Polymarket Is Back in the U.S.: This Is Its Story
How a 21-year-old college dropout turned a niche crypto experiment into a multi-billion-dollar prediction market, survived a CFTC crackdown, and came back to challenge Wall Street and Kalshi in U.S.
Founded in 2020, the platform grew from a niche crypto experiment into a multi-billion dollar prediction market powerhouse by 2025. Its simple brand belies the complex decentralized infrastructure under the hood.
In This Issue:
Origin Story – A Dropout’s Vision: How 21-year-old Shayne Coplan launched Polymarket in 2020 to let anyone bet on world events, marrying blockchain tech with a user-friendly interface.
Early Traction Amid Legal Hurdles: Polymarket’s early growth brought legal challenges – a $1.4M CFTC fine in 2022 forced it to geofence U.S. users. The startup rebounded by hiring ex-CFTC “CryptoDad” Chris Giancarlo as an advisor and doubling down on overseas markets.
Product-Market Fit & Exponential Growth: In 2024, Polymarket’s bet paid off. The platform correctly predicted the U.S. election outcome as users wagered $3.6B on that question alone. Monthly volume rocketed from ~$54M in January to $2.63B in November 2024 – a 48x surge – with cumulative trades topping $9B for the year. Active traders jumped to 314,500 by December (up from just ~4,000 in January) as Polymarket found product-market fit beyond just politics.
The investors: Venture capital followed the traction. After raising modest seed funds (Polychain led $4M in 2020), Polymarket closed larger rounds through 2024 (totaling $70M by mid-2024 with investors like Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin joining in). By early 2025 it hit unicorn status. The capstone: in Oct 2025 the NYSE’s parent ICE invested $2B, valuing Polymarket around $9B – making Coplan, at 27, one of the world’s youngest self-made billionaires.
Polymarket Vs Kalshi: We examine how Polymarket stacks up against rival Kalshi, which took a regulated U.S. path and now sometimes surpasses Polymarket in weekly volume.
1. Origin Story – A Dropout’s Vision
Polymarket’s story begins with a college dropout and an ambitious idea.
Shayne Coplan, a New York University student who left school at 21, founded Polymarket in mid-2020. Frustrated by online misinformation and inspired by economist Robin Hanson’s work on prediction markets, Coplan envisioned a platform where anyone could “bet on your beliefs” and let real-money odds reveal the truth.
He incorporated the startup (Blockratize, Inc.) in Delaware and launched the Polymarket web app in the summer of 2020.
From the outset, Polymarket blended blockchain technology with a slick web interface to make prediction markets accessible. Under the hood, it deployed smart contracts on Ethereum (via the Polygon sidechain) so trades and outcomes would be transparently settled on-chain. To users, though, it felt as easy as a betting website: one could sign up with an email (or crypto wallet), deposit USDC stablecoins, and start trading on everyday questions.
Early markets in 2020 ranged from crypto prices (“Will ETH be above $2,500 on July 22?”) to COVID-19 case counts (“Will the U.S. 7-day avg be <15,000 on July 22?”) and the looming 2020 election (“Will Trump win the 2020 presidential election?”).
These initial markets attracted a small but passionate user base of crypto enthusiasts and pundits willing to wager on world events.
Crucially, Polymarket introduced an automated market maker (AMM) model (inspired by DeFi exchanges) to provide liquidity in each yes/no market. Rather than rely on matching individual bettors, Polymarket’s smart contracts continuously quoted prices for outcomes, adjusting odds as people bought “Yes” or “No” shares. This ensured even new markets had liquidity. Over time, the team evolved the design – by 2023 they’d implemented a hybrid order book for faster, cheaper trading while still settling trades on-chain.
The platform also integrated a robust oracle system to resolve markets: outcomes are determined by a combination of Polymarket’s own declarations, community dispute mechanisms via UMA Protocol, and external data feeds (for numeric outcomes, they use Chainlink oracles) to ensure integrity in payouts. All these technical choices (Polygon L2 for low fees, AMM + order book for liquidity, decentralized oracles for trust) were aimed at one thing: making prediction markets reliable and easy to use.
