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 current 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 Billionaires 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 $1 on a “yes” 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.
