Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan is betting on the wisdom of crowds.
On his cryptocurrency-based prediction market, customers wager real money on real-world events — everything from elections to sports, entertainment and even conflict. Polymarket has beaten the experts at predicting some outcomes.
“It’s the most accurate thing we have as mankind right now, until someone else creates some sort of a super crystal ball,” Coplan said.
What is Polymarket?
Coplan, a native New Yorker, dropped out of New York University in his freshman year. When COVID hit, found himself looking for simple answers to complex questions — the kinds that can, in some cases, be answered by prediction markets. He remembers asking himself questions like: “When is this going to end? When’s the vaccine going to be ready? When is shelter in place going to be over?””
He was 22 when he launched Polymarket as a place for people to bet on current events.
“And as a result, when a ton of people are betting, you get the betting odds, which basically tell you how likely each outcome is,” Coplan said.
When 60 Minutes met Coplan, he showed correspondent Anderson Cooper Polymarket’s main page featuring 15 categories to choose from, including politics, culture, sports and finance. Within each, there are questions – around 10,000 – about upcoming events for people to bet on.
“If something is being discussed in the news, if something is of importance, whether it’s geopolitically, you know, macroeconomically, culturally, we want to have a Polymarket for it,” Coplan said.
60 Minutes 
To wager, customers click on one of the questions. Users can take a “yes” or “no” position on each one.
“You make money if you’re right. You lose money if you’re wrong,” Coplan said. “And as a result, it creates this information that’s really useful for people.”
Percentages next to questions show the odds, determined by all the other bets that have already been made. As more people wager and news breaks, the odds change.
One of the most popular questions came nearly a year before the 2024 presidential election: Who will be the presidential election winner? President Trump started pulling away in early October. In the final month of the campaign, while most pollsters were saying the race was too close to call, Polymarket correctly predicted the outcome of the race.
“The percentage of people who are gonna vote for a candidate is not the same as who’s likely to win,” Coplan said. “You would look at Polymarket and it would say ‘70%-30% for Trump.’ And people are like, ‘No way it’s gonna be 70%-30%.'”
Coplan says that unlike polls, which ask who you’re most likely to vote for, Polymarket answers a different question: Who is going to win.
“But it’s the question people actually want to know,” Coplan said.
In all, around $3.6 billion was wagered on that one question
Money has also been wagered on politics around the world on Polymarket: like the Irish election results, and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s ability to hold on to power.
“If you are into geopolitics, this creates an incentive for you to dig into what’s going on in Venezuela and try and get an edge,” Coplan said.
Sports are also hugely popular. You can buy and sell shares and cash out any time before an event resolves.
“Unlike a betting site where you make a bet and it’s against the house, here you own a share,” Coplan said. “You could almost say it’s similar to a stock, but it’s not a stock.”
Investigations by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the FBI
Coplan made a risky bet of his own when he built Polymarket in 2020. He did it fast – in just three months – and he didn’t seek regulatory approval as required by law. His main competitor, Kalshi, did. The next year, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees derivatives and futures trading, launched an investigation. Polymarket cooperated and ultimately paid a $1.4 million penalty for operating without registering with the CFTC. Coplan also agreed that the company would not have customers in the U.S.
Polymarket geo-blocked trading in the U.S. and moved certain operations outside the country, Coplan said.
“It wasn’t, ‘Hey, you’re banned from trading in the U.S.’ It’s like, ‘Until you’re licensed,'” Coplan said.
60 Minutes 
After the settlement, Polymarket wasn’t supposed to let U.S. users trade on its platform. But plenty continued to do so, even though officially it violated the site’s terms of service. All they needed was a VPN connection to mask their computer’s location.
In 2024, in the final weeks of the Biden administration, Coplan got a rude awakening at home from the FBI.
“There was a lot of, like, yelling and banging on the door,” Coplan said.
He wasn’t arrested, but agents seized his phones and computers.
“New phone, who dis?” Coplan posted on social media afterwards.
Future of prediction markets
But with a new administration in the White House came a new appreciation for prediction markets. The government dropped its investigations in July. Coplan bought a fully licensed, legally compliant trading platform, paving the way for U.S. customers to openly bet on Polymarket.
In August 2025, Coplan named the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., to Polymarket’s advisory board. Trump Jr.’s 1789 Capital fund invested around $10 million in the company. Coplan said putting President Trump’s son on his advisory board had nothing to do with protecting his company.
“This [administration] is very pro-innovation, and pro-crypto, and pro-Polymarket, which is amazing,” Coplan said, adding, “I need help navigating that, right? I’m a young entrepreneur.”
Last month, Polymarket got its biggest validation yet when the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange announced it was investing $2 billion in Polymarket. Polymarket’s data will soon be integrated into the exchange to help investors and traders get an edge.
Polymarket, which is valued at $9 billion, has not yet turned a profit. It gives away its main product — its predictions — for free, and doesn’t charge fees on trades, at least not yet.
Hundreds of thousands of people trade on Polymarket and tens of millions of people look at the odds on the prediction market, according to Coplan. His goal is to reach a billion people, though he acknowledges that there’s a lot that needs to be done to get there.
“There are billions of people who could find value in this, which means until those people have Polymarket, are getting value from Polymarket, job’s not done,” Coplan said.