Polymarket’s product had to overcome the slow, clunky user experience of earlier prediction platforms, and it largely succeeded in offering near-instant, low-cost trades with straightforward resolution of bets.
2. Early Traction Amid Legal Hurdles
By late 2020, Polymarket’s novel approach caught the attention of investors. In October 2020 it raised a $4 million seed round led by Polychain Capital, with prominent angels like former AngelList CEO Naval Ravikant and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan joining in.
This funding gave Coplan’s small team (then just a handful of engineers and crypto community members) a runway to grow the platform. Indeed, early usage spiked during the 2020 U.S. election – Polymarket drew in bettors debating Trump vs. Biden outcomes, showcasing the “wisdom of the crowd” advantage of prediction markets. (Notably, Polymarket’s odds trended towards Trump late in the race, correctly reflecting the eventual result when many polls did not.)
The influx of users during major news events validated Coplan’s belief that there was demand for markets on “anything and everything.”
However, this early rise also brought regulatory scrutiny. In the U.S., offering real-money binary options on events is considered offering swaps or commodity options – activities that require CFTC approval if done for U.S. customers. Polymarket had been operating openly (though without KYC and with crypto bets), which caught the eye of regulators. The hammer dropped in January 2022, when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced a settlement with Polymarket. The charge: Polymarket’s event markets were essentially unregistered binary option exchanges. The startup agreed to pay a $1.4 million fine and shut down all non-compliant markets. Crucially, Polymarket also geoblocked U.S. users after this – Americans could no longer trade on polymarket.com, which became accessible only to international users.
This could have been a death knell – losing the U.S. market and facing regulatory ire just as the platform was finding its footing. Many early prediction market projects (like Intrade in the 2000s) never recovered from regulatory bans.
Polymarket, however, pivoted and persevered. The team immediately took steps to bolster compliance and credibility. In May 2022, in a savvy move, Polymarket appointed J. Christopher “CryptoDad” Giancarlo – the former CFTC Chairman – as chairman of its advisory board.
Bringing a respected ex-regulator on board sent a clear signal that Polymarket intended to work with regulators, not against them, in the long run. As Giancarlo later noted, he joined to help shape a framework where prediction markets could operate legally in the U.S. This advisory firepower gave Polymarket a second chance in the eyes of many observers.
At the same time, Polymarket doubled down on serving the rest of the world.
Because it’s a decentralized protocol at its core, non-U.S. users continued to trade freely on Polymarket via crypto wallets. Throughout 2022 and 2023, the platform quietly kept operating outside America.
Growth was relatively modest in this period – volumes were nowhere near what they’d achieve later – but Polymarket built a loyal base of crypto-savvy bettors in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
By late 2023, Polymarket had hosted on the order of a few dozen million dollars in total trades (a fraction of what traditional betting sites handle, but laying important groundwork). More importantly, the company set the stage for a U.S. comeback. It developed plans to launch a fully regulated U.S. version of Polymarket once legally feasible. In 2023 Polymarket even quietly acquired a tiny CFTC-regulated exchange called QCX for $112M (announced in 2025) as a vehicle to re-enter the U.S. market through proper channels. This patience and persistence through the “crypto winter” of 2022–2023 would pay off soon.
3. Breakout: Election Fever and Product-Market Fit in 2024
The true inflection point for Polymarket came in 2024. The combination of a heated U.S. presidential election and a maturing product turned Polymarket into a breakout star of crypto.
With U.S. residents locked out of the site (to satisfy regulators), it might seem paradoxical that a U.S. election would drive Polymarket’s growth. But the global interest in American politics is huge – and Polymarket became the venue for anyone outside the U.S. (and some creative Americans using VPNs) to bet on the 2024 race. By Polymarket’s own stats, it hosted the majority of worldwide prediction trading on the U.S. election. In fact, over $3.6 billion was wagered on the single question “Who will win the presidency in 2024?” on Polymarket.
