Shayne Coplan

Shayne Coplan is the Founder and CEO of Polymarket, a cryptocurrency-based prediction market he founded in June 2020 and has led since. His remit spans product, market policy, and partnerships, including market wording and resolution standards, integrity controls, and institutional data distribution. Polymarket operates via blockchain-based smart contracts, with trades and payouts settled on the Polygon (Ethereum) network, allowing users to bet on the outcomes of real-world events using cryptocurrency.

Coplan was born in 1998 and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He attended public schools in Hell's Kitchen and studied computer science at New York University, leaving during his freshman year to pursue blockchain technology and prediction markets. In 2014, at age 16, he participated in the initial coin offering of Ethereum, acquiring tokens at approximately $0.30 each. He has cited economist Friedrich Hayek's theories on decentralized information and professor Robin Hanson's concept of futarchy as intellectual foundations for Polymarket. Prior to founding Polymarket, he interned at Chronicled, where he worked on product interactions with the Ethereum blockchain, and at Genius, where he contributed to the platform's collaboration with Spotify on its "Behind The Lyrics" feature. He founded Polymarket in his Lower East Side apartment during the COVID-19 pandemic, having previously worked on a decentralized finance project called Union Market. By 2024, Polymarket had raised approximately $70 million from investors including Vitalik Buterin and Peter Thiel. In October 2025, following an investment by Intercontinental Exchange, Bloomberg reported his net worth at approximately $1.0 billion, making him, at age 27, the youngest self-made billionaire on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index at that time.