Business
Why the New York Stock Exchange just crowned a Gen Z billionaire: Shayne Coplan figured out a society that gambles on everything
Less than 10 years after dropping out of New York University and then starting what would become the prediction market Polymarket in the bathroom of his Lower East Side apartment, Shayne Coplan has been crowned the youngest ever self-made billionaire by capitalizing on Gen Z’s readiness to bet on anything.
On Tuesday, the New York Stock Exchange’s parent company, Intercontinental Exchange, invested $2 billion cash in Polymarket, skyrocketing the company’s valuation to $9 billion post investment and making CEO and founder Coplan a billionaire at the age of 27, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.
Through the partnership, the NYSE will distribute Polymarket’s data and the two companies will work together on tokenization initiatives, according to a press release.
Polymarket has a simple premise: Markets are the best way to source truth. By giving users a stake in predicting literally everything, from the 2025 World Series Champion to when the government shutdown will end (both bets are currently available on its website), Polymarket aims to “harness the power of free markets to demystify real events that matter most to you,” Coplan said in a post on X.
Polymarket matches users with opposing bets and pays out $1 per “share” for every correct guess with the help of a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin and a blockchain built on top of Ethereum’s infrastructure. This means if you bet “yes” on an outcome at 37 cents and it proves to be true, you’ll net a 63-cent profit. You can also sell your stake in an outcome before the event happens, which can also net you a profit if the price of your shares go up as the outcome you chose 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 U.S. elections before shutting down in 2013. Polymarket and its competitors seem to be succeeding where others have failed. Polymarket for its part has drawn in younger users with a better platform and by seizing upon the pandemic-era gambling trend especially prevalent in Gen Z men—not to mention with a little help from a newly friendly regulatory environment.
“I think these types of markets are just another place to make a bet,” Tomic told Fortune.
Polymarket did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Until last month, Polymarket was banned in the U.S., largely due to federal regulators’ objections to its “speed over scrutiny” business model. In 2022, the company paid a $1.4 million fine after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said it was allegedly operating an unregistered event market. The platform was subsequently barred from the country. As wagers on the 2024 election grew last year, the CFTC renewed its scrutiny, and the FBI raided founder Shayne Coplan’s home in November. Just under a year later—following President Trump’s return to office, and with Donald Trump Jr. now serving as an adviser to the company—the CFTC and Justice Department closed their investigations without filing charges, clearing the way for Polymarket’s return to the U.S.
Despite Polymarket’s many headwinds over the years, Coplan has previously pointed out some of the company’s notable successes on X, including predicting that President Biden would drop out of the 2024 presidential election. In total, Polymarket users put at least $3.2 billion into the presidential election, and one French trader even made around $85 million from his contrarian multimillion-dollar bet that President Donald Trump would return to the Oval Office.
With this week’s announcement of the team-up and investment from the New York Stock Exchange’s parent company, Coplan is riding high, while still reflecting on his journey upwards.
“At the onset of the pandemic, I quite literally had nothing to lose: 21, running out of money, 2.5 years since I dropped out and nothing to show for it,” he wrote on X. “But I knew we were entering an era where ways to find truth would matter more than ever, and Polymarket could play a critical role in that.”
On Sunday, he plans to watch football and beta-test the new Polymarket U.S. app, he wrote on X.