This was a staggering sum, reflecting tens of thousands of users trading in and out as odds fluctuated daily. Polymarket’s markets correctly signaled the eventual winner well before many polls did, vindicating the “wisdom of crowds” ethos.
The election mania sparked a chain reaction of growth across the platform. Traders who came for politics stayed for other topics. Polymarket rapidly expanded its categories of markets – from major geopolitical events (Russia-Ukraine war outcomes, for instance) to finance and crypto (Will the Fed hike rates? Will Bitcoin hit a price target?) to pop culture and sports (celebrity news, soccer matches, etc.).
The second half of 2024 saw an explosion in both volume and user count: Polymarket’s cumulative trading volume surpassed $9 billion in 2024, compared to only tens of millions prior. In November 2024 alone (election month), Polymarket processed $2.63 billion in trades – its highest month ever. For context, in January 2024 volume was just $54 million; by November it was 48× higher. Open interest (the amount of money tied up in active bets) hit a record $510 million on Election Day.
Even more telling, the user base absolutely skyrocketed. At the start of 2024, Polymarket had only around 4,000 monthly active traders. By December 2024, it boasted over 314,000 active traders that month.
Put another way, the platform’s user activity grew ~74% month-over-month through the year – a viral growth curve by any standard. Importantly, even after the U.S. election concluded (removing the year’s biggest catalyst), users kept coming. In December 2024, trading volume did dip about 34% from the November peak (as expected post-election), but the number of traders still climbed to a new high.
This indicated that Polymarket had converted many people into regular users, now participating in markets beyond just the presidential race.
One notable trend post-election was a shift toward sports-related markets. During the election frenzy, political markets soaked up most of the capital (and Polymarket couldn’t officially serve U.S. customers for sports anyway). But afterwards, many users explored other bets: NFL games, soccer tournaments, and yes/no questions on athletes began to gain traction.
Sports markets tend to be shorter-term and smaller in size per event (a single game resolves in a day, unlike a months-long election market), so open interest naturally dropped after the election.
But the fact that sports became the most popular category by late 2024 was encouraging – it showed Polymarket’s appeal broadening into the massive sports betting arena (a market worth tens of billions globally). This transition also explained a quirk in the data: active traders kept rising while total OI (money at stake at any given time) fell in Dec 2024. With many users placing rapid, smaller bets on games, you had more people trading even though each kept less money parked in long-running markets.
In short, Polymarket achieved true product-market fit in 2024 – it proved that a decentralized prediction market could attract hundreds of thousands of users and billions in volume when the product and timing clicked.
4. Sustaining Momentum in 2025: Beyond Politics
After such a banner year, a key question was whether Polymarket could retain users and growth in 2025, especially with the U.S. election over. The early signs have been positive. While no single event in 2025 matched a Presidential election, Polymarket managed to keep volumes high by expanding content and continuously engaging its community. In the first quarter of 2025, the platform still regularly cleared over $1 billion in trading volume per month.
January 2025, for instance, saw about $1.23B traded – down from November’s peak, but roughly 20× higher than a year prior.
And the user count kept climbing: Polymarket reached 450,000 monthly active traders by January 2025, as interest spilled over into all sorts of news and sports markets. In fact, Polymarket reported that the majority of prediction trades on major sports championships (like the NFL Super Bowl and European soccer finals) were happening on its platform by mid-2025, not on traditional sportsbooks. Markets like “Will the Federal Reserve hike rates at the March meeting?” or “Who will win the Best Picture Oscar?” also kept engagement high during non-election months.
