Transcription
The New York Stock Exchange has just made a 2 billion dollar bet on the future of financial markets. If you think that the stock market is simply about buying and selling securities, according to the New York Stock Exchange, its future is no longer necessarily there. In this video, I will tell you the story of a 14-year-old young man who faced the American regulator, who has already undergone an FBI search, and who has just become, a few days ago, one of the youngest tech billionaires. And through the story of this little genius Shane Coplan, we will naturally discuss his company, and you will see that the New York Stock Exchange's bet may not be so crazy after all. [Music] On October 7, 2025, last week, the news broke. The company Polymarket has just raised 2 billion dollars on a global valuation of 9 billion. All the media are talking about it, even the French media. It's even a story that was covered by TF1, and it's making a lot of noise in the world of finance and even a little beyond. What is all the more interesting is that in the same week, Poly Market's direct competitor, the company Calchi, also announced a record fundraising, 300 million dollars on a valuation of 5 billion. Suddenly, the whole world turns its attention to predictive markets, and some are only discovering their existence at that moment. So, globally, what is a predictive market? It's a market that allows you to bet on the outcome of an event, any event. It could be a sporting event, and it's often assimilated to betting sites. But for this, it covers all categories: war, vaccines, politics, sports results, a government's new monetary policies, Jérôme Powell's first words at the next Fed meeting, the bankruptcy or acquisition of a large company, and even whether Taylor Swift will be pregnant by the end of the year. I'm not kidding. The concept is relatively simple. You connect to a platform, you have a specific event in front of you, and you have to vote yes or no, for or against the fact that this event will happen. Sometimes there are multiple choices, but depending on the investors, depending on the financial volume that will be positioned for or against the realization of this event, the platform will automatically calculate odds, the expected gain, and the potential multiple achieved by those who are for, depending on the volume and investments of those who are against. And vice versa, it's a kind of prediction stock exchange. Except that prediction stock exchanges are not new. It's not Polymarket or Kalschi who invented the concept. It has existed since the 80s or 90s. But it has always been systematically hindered for the same reasons. Regulatory hurdles, often assimilated to gambling or sports betting platforms, which require a license or authorizations. The capacity and integrity of the platforms that will manage and hold people's money, deposits, to ultimately execute these bets, the way it will be verified that a bet is won or lost, and a large part of the processes and mechanisms to ensure that it is legal in a country, particularly depending on its jurisdiction, and also that the execution is fair for all users. In short, it exists in some places, it's forbidden in others, and that's France's position. As I speak to you, prediction markets and Polymarket are treated as betting platforms and are not in compliance with French law. That's why you cannot directly access Polymarket from your computer, and it's peculiar, even very unclear, in most countries. But at that point, blockchain technology changes the game, and cryptocurrencies allow this to be done differently. Since the blockchain can be decentralized, the creation of the bet, its execution, the verification of the winner and loser, and the holding and distribution of funds to the winners can be done without any intermediary, in a completely decentralized way. It's the algorithm that will be connected to what's called an oracle, which will be able to verify who wins and who loses the bet and make an automatic, mechanical, algorithmic distribution of payments. So there are no more brokers, someone who creates the mechanism that makes it possible, of course, and who takes a commission on the bet, but no one who executes it and holds and keeps people's funds. The result is therefore automatic. Everything is totally transparent, it's public, and it's written on the blockchain. At any moment, people can verify what's happening and that no one is taking control of this system. It's exactly as if you contacted a friend, made this bet, and shook hands. With a little extra, the guarantee that the execution and payment will happen after the prediction. In short, blockchain changes the execution, solves some of its problems, even if it doesn't solve the issue of qualification. And especially, while for some it's just bets or predictions, for others it's a precise and very granular measure of public opinion regarding a specific event. And that, for some, is worth gold. But we'll come back to that later. [Music] To understand how Polymarket became the leader in this industry and the incredible progress this environment has made, we need to go back to Shane Coplan's story. And for this, buckle up, the story of Polymarket's creation is literally American storytelling. Shane Coplan was born in New York in 1998. A tech prodigy, he started getting interested in cryptocurrencies in 2012 at the age of 14 and discovered this universe. At 16, as a self-taught person, he started