Polymarket

Polymarket was founded by Shayne Coplan in 2020 and is operated by Blockratize, Inc., a Delaware-registered company based in New York City. Coplan has recalled that he was a solo founder at the time; he worked out the platform’s design during the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning in approximately June 2020, the platform offered “event markets” in which users bought and sold binary contracts on future events that could be resolved as “yes” or “no,” such as the price of Ethereum, COVID-19 case counts, and the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election; the contracts ran on smart contracts deployed on a blockchain.⁠[1][2][3][3][2][2][2][2][2]

In 2020, Polymarket raised a $4 million seed round led by Polychain Capital. In its first three years, the platform’s monthly active users never exceeded approximately 5,700.⁠[3][3]

On January 3, 2022, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced a settlement with Blockratize. The CFTC found that Polymarket had offered more than 900 event markets since its inception, and that these contracts, each consisting of a pair of binary options, were swaps that could only be offered on a registered exchange, while the company had not obtained designation as a designated contract market (DCM) or registration as a swap execution facility (SEF). The settlement required the company to pay a $1.4 million civil monetary penalty, wind down all non-compliant markets on its website, and cease the violations; the CFTC reduced the penalty in recognition of the company’s substantial cooperation with the investigation. At the same time, the platform officially closed to US users.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][3]

On May 14, 2024, Polymarket disclosed two previously unannounced funding rounds totaling $70 million: a $25 million Series A led by General Catalyst, with participation from Airbnb’s Joe Gebbia, Polychain, and others; and a $45 million Series B led by Founders Fund and existing investors 1confirmation and ParaFi, with participation from Vitalik Buterin, Dragonfly, and Kevin Hartz. The company said a record $202 million worth of predictions had been made on the platform so far in 2024, and that users in the United States and other restricted jurisdictions could not trade, though forecasts were freely available worldwide.⁠[4][4][4][4]

At the same time, Richard Jaycobs, a veteran futures industry executive who had served as president of the Cantor Exchange, joined the company as head of market expansion, responsible for strategic initiatives including exploring the prospect of regulated activities in the United States; former CFTC chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo serves as chairman of the company’s advisory board.⁠[4][4][4][4]

The 2024 US presidential election quickly brought Polymarket into the mainstream. A market on the platform betting that Joe Biden would drop out rose after his debate against Trump, a call that was later validated; statistician Nate Silver joined Polymarket as an advisor in July. The platform’s monthly trading volume grew from about $38 million in April 2024 to more than $500 million by the beginning of September.⁠[3][3][3][3]

By Election Day in November, more than 200,000 people a month were using the platform and open interest totaled $463 million; the platform’s main US election market ultimately generated more than $3.6 billion in trading volume. Interest cooled after the election, with daily trading volume averaging about $50 million in December, down from a November peak of more than $85 million. That year, after a French trader won an estimated $47 million on about $45 million in bets, mostly centered on whether Trump would win, France’s gaming regulator began looking into the platform, and Polymarket subsequently blocked the relevant markets for French users.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3]

Shortly after Trump’s election win in November 2024, the FBI searched Coplan’s New York apartment and seized his phone and computer. A Polymarket spokesperson called it an act of “political retribution” for the platform predicting the election outcome; people familiar with the matter later said the search was related to a US Department of Justice investigation into the platform allowing US users to bet despite the CFTC settlement. At the time, the platform blocked US users by IP address, but the restriction could be circumvented via VPN. As of December 2024, the matter had not been resolved.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3]

On July 21, 2025, Polymarket announced that it had closed the acquisition, for $112 million, of the holding company of CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange QCX, LLC and clearinghouse QC Clearing LLC (collectively “QCEX”), as the foundation for a regulated return to the US market. The company disclosed that users had made about $6 billion in predictions on the platform in the first half of 2025, and that it had become the official prediction market partner of X.⁠[5][5][5][5]

On October 7, 2025, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, announced a strategic investment of up to $2 billion in Polymarket, reflecting a pre-investment valuation of approximately $8 billion; ICE would become a global distributor of Polymarket’s event data to institutional clients, and the two also agreed to partner on tokenization. That day ICE entered into an agreement to purchase 9.6 million shares of Blockratize Series D Preferred Stock for $1 billion; its ownership gives it the right to exclusively nominate and elect one board member.⁠[1][1][1][6][6][6]

Also in October 2025, JPMorgan ended its primary banking relationship with Polymarket over regulatory concerns, and the platform moved its primary banking to another, undisclosed bank; Polymarket said it continued to work with JPMorgan in areas including handling customer fund flows.⁠[7][7]

On November 26, 2025, Polymarket announced that the CFTC had issued an Amended Order of Designation permitting it to operate a federally regulated, intermediated trading platform on which users can trade through futures commission merchants (FCMs); the company had built enhanced market surveillance, clearing procedures, and regulatory reporting capabilities for this purpose, and is subject to the self-regulatory obligations that apply to designated contract markets. In December of that year, Polymarket launched in the United States, initially as a service that let users bet on the outcomes of sporting events.⁠[8][8][8][8][9]

On December 10, 2025, CFTC Acting Chairman Caroline Pham announced the first round of participants in the “CEO Innovation Council,” with Coplan included alongside the heads of exchanges such as CME Group, Nasdaq, Intercontinental Exchange, and Kalshi.⁠[10][10]

On March 26, 2026, ICE invested an additional $600 million in Polymarket under a Series E Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement, acquiring approximately 4.2 million shares of Series E Preferred Stock, and accordingly recognized a $389 million fair-value gain on its Series D Preferred Stock; in April 2026, ICE also acquired approximately 0.4 million shares of common stock through a tender offer for $40 million. As of June 30, 2026, the carrying value of ICE’s Series D and E Preferred Stock holdings was approximately $2 billion, representing approximately 22% of Polymarket’s outstanding shares and 14% of its fully diluted shares.⁠[6][6][6][6]

On April 21, 2026, Polymarket announced on X that it had launched a perpetual futures product and opened early-access sign-ups, with a company representative saying it aimed to close the gap between prediction markets and traditional trading; Polymarket holds key CFTC approvals through its subsidiary QCX.⁠[11][11][11]

On the 23rd of that month, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced that US Army soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke had been charged with five felonies: he had been involved in planning the military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and allegedly used classified information to place about 13 bets totaling about $33,000 on Polymarket, profiting about $409,900. Coplan said on X that the platform had flagged the activity after detecting anomalies, referred it, and cooperated throughout the investigation. The case consists of charges; there has been no conviction.⁠[12][12][12][12][12][12]

On the 23rd of that month, the Wisconsin Department of Justice sued Kalshi, Robinhood, Coinbase, Polymarket, and Crypto.com in Dane County Court, arguing that their sports event contracts constituted unlawful commercial gambling prohibited by state law and asking the court to bar the platforms from offering sports-related contracts to in-state users; Polymarket has filed to remove its case to federal court.⁠[13][13][13][13]

On May 19, 2026, Polymarket announced an exclusive partnership with Nasdaq Private Market, under which the latter would serve as the resolution data provider for event contracts involving private companies; the first private company prediction markets launched that day.⁠[14][14]

On the 22nd of that month, James Comer, chairman of the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote to Coplan saying the committee was examining the use of prediction markets by some users to conduct insider trading, and asked Polymarket to provide, by June 5, materials from 2024 onward on its identity verification and know-your-customer (KYC) policies, its enforcement of geographic access restrictions, and its detection of anomalous trading. The letter is a congressional request for information and does not represent a finding that the company broke the law.⁠[15][15][15][15]

On August 13, 2026, Polymarket acquihired the roughly six-person team behind Turf, a real-time NFL prediction app, to work on Polymarket’s US web platform and app; the two had already partnered in April of that year.⁠[16][16][16]

That month, South Korea’s Media and Communications Standards Commission voted to block domestic access to Polymarket, concluding that its prediction markets facilitate illegal gambling; regulators rejected Polymarket’s argument that it had removed Korean-language services, does not accept Korean won, and uses non-custodial smart contracts. With this, more than 30 jurisdictions were restricting Polymarket.⁠[17][17][17][17]

On September 24, 2026, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Governor Kathy Hochul announced a lawsuit against QCX LLC d/b/a Polymarket US, alleging that its prediction markets constitute an unlicensed gambling operation that has not obtained a license from the New York State Gaming Commission, does not pay taxes as licensed casinos do, and is available to users aged 18 to 20, under 21. The state asked the court to bar it from operating without a license in New York and to order it to forfeit its illegal gains, pay restitution to users, and pay fines equal to three times those gains.⁠[9][9][9][9]

On October 7, 2026, in a fireside chat with Balaji Srinivasan at the TOKEN2049TOKEN2049TOKEN2049 is a global series of cryptocurrency and Web3 industry conferences that originated in Hong Kong; as of October 2026 it centers on its Singapore and Dubai editions and has announced a New York edition to be added in June 2027. The Singapore edition is held at Marina Bay Sands, coinciding with the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix.Open the full entry conference in Singapore, Coplan said Polymarket was exploring an onchain asset tied to the platform’s economy with “real programmable utility,” resembling an ideally designed stock, but gave no name, timeline, or structure, and said his remarks should not be taken as investment advice. As of that day, Polymarket had no native token; the company had previously filed trademarks for POLY and $POLY. Before the conference, the platform had upgraded to Protocol V2, introducing single ERC-1155 positions and PUSD collateral.⁠[18][18][18][18][18][18][18][18]

In the same session, he described the hype around chasing “100x tokens” as a game of “irrational exuberance and hot potato,” likening it to betting that something worthless can be offloaded before it collapses; by contrast, he said, trading on Polymarket has “no exponential upside” and relies more on information and probability analysis. According to DefiLlama data, Polymarket’s seven-day trading volume at the time was about $1.21 billion, second among prediction markets to Kalshi’s $2.3 billion.⁠[19][19][19][19][20][20]

On Polymarket, users buy shares in the outcome of an event, priced between $0 and $1, representing the market’s judgment of the probability of that outcome; for example, $0.66 corresponds to a 66% probability. Once the outcome is determined, those who bet correctly are paid out. All trades are matched peer-to-peer between users through smart contracts, and markets grow in size with the number of participants.⁠[3][1]

Polymarket: Official website: https://polymarket.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]

X: Public account: https://x.com/polymarket (opens in a new window)⁠[21][16]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/polymarket (opens in a new window)⁠[21]