
The shift in the US political landscape following Trump's return to the White House reshaped Polymarket's standing. As early as July 2025, regulators controlled by the new administration abruptly halted all investigations into the platform.
In the same month, the company acquired the CFTC-licensed exchange QCEX for US$112 million, enabling it to legally resume operations in the United States. Notably, QCEX had applied for federal exchange status back in 2022, and the application remained pending for three years but was approved in less than two weeks after the change of power, shortly before its acquisition by Polymarket was announced.
Developments continued to accelerate. In August, Donald Trump Jr. joined Polymarket's advisory board, while the venture capital firm 1789 Capital, where he is a partner, invested tens of millions of dollars in the project. Against the backdrop of the expanding influence of the Trump family in the fintech sector, the US president's son also became an adviser to Polymarket's main competitor, Kalshi.
Subsequently, the project raised at least US$255 million from a broad range of investors, including Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, and was even featured in an episode of the cult animated TV series South Park.
A genuine triumph for both Polymarket and Coplan personally came in October, when Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, invested US$2 billion in the company. ICE acquired a 20% stake, lifting Polymarket's valuation to US$9 billion from US$1.2 billion at the beginning of the year, while Coplan's roughly 11% share made him the youngest self-made billionaire in the world.
The platform is not stopping there. Amid intensifying competition with Kalshi, Polymarket is working on a new fundraising round that would value the company at US$12-15 billion.
Immorality and "profiting from war"
A defining feature of Polymarket that has driven its rapid growth is the ability to place bets on virtually any event. This "bet on everything" model – ranging from US elections to the death of the Pope, from wildfires in California to wars in Gaza and Ukraine (including the pace at which specific Ukrainian cities might be captured and the possibility of Russia invading NATO countries or using nuclear weapons) – raises numerous questions about the ethical implications of the business model.
Accusations of Polymarket's immorality began with a scandal involving rapper P. Diddy, who was accused of sexual crimes. After his arrest, several "markets" (specific questions on which traders can bet) appeared on the platform that sparked widespread outrage, including bets on whether explicit 18+ videos involving the controversial rapper would be leaked online.
The next wave of criticism erupted after the large-scale wildfires in California at the beginning of this year, which destroyed the mansions of Hollywood stars. At the time, at least 20 markets appeared on Polymarket, accepting a wide range of bets – from the area of land that would be burned to the date the fires would be brought under control. As a result, the practice was described as "depravity".
Polymarket responded immediately, stating that the service does not charge any commission on wildfire-related bets and that the forecasts themselves help users seek the most accurate real-time data. Sociologists countered that it was hard to imagine people turning specifically to Polymarket to decide whether to evacuate or not.
Even more questions have been raised about Polymarket because of bets related to the war in Ukraine. According to Forbes Ukraine, the volume of bets on the Russo-Ukrainian war on the platform had reached nearly US$100 million by mid-November. The most popular markets concern the fate of the cities of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad in Donetsk Oblast, the possibility of a ceasefire before the end of 2025, and the likelihood of a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin.
On 25 November, the Pentagon Pizza Watch project (which operates on the theory that spikes in pizza orders from pizzerias in the vicinity of the Pentagon, the White House or the CIA can be used to predict war or other international crises) promoted an update to the Polyglobe "globe" by integrating it with the map of the Ukrainian service DeepState. Polyglobe's "globe" visualises data for Polymarket users: it displays the bets placed on the platform – if a bet concerns German politics, for example, the marker appears in Germany.
This initiative by Pentagon Pizza Watch (PPW) was immediately criticised, forcing the project to clarify that it "does not endorse war, violence, or suffering of any kind". "This update was not created to gamify conflict, celebrate destruction, or trivialize human life," PPW said.
However, the outrage did not subside, and DeepState decided to comment on the situation. The project stressed that it had not authorised a "bookmaking service" that "profits from bets on war" to use its map.
DeepState suggested that PPW had connected to the map either via a free API provided to someone for military or humanitarian purposes, or through parsing.
"Such attempts to profit from our work are not unprecedented, which has forced us to introduce stricter API controls and create individual client keys", said DeepState in a statement. PPW subsequently apologised and removed the DeepState map from Polyglobe.
Another scandal emerged over maps produced by the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW): an "unauthorised edit" by one of its analysts to the battlefield map helped a group of traders win a significant sum on Polymarket. On 15 November, several users placed bets that Russian forces would occupy Myrnohrad before nightfall. At the time, most observers considered this unlikely, meaning that Russian forces taking control of the city could have yielded traders returns of up to 33,000%.
On the same day, the interactive ISW map used by Polymarket as a source showed an update indicating that Russian forces had already seized a key crossroads in the city, which in fact had not happened. After Polymarket paid out the winnings, the edit disappeared.
ISW later issued an apology and explanation, stating that the battlefield map is updated throughout the day and should not be considered final until the relevant marker appears. According to Responsible Statecraft, on 18 November, ISW dismissed the employee who had made the "fatal" edit, and his name disappeared from the project's website. It is likely that this refers to analyst Quinn Deutschendorf, who had been involved in preparing maps of the Russo-Ukrainian war up to and including 17 November.
In response to the scandal, on 21 November Polymarket added a note to the page where users can bet on the date of the Russian "capture" of Myrnohrad, stating that the city would be considered "captured" if the relevant information remained on the ISW map "through the next full ISW daily update cycle".
The founder of Polymarket describes his project as a way of reality-checking. The platform can indeed be a more objective barometer of public opinion than opinion polls, argues academic Jason Wingard. "Polls measure what people say. Bets measure what people believe. People are simply more honest when honesty costs money", he said.
However, Polymarket remains in a "grey zone": in some countries regulators treat it as a fintech start-up, while in others it is seen as a platform for illegal gambling. Moreover, as the ISW incident demonstrated, bets on the platform are vulnerable to manipulation and insider trading. And wagers on events involving human suffering and death have been described as the "monetisation of cynicism".
Yet the fact that bets on the "date of Myrnohrad's fall" are at least ethically questionable does not deter traders. When one player expressed outrage over the misleading ISW map, other users responded with mockery: "Guy who is gambling on real people dying in a war but thinks being tricked is unethical."
Author: Oleksii Pavlysh
Translation: Anastasiia Yankina and Anna Kybukevych
Editing: Shoël Stadlen