One catalyst that helped in 2025 was media and data integration. Polymarket’s real-time odds began to be cited in mainstream news coverage. In 2024, Bloomberg notably displayed Polymarket’s presidential odds on its terminals, lending credibility. By 2025, even some TV networks would reference Polymarket betting odds as a pulse of public sentiment. Polymarket capitalized on this by partnering with Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) (which as we’ll discuss also invested heavily) to package its data for institutional distribution. The idea is that hedge funds, analysts, and journalists might subscribe to Polymarket’s data feed for insight into event probabilities – creating a new revenue stream and spreading the brand. This data play underscores how Polymarket sees itself not just as a betting site, but as an information platform that monetizes the “wisdom of crowds.”
The Polymarket team also kept shipping product improvements. In 2025 they rolled out a more polished mobile app and user interface refresh to make browsing markets and reading news in-app easier. They also launched a campaign via Twitter (now X) that allowed users to see Polymarket odds embedded in tweets about news events – tapping into social media discussions. These efforts paid off in user retention: even a month after the big election, CoinDesk noted Polymarket still had a “loyal base” of traders sticking around, and by late Q3 2025 the platform saw some of its busiest weeks ever outside of election season.
One example of a 2025 hit market: the U.S. Federal Reserve’s September 2025 interest rate decision. Macro traders around the world used Polymarket to hedge and speculate on whether the Fed would hike, hold, or cut rates. That market alone reportedly handled over $200 million in volume in the days around the Fed meeting – showing that serious capital was now using Polymarket for financial event hedging. Similarly, when the U.S. approved the first Bitcoin ETF in late 2025, Polymarket’s markets on “Will the SEC approve a Bitcoin ETF by date X?” drew huge interest from crypto traders, influencing discourse in that industry. All told, by the fall of 2025 Polymarket was regularly putting up 10-figure monthly volumes even in “normal” news months, and open interest on the platform rebounded to near post-election highs as new categories (sports, macro, pop culture) drove activity. This sustained traction gave Polymarket strong momentum going into its next phase – and caught the eye of some very big investors.
5. Zero Fees, Big Growth: Business Model and Funding
It’s worth highlighting that Polymarket achieved all this growth while essentially not charging its users anything.
The platform has, to date, charged no trading fees on markets – an almost unheard-of strategy in finance. Whether you trade $10 or $1 million on Polymarket, the platform takes 0% cut (aside from minor crypto network fees). This was a deliberate choice: by subsidizing all the costs, Polymarket removed any friction for users to try it out and kept liquidity flowing freely.
As Polymarket’s VP David Rosenberg put it in mid-2024, the company was in “growth mode and doesn’t yet monetize the hundreds of millions of dollars in trades”, though it “will probably charge a fee” later on. Essentially, venture capital has been footing the bill to achieve network effects first; revenue can come later once Polymarket is the dominant platform.
So how did Polymarket fund itself through years of zero commissions and heavy engineering and legal spend? The answer: a dramatic fundraising journey, culminating in over $2.3 billion raised by late 2025. We’ve already noted the $4M seed in 2020. After that, Polymarket kept rounds relatively quiet for a while (likely due to regulatory overhang).
It reportedly raised a Series A of ~$25M in late 2021, led by General Catalyst (though this wasn’t publicly announced at the time).
Once the CFTC case was settled and growth started picking up, investors piled on more visibly:
Series B (May 2024) – Polymarket announced it had raised $70 million across two rounds by mid-2024. This included a formal Series B led by Founders Fund (Peter Thiel’s fund) at around a $500M valuation, as well as participation from crypto luminaries.
Notably, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin personally invested in this round, a strong vote of confidence from the crypto community. Other backers included Polychain (doubling down from seed) and Blockchain Capital. This influx of capital in early 2024 helped Polymarket scale its tech for the election onslaught and signaled that top VCs saw long-term potential in event markets.
Series C (January 2025) – After the record-breaking 2024 performance, Polymarket raised roughly $150 million at a $1.2 billion valuation, officially making it a “unicorn.” This round was again led by Founders Fund (reinforcing their conviction), with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Point72 Ventures (hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen’s VC arm), and others. The Series C gave Polymarket a war chest to tackle its next big challenges: namely, re-entering the U.S. legally and continuing global expansion. By now, Shayne Coplan’s startup had gone from scrappy college project to one of the most valuable companies in the crypto sector.
