Shayne Coplan, 27, is always in a hurry. Last year, he arrived at a Manhattan dinner hosted by a venture capital firm for networking, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket. He had been invited as one of the most promising entrepreneurs of the moment, but after a brief chat, he got up while the main course was being served and left for a concert in Brooklyn. At this pace, Coplan has become the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.
He made his fortune through Polymarket, a platform founded in 2020 that lets users bet on whether real-world events will occur. The bets cover everything from Brazil’s elections to whether the Obamas will divorce. Using blockchain technology, the platform shows in real time what the market believes will happen. Coplan argues that Polymarket offers a more objective view than traditional media, as its predictions are the sum of thousands of individual opinions and are not influenced by ideological biases or political agendas.
After a $2 billion investment from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owner of the New York Stock Exchange, Polymarket is now valued at around $8 billion. Prior to ICE, it had already attracted high-profile investors from the tech and political worlds, including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Donald Trump Jr. has become an adviser to the company through the conservative-leaning tech fund 1789 Capital. Interestingly, he also advises Kalshi, a rival platform. Polymarket is neither the first nor the only prediction market, but it has become the most appealing to Generation Z.
Coplan, recognizable by his curly hair and a look reminiscent of the founders of Nude Project, grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, a middle-to-upper-class neighborhood. From a young age, he showed a lot of curiosity for technology and markets, developing an interest in cryptocurrencies: at just 15, he participated in Ethereum’s 2014 ICO, immersing himself in blockchain long before most people even knew what it was.
Although little is publicly known about his family, Coplan has said that as a teenager he was restless, self-taught, and drawn to libertarian ideas. He studied computer science at NYU but dropped out, convinced he could build something significant outside the traditional path. His first project was TokenUnion, a platform rewarding users for holding certain tokens — a kind of crypto loyalty program.
During the 2020 pandemic, Coplan was confined to his New York apartment without an office or workspace. The only room where he could find privacy was the bathroom, which he converted into a workspace. It was there that the idea for Polymarket was born. He drew inspiration from the work of economist Robin Hanson, who has studied prediction markets for decades, and Friedrich Hayek, who argued that decentralized systems, like markets, distribute information more efficiently than centralized decisions — a kind of collective wisdom.
In 2021 and 2022, Polymarket grew outside traditional regulations, following the mantra of “act first, apologize later.” The strategy worked until 2022, when the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined the company $1.4 million for operating without a license and blocked access to U.S. users. This was a major setback, removing one of its main markets. Coplan, however, accepted the settlement and kept the platform alive outside direct regulatory reach.
Instead of stagnating, Polymarket expanded internationally. It increased the range of events users could bet on, improved user experience, and added more accessible payment methods, including credit cards linked to stablecoins. No blockchain expertise was required to participate. By 2023, the company had raised more than $70 million in new funding rounds, backed by major names in crypto and tech.
The real turning point came in 2024. Polymarket accurately predicted Donald Trump’s electoral victory. As Coplan celebrated, he said, “Polymarket single-handedly called the election before anything else. The global truth machine is here, powered by the people.”
The success, however, had consequences. Just a week after the election, Coplan’s apartment was raided by the FBI, accused of continuing to allow U.S. users to participate despite the ban. The company publicly denounced the raid as a “political retaliation” by the outgoing Biden administration, upset, according to Coplan, by Polymarket’s media impact during the campaign.
With Trump’s return to the White House, the regulatory climate in the U.S. shifted dramatically. Investigations against Polymarket were dropped, and the new political environment became much more receptive to financial innovation.
Taking advantage of this window, Polymarket acquired a CFTC-licensed company, QCEX, for $112 million, allowing it to legally resume U.S. operations after three years of restrictions. The ICE investment finally marked the company’s major breakthrough.
Coplan, who says he aspires to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, may represent the first major billionaire of Generation Z. He has a rare ability to sense the political and emotional climate of his generation and to leverage its characteristic impatience. The big question now is whether, having reached the top, he can temper the impulses of youth.