coding himself and creating his first programs. While he was starting his studies at New York University, he quickly dropped out to dedicate himself to crypto. It's clearly this subject that fascinates him, and he wants to create something in this ecosystem. That's why he launched his first project, Union. The objective of Union was to offer staking solutions across the entire Cosmos ecosystem. A very young ecosystem at the time, which took some time to gain value, and Union's beginnings were very difficult. Shane Coplan worked from his "bathroom office," as he called it, meaning he had set up his desk directly in his apartment, in his bathroom. The problem was that it started very slowly. Not much success, very little traction, very little revenue. Some sources and articles even specify that he said he had sold furniture to be able to pay his rent at the end of the month. It was a failure. Union was about to close when Shane had a new idea, a new project, and the desire to create a predictive market. And it's probably at this moment that there was a turning point in his life, and we're not about to see him selling furniture again. During this period, it was also the launch of Ethereum and the very first known ICO where you could exchange a few cents of Bitcoin for Ether. Shane was present and made his first investments. Although it took a few years for it to pay off, his position must have paid off well. He had much more interest and much more resources to create the very first version of what he would call Polymarket. Discussions began in 2019, and the official launch of the project was in 2020. Six months after the team was formed, the platform was live. But it was in 2021 that there was completely crazy traction. Trump versus Biden, the first major political elections that attracted millions of dollars in volume on Polymarket and therefore large commissions. But that's not all, it was the Covid period. People were at home, worried, researching, discovering cryptocurrencies, and it was the boom we experienced in cryptocurrencies during that period. Everyone was interested in this ecosystem, and the Polymarket project experienced its first disproportionate success. The media started talking about the creators. More and more volume was attracted, more and more bets, even on Covid figures and vaccines. In short, a first real spotlight. But with media interest came regulator interest. And very quickly in 2022, Polymarket experienced its first setback. The CFTC, the commodities regulator, banned Polymarket's activity in the United States, demanding a 1.4 million dollar fine for illegally serving American users without prior registration or authorization. Growth stopped, or at least slowed down drastically. Their main market, the United States, could no longer connect to the Polymarket platform. The team took a little step back, but they didn't give up. In 2023, Polymarket released a new platform, even simpler, more accessible, visual, streamlined, Web3, crypto, and totally decentralized. In addition to being inaccessible from the United States, more Web3 and more crypto than ever, bets resumed with renewed vigor. American elections, the start of the war in Ukraine, the explosion of artificial intelligence. There was no shortage of events, and neither was there a shortage of volume. The platform broke all records, recorded unprecedented profits, and this time attracted the eye of investors. Airbnb, Figma, Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum, Peter Thiel, among the biggest names in the industry, became interested in Polymarket. But in November 2024, another dip. This time perhaps more traumatic, as the FBI directly raided Shane Coplan's home and seized all his computer equipment. Still a consequence of the famous investigation for distributing prohibited services to Americans. Quickly, Shane Coplan made an ironic, short tweet and explained that he had just bought a new phone and recovered his access. A probably more traumatic event, as a search is never pleasant. Following this, many countries in Europe, including France, blocked access to Polymarket. These are issues that are still very open because as long as it's on the blockchain, anyone can access it, but the platforms, the collection, the website polymarket.com, is no longer accessible from a French IP. This reduces the platform's user base. [Music] It was in September 2025. A few weeks ago, the biggest thunderclap ever heard about Polymarket took place. The company announced that it had raised 2 billion dollars in a single round at a valuation of 9 billion, and not with just anyone, but with the group behind the New York Stock Exchange, one of the parent companies of the New York Stock Exchange. An actor among the most virtuous and well-known in the centralized financial industry. But that's not all, they also announced the acquisition of QCX, a platform already regulated in the United States, and thus announced their return to American soil, as the small flag in the top left of their website clearly indicates at the time of speaking. The CFTC, the regulator that had fined them, published a no-action letter, a sort of partial green light that could authorize certain event contracts. And if that wasn't enough, Elon Musk, the CEO of X, formerly Twitter, announced that Polymarket would be the prediction platform that would be integrated directly into the social network. With this valuation of 9 billion dollars and a little over 11% of its capital