Strategic Investment (October 2025) – The crowning moment of Polymarket’s fundraising came when Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) – the Fortune-500 owner of the New York Stock Exchange – took a major stake. In early October 2025, ICE announced it would invest up to $2 billion in Polymarket for a minority equity stake, valuing the company around $8–9 billion post-money.
The first tranche of ~$1.25B closed immediately, instantly making Shayne Coplan extraordinarily wealthy (at least on paper). As ICE’s CEO Jeffrey Sprecher put it, this partnership would let ICE and Polymarket “serve opportunities across markets” blending Wall Street and crypto. For Polymarket, beyond the money, having the NYSE’s parent as an investor is huge validation – it positions Polymarket as the bridge between blockchain-based event markets and traditional finance. ICE’s investment also came with a deal to distribute Polymarket’s market data to institutional clients, giving Polymarket a clear path to monetizing its wealth of prediction data. It’s hard to overstate how unusual a $2B private investment is in this space – this is one of the largest checks ever written into a crypto startup.
In total, by end of 2025 Polymarket has raised roughly ~$2.3B.
Its valuation in the latest rumor (as per Reuters) is even higher – Polymarket was reportedly in talks for a $12–15 billion valuation round around the same time, riding the sector’s enthusiasm.
For context, its chief U.S. competitor Kalshi was valued at $11B in late 2025 after raising $1B – Polymarket’s investors clearly see it as at least on par if not more promising.
Who are these investors?
In addition to the funds mentioned, Polymarket’s cap table now includes a diverse mix of Silicon Valley VCs (Sequoia and a16z even joined Kalshi’s rounds, indirectly validating Polymarket’s space), crypto-native funds, and strategic/political players.
For example, in August 2025 1789 Capital, a VC firm with ties to Donald Trump Jr., made an eight-figure investment in Polymarket. This came with Donald Trump Jr. himself joining as a strategic advisor to Polymarket – a somewhat eyebrow-raising addition, but one that could help Polymarket navigate political relationships (Trump Jr. had also advised Kalshi previously).
On the other end of the spectrum, Nate Silver, the famed statistician behind FiveThirtyEight, joined as an advisor in 2024 to help Polymarket with forecasting models and perhaps attract the analytically minded trader crowd. And of course, ex-CFTC Chair Chris Giancarlo continues to guide regulatory strategy.
Throughout all this, Shayne Coplan remains at the helm as CEO, and by all accounts retains significant ownership.
His journey – from being “broke at 21” after dropping out, to building Polymarket, getting raided by the FBI during the CFTC probe (as reported by Forbes), then rebounding to become a billionaire at 27 – has been covered by mainstream media.
Coplan’s vision is unapologetically grand: he often talks about reaching “a billion people” with Polymarket eventually. Now flush with capital and credibility, he’ll have to manage a much larger organization (Polymarket’s headcount has grown with recent hiring in compliance, engineering, and marketing).
The company’s lack of revenue so far isn’t a huge concern for investors yet – they understand it’s akin to early Amazon or early Twitter: grow the user base first, monetize later. Possible future monetization includes introducing trading fees or a token, earning spreads as a market maker, selling premium data (already begun with ICE), or offering enterprise products. As Anderson Cooper pressed Coplan in a 60 Minutes feature, Polymarket “still hasn’t made any profit” and gives away its main service for free – but if and when Polymarket decides to flip the monetization switch, the groundwork (huge engaged user base + high-value data) is there.
