Polymarket CEO Becomes Youngest Self-Made Billionaire

Bloomberg

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00:00Tom, you wrote a story today looking at examining Shane Copland, who founded Polymarket.

00:05What is the story behind this young man's founding of Polymarket?

00:09Yeah, so he's a native New Yorker, born and raised here in the city.

00:15He went to Beacon High School. He went to NYU for a while, but dropped out pretty quickly.

00:20Bounced around the sort of startup tech crypto scene for a while.

00:24Two years after dropping out, nothing really came of that, and he was a little frustrated.

00:30COVID hit, and he decided that he was going to found this prediction markets platform, Polymarket.

00:37He was really interested in this guy, Robin Hanson, and he's an economist who'd written about prediction markets,

00:42and he said, I want to make this thing a reality.

00:45Five years later, they've gotten an $8 billion valuation, that investment from ICE that you just mentioned,

00:50and he's the youngest self-made billionaire that we track.

00:53Yeah, that was the headline that stuck out to everyone and got a lot of clicks on the Bloomberg terminal.

00:58Before he got to that $8 billion valuation, though, he had to jump through some hurdles,

01:02get through some obstacles, including the fact that he was raided by the FBI, I think, a year ago?

01:07That's right, yeah.

01:08Right after the election, or about a week after the election, they came into his apartment,

01:13seized his electronic devices.

01:15That was related to them having to ban U.S. users from Polymarket.

01:21With an agreement with the CFTC from three years earlier, regulators thought they weren't doing that properly.

01:28But it's all changed under the new administration that's been much more friendly to crypto and these kind of markets.

01:36That investigation was dropped in July.

01:39He's got a lot of institutional support.

01:41One of his biggest backers is 1789 Capital, which is the investment firm where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner,

01:49and he's an advisor to the firm.

01:50So, you know, he's now really fairly close to the Washington establishment, you could say.

01:55So those investigations that regulators were looking into, have those just been completely wiped out?

02:00Those investigations were dropped in July.

02:02That's right.

02:03Okay.

02:03In terms of the origin story for Polymarket, you know, my producer was telling me how he basically came up with this during the pandemic,

02:11and he just created it out of thin air, essentially.

02:15Yeah.

02:16As I mentioned, he'd been reading the ideas of This Economist, and he wanted to make it a reality,

02:20and then COVID hit, and he thought it was a good time for stuck-at-home people to maybe bet on, you know,

02:25the outcome of real-world events.

02:27And he started building this thing from his bathroom in his apartment.

02:31And June 2020, it was launched and took off.

02:35And, you know, Polymarket, it's really interesting now.

02:37We talk about the odds of so-and-so winning elections and that kind of thing,

02:41and we cite Polymarket odds, and it's really becoming a sort of a household name.

02:46But they do much more than just bet on, or not bet on, excuse me, take positions on, you know,

02:52for instance, an election or something else.

02:54It could be on pop culture.

02:55It could be on a sports outcome.

02:56It could be on anything as long as it's binary, correct?

02:58That's right.

02:59And what's really interesting is how sports betting is taking off on these platforms,

03:03or they don't like to call it sports betting.

03:06You know, it's a financial product tied to the outcome of a real-world event.

03:11You brought the press release.

03:12Yeah, that's right.

03:12And that gives them, you know, certain advantages over some of the online gaming sites,

03:17which have to abide by state-level bans.

03:20And so far, prediction sites have been able to get around those.

03:23And that's kind of part of, I think, why this investment is happening now.

03:27I think I think for once in a while—

03:28You got the same knowledge about it, right?

03:30So pickle, if I want to help you out on your team or at what's happening,

03:31and, if you understand you, you don't feel like you're gonna say it,

03:32If you're running, you're hitting the people of whatever you want to think about,

03:33it might be right.

03:34And, if you ask that, you at a moment of news,

03:37and that's really interesting, and there's a lot of proof between that.

03:38That conversation continues.

03:39Today's something on theugal level.

03:39That kind of leads.

03:40That's really interesting, and many funny things.

03:42How about that can I do this to chapbook

03:55and the charm?

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