at the age of 27, Shane Coplan becomes one of the youngest tech billionaires. And here, one might wonder what's happening, because at the same time that Polymarket is raising funds with the New York Stock Exchange, Kalschi, their direct competitor, is also announcing a 300 million raise on a valuation of 5 billion with completely different players. While Polymarket is moving closer to the centralized and regulated world of finance, Kalschi is doing the exact opposite. Kalschi was already regulated in the United States. They had a market that was limited. They couldn't serve just anyone, but they had the right to operate on American soil. And for this, they raised funds almost exclusively with Web3 and crypto players: Paradigm, Multicoin Capital, Sequoia Capital, players who know the world of cryptocurrency. The two biggest giants in this industry are equipping themselves with the resources and weapons they lacked by bringing in players of a completely different nature into their capital. Although different, their bets seem to converge. But what interests us is what's behind the scenes. What could be going through the mind of such a large and prestigious financial institution to invest a colossal amount on a bet? Well, it's precisely not a bet. It's not a betting site, it's not solely a prediction market, it's a granular tool to gauge public opinion, to understand people's opinions. Elon Musk said it in one of his tweets: money doesn't lie. When people make a bet and we have statistics, they are very often more accurate than simple opinion polls. Many financial magazines have said it. During the last American elections, prediction markets were much more precise and accurate than polls and public opinion. In addition to being instantaneous, verifiable, and backed by a financial investment that supports conviction rather than a simple word or an opinion response on a form. Money doesn't lie. It is therefore in a very precise sensor, a barometer of public opinion, and very reliable data that the New York Stock Exchange is making its bet. The ICE group wants to master this new material and these new Web3 codes before it's too late. We see the NASDAQ making a shift and announcing its intention to offer tokenized shares for settlement. On the other hand, financial markets are asking if they shouldn't operate 24/7. Even these large operators and even these large companies are trying to stay up-to-date and not lose touch with the obvious progress and the entry of institutions into the crypto world. The bet, therefore, is the revolution of financial data, and what the New York Stock Exchange is seeking here is probably a stake in a platform that could one day become a decentralized equivalent of Bloomberg, capable of extracting and obtaining precise data on people's opinions about a future event. And everything continues to accelerate. Polymarket announces a massive airdrop for all people who have used the service in the past. In parallel, they announced today that they can bet on the future rise or fall of a stock. And this has nothing to do with buying or short selling. It's a simple bet on a future event. In this case, the event is the rise or fall of a financial stock. This will open doors to arbitrage and will make people reconsider a way to be exposed to the world of finance once again, in a way that is still very little explored. The New York Stock Exchange has even stated that they will officially become distributors of this privileged data and this sentiment collected through Polymarket. And that's not all. They are even announcing future collaborations on tokenization, the possibility of creating their own token, a token that would represent a sentiment, a probability, or an event. The closer we get to the realization of this event, the more the token could gain value, or conversely, if we move away from it, if it becomes obsolete, the token could lose all its value. Once again, the range of possibilities with tokenization is such, and we are so early, that it is difficult to say what they will do, but it is interesting to see the avenues that are already being explored and that they are already mentioning in their public statements. [Music] This was Hur. I hope you enjoyed this video. It's a bit different from how I usually cover news, but I really wanted to delve into this investment, which goes beyond a simple betting platform. While it's considered financial gambling in many countries, like France, and is highly regulated or even inaccessible in many places, it's not everywhere. And seeing how behaviors are evolving and users naturally wanting to take positions and use these kinds of services gives ideas even to the most regulated institutions in the United States. Feel free to tell me if you liked this format. Feel free to add any other anecdotes about this story. I avoided the anecdotes that were the hardest to verify. I've heard all sorts of things on the subject. I tried to condense information that not only made sense but that I could also verify about the evolution of this project and Shane Coplan's youth. If you liked it, feel free to tell me which story or character you would like to see in a video of this format. A little thumbs up is also appreciated. And if you're not subscribed, don't hesitate to do so. It's what motivates my work and has made me want to continue creating content every week on this YouTube channel for almost 9 years now. This was Hur, and I'll see you very soon. Goodbye. [Music]