6. The New Prediction Market Landscape: Polymarket vs. the Rest
Once considered a fringe idea, prediction markets are now a hot sector – and Polymarket is at its forefront. However, it’s not alone. Let’s briefly map the competitive landscape and how Polymarket differentiates:
Kalshi (U.S.-Regulated Rival): If Polymarket is the decentralized rebel, Kalshi is the establishment-friendly twin. Founded in 2018, Kalshi took the opposite route: it spent years working with the CFTC to become a fully regulated designated contract market for event contracts. Launched in 2021, Kalshi initially offered markets on things like inflation rates and economic indicators under strict CFTC rules (each user limited in investment size, etc.). In 2023, Kalshi won a landmark legal battle giving it approval to offer political event markets in the U.S., including elections. It also aggressively expanded into sports events after determining that many sports contracts could be considered “event futures” rather than gambling. By late 2024 and into 2025, Kalshi experienced a boom of its own – particularly as U.S. users who couldn’t use Polymarket found Kalshi to bet on elections and sports. Kalshi’s volumes surged over 1000% in a year; by fall 2025 Kalshi was reportedly handling over $1 billion per week in trading volume, often outpacing Polymarket’s weekly volume. In one October 2025 week, for instance, industry data showed Kalshi had roughly 70% of all prediction market turnover, thanks largely to NFL football betting that drew in mainstream Americans. Kalshi’s approach is more traditional: it charges fees on trades (a few percent on winnings plus small per-contract fees) and requires full KYC (users link bank accounts, etc.). This has allowed it to advertise in the open in the U.S. and attract users who might never touch crypto. In terms of funding, Kalshi has also raised big rounds (Sequoia, A16z, etc., and by Dec 2025 a $1B round at an $11B valuation).
Polymarket vs. Kalshi is shaping up to be a duopoly battle – with Polymarket currently dominating globally and in crypto circles, and Kalshi leading in the U.S. with sports. It’s telling that Polymarket’s valuation ($9B–$12B) slightly eclipses Kalshi’s, implying investors value Polymarket’s global liquidity and growth a bit more, even though Kalshi has more immediate revenue potential. Going forward, Polymarket is gearing up to launch a U.S.-compliant platform (likely via the acquired QCX exchange rebranded as Polymarket US) to compete on Kalshi’s home turf, while Kalshi is rumored to explore crypto integrations to not cede the Web3 user segment. We may even see the same markets on both (e.g. a 2028 election market running on both Kalshi US and Polymarket global, each catering to their jurisdictions). This competition should ultimately help validate the space – but also could become heated as both race to sign up users.
Legacy Platforms (PredictIt, etc.): Before Polymarket and Kalshi, the prediction market space had a long but checkered history. PredictIt, launched in 2014 under a special academic exemption, allowed U.S. users to bet small amounts on political events and became quite popular among political junkies in the 2010s. However, it operated under strict limits (no more than $850 per market per trader) and was ultimately shut down by regulators – the CFTC withdrew its no-action relief in Aug 2022, deeming even the low-stakes betting problematic. PredictIt fought a legal battle that lasted into 2023, but by 2024 it had ceased offering new markets. Its community reluctantly migrated to other venues. Polymarket benefited indirectly from PredictIt’s demise, as many U.S. political bettors either switched to Polymarket (via workarounds) or waited for Kalshi’s election markets. Academic and play-money exchanges (like the Iowa Electronic Markets in academia, or some free prediction sites) have existed, but none scaled commercially. Polymarket essentially picked up where PredictIt left off, offering a modern, global version of political prediction markets (with much higher limits and liquidity).
