Shayne Coplan
Shayne Coplan outside the New York Stock Exchange International Exchange on X

The world welcomed yet another Gen Z billionaire in October after the valuation of American cryptocurrency prediction platform Polymarket soared to £6.7 billion ($9bn), catapulting its founder, Shayne Coplan, straight into the global one per cent.

At just 27, Coplan has now overtaken China's Alexandr Wang, 28, to become the world's youngest self-made billionaire. But his rise was anything but ordinary. His entrepreneurial journey began in the most unlikely of places, the tiny bathroom of his Lower East Side apartment in New York, where he worked during the pandemic because it was the only spot quiet enough to focus.

Like Wang, Coplan is a college dropout. He abandoned his computer science degree at New York University, started from scratch and plunged headfirst into the volatile world of crypto, facing more than a few hurdles along the way.

The Idea That Turned His Life Around

Coplan took to X last month to recount his journey after dropping out, when the International Exchange (ICE) poured £1.5 billion ($2bn) into his startup. He revealed that the entire concept sprang from economist Robin Hanson's research on prediction markets.

'I remember reading Robin Hanson's literature on prediction markets and thinking: this is too good an idea to stay trapped in whitepapers,' he wrote. 'There were a million reasons it shouldn't work... but we had to try.'

The investment from ICE not only turned Coplan into a billionaire overnight but also cemented Polymarket as the world's largest prediction platform.

Coplan admits he could never have imagined that the company he built from his bathroom would one day be worth billions. However, his belief in the project never wavered.

'At the onset of the pandemic, I quite literally had nothing to lose, at 21, running out of money, 2.5 years since I dropped out, and with nothing to show for it. 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,' he said.

He added that truth is now the most valuable asset in the world and that while Polymarket still has a long way to go, he is proud of the impact it has already made.

Polymarket Hits Trading Milestone After FBI Raid

Coplan's big break came in 2023 as Polymarket raised £55 million ($70m) in new funding. But the platform really made headlines after correctly predicting that Donald Trump – who once sat on the company's advisory board – would win the 2024 presidential election.

But success came at a price.

Just a week after the election, Coplan opened the door of his New York apartment to find FBI agents there to raid the property. The investigation centred on allegations that Polymarket had continued allowing US citizens to use the platform despite agreeing to ban them in 2022, following a crackdown by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over illegal trading claims.

Coplan denied wrongdoing but agreed to pay a £1.06 million ($1.4m) settlement to the CFTC.

A year later, the company made a dramatic comeback in the American market – and it paid off. In October, Polymarket hit a record £14.6 billion ($19.4bn) in cumulative trading volume as its user base exploded from just 40,000 in late 2023 to more than 1.4 million.

With explosive growth, deep-pocketed backers and a booming prediction market industry, Polymarket appears poised for an even bigger run – and Coplan looks set to become far richer than he ever imagined sitting in that cramped New York bathroom.

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