From college dropout to bathroom office: 5 things to know about Shayne Coplan, who recently overtook Alexandr Wang as world’s youngest self-made billionaire

Polymarket received a major boost last week when Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, poured US$2 billion in cash into the startup.

The investment lifted the firm’s valuation to $9 billion and turned Coplan, its founder and CEO, into a billionaire at age 27 as his estimated 11% stake in Polymarket is now valued at more than $1 billion.

Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan (R) stands for a photo with retired New York Rangers Swedish ice hockey player Henrik Lundqvist after former Rangers players rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York on Oct. 7, 2025. Photo by AFP

Here are five things to know about his rise to wealth.

New York University dropout

Coplan left New York University early in his twenties to pursue big dreams in the crypto world, but he soon found himself cash-strapped. Struggling to make ends meet, he once took stock of everything in his apartment in New York City’s Lower East Side just to see what he could sell to cover rent.

"At the onset of the pandemic, I quite literally had nothing to lose: 21, running out of money, 2.5 years since I dropped out, and nothing to show for it, but I knew we were entering an era where ways to find truth would matter more than ever." Coplan later recounted in a social media post.

He shares the same college-dropout-to-billionaire path as Wang, the 28-year-old co-founder of Scale AI who was the world’s youngest self-made billionaire up until last week, according to Forbes. Wang first earned the title at just 24, several years after he left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to start his company with Lucy Guo, who is now the world's youngest self-made woman billionaire.

Multi-billion-dollar business out of a bathroom

Coplan launched Polymarket in 2020 at age 21 from an unlikely headquarters—the bathroom of his apartment, which he has referred to as his "makeshift bathroom office" in an X post.

Shayne Coplan's supposed "makeshift bathroom office." Photo from Shayne Coplan's X/@shayne_coplan

He said in a separate post that the idea for the firm came from the ideas of economist Robin Hanson, who pioneered academic research on prediction markets, per Cointelegraph.

Built around the belief that markets reveal reality, Polymarket lets users place bets on virtually anything, from who will win the 2025 World Series to the timing of the next U.S. government shutdown. Coplan said the goal is to "harness the power of free markets to demystify real events that matter most to you."

Before founding Polymarket, he had already dabbled in the field, developing a crypto staking platform called Union that attracted venture capital and working on several smaller crypto-related projects while still in school.

Raided by the FBI

Polymarket faced a serious blow in early 2022, when it had to pay a $1.4 million fine to settle allegations by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission that it had been offering illegal trading, Bloomberg reported.

The company did not admit wrongdoing but agreed to bar American users from its platform, effectively cutting itself off from a massive market for years.

"Having to exit the U.S. market four years ago was a tough setback, but we knew we were on the right side of history," Coplan told TIME magazine, which late last month named him on a list of the world’s most influential rising stars.

But authorities suspected Polymarket was still serving users in the country and, a week after the 2024 U.S. presidential election last November, FBI agents raided Coplan’s home before sunrise and seized several electronic devices.

Polymarket's odds-defying rise

Despite those setbacks, Polymarket continued to expand rapidly and saw its breakout moment during the same U.S. presidential election.

Users on the platform wagered more than $3.2 billion on the outcome of the race, Fortune reported, with one French trader taking home about $85 million from a bet that President Donald Trump would win.

Authorities closed their investigations into the firm in July 2025. That same month, Polymarket acquired QCEX, a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, for $112 million. The purchase allowed the company to legally resume operations in the U.S.

The CFTC granted final approval for the launch in September, just days after the U.S. president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., invested in Polymarket and joined its advisory board through venture firm 1789 Capital.

Forbes noted that Trump Jr. is a partner at 1789 Capital and has, since January, also served as a strategic adviser to Kalshi, Polymarket’s main rival.

Before ICE’s investment, Polymarket had already raised about $255 million, according to Pitchbook, with notable backers including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin and Blockchain Capital.

As the current U.S. administration loosens regulations on prediction markets and crypto, Polymarket has deepened its connections in Washington. ICE’s CEO Jeffrey Sprecher and his wife Kelly Loeffler, a former ICE executive and head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, are also known allies of President Trump.

What’s next for Polymarket

Polymarket has rapidly transformed both the gambling and prediction market landscapes by combining blockchain transparency with market-driven betting. The platform now draws growing interest from institutional players as well as everyday traders.

After announcing the multibillion-dollar investment from ICE, Coplan hinted at the possible debut of a Polymarket token, sharing a post on X that listed top cryptocurrencies alongside another hashtag: "$POLY."

Speculation about such a token has been circulating for months. If launched, it could boost liquidity on the platform and offer traders and market makers stronger incentives to participate.