Other Crypto Prediction Markets: Polymarket wasn’t the first crypto project in this arena. Augur, launched in 2018 on Ethereum, was a pioneering decentralized prediction market protocol. It had lofty ideals – fully on-chain order books, a native token (REP) for governance, and no central party. However, Augur’s user experience was abysmal. Trades required high Ethereum gas fees and slow transaction times; the interface was unintuitive; and resolving markets was cumbersome (Augur had a decentralized oracle mechanism that was theoretically robust but impractical). As a result, Augur never gained traction beyond a small niche. For example, data shows Augur peaked at only 265 daily active users at launch, then quickly fell into double-digits. By 2020, Augur’s volumes were negligible (a few million total), and effectively it has been sunset (no active development and almost zero usage now). Other Ethereum-based markets like Gnosis’s Omen, or Polymarket clones on other chains (e.g. Hedgehog on Solana), similarly failed to crack the chicken-and-egg problem of liquidity and users. One noteworthy project is Manifold Markets – launched in 2021, it’s a Web2-style site where users bet play-money points on user-created questions (with occasional real-money prizes or charity donations). Manifold attracted a community of forecasters (particularly in tech and EA circles) and proved the appetite for user-generated questions. But since its currency isn’t real (outside of some creative bounties), it hasn’t directly competed with Polymarket for volume; rather, it has served as a feeder of ideas (Polymarket might observe which Manifold questions are hot and create real-money markets for them). All told, no decentralized competitor has matched Polymarket’s liquidity or user base so far. Polymarket’s hybrid approach – decentralization where it counts (non-custodial funds, on-chain settlement) but centralized curation and UX – seems to have been the winning formula over pure on-chain order books like Augur.
Traditional Betting & Finance: Broadly, Polymarket is also competing with sportsbooks and exchanges. In Europe, sites like Betfair and Smarkets operate large betting exchanges where users can wager on sports and some political events by matching bets peer-to-peer. Betfair’s exchange handles billions in sports bets annually (especially in soccer and horse racing). Polymarket’s distinction is twofold: it covers a wider array of events (e.g. tech industry happenings, crypto events, global politics that Betfair might not list) and it operates on crypto rails, which means it’s accessible globally with just an internet connection and crypto wallet. However, as Polymarket grows, it could start to encroach on sportsbook territory. Already, Polymarket has offered markets on things like the NFL and big sports tournaments (outside the U.S. it can do so freely). If a user in, say, Canada wants to bet on the Super Bowl, they have a choice: use a traditional sportsbook (possibly with a margin and limits) or use Polymarket’s exchange where odds might be sharper due to the crowd and there are effectively no limits.
In summary, Polymarket today stands as a leader in a rapidly evolving “information market” industry. Its main rival Kalshi offers a contrasting strategy (compliance-first vs. crypto-first), and both are now richly valued and well-funded. Smaller or older players either operate in niches or have fallen by the wayside. Polymarket’s advantage lies in its global liquidity pool and tech efficiency – it achieved scale that Augur and others never did, and it did so by running lean and fast in the unregulated wilds of crypto. The big question is whether Polymarket can maintain that edge as the sector matures and regulators, competitors, and even gamblers themselves reshape the environment.
Conclusion
This is one of the wildest venture stories of our generation and it’s still early and full of risks. A lot of investors are discussing if Polymarket is just plain gambling while others see the value in having the market bet on outcomes and how that can impact democracies (and lower corruption).
However, the facts so far are the facts
Hope you enjoyed this one!
Leave some comments below & share to get it more visibility!
Best,
Guillermo
High-Intent “What is / Why it matters” FAQs
Q1. What is Polymarket?
Polymarket is a decentralized prediction market platform launched in 2020 that lets users bet on real-world events using crypto (USDC) on Polygon. Under the hood it uses smart contracts, automated market makers, and oracles to settle markets on anything from elections and macro to sports and pop culture.
Q2. Why is Polymarket important for prediction markets and crypto?
Polymarket proved that a decentralized prediction platform can scale to billions in volume and hundreds of thousands of users when UX, liquidity, and timing line up. It effectively turned “betting on beliefs” into an information market that mainstream media, Wall Street, and serious traders now take seriously.
Q3. How big is Polymarket today?
By late 2025, Polymarket had processed over $9B in trading volume in 2024 alone, crossed 10-figure monthly volumes in “normal” news months, and reached hundreds of thousands of monthly active traders. Its latest funding round valued the company in the high single-digit to low double-digit billions.
Q4. Why are VCs and Wall Street so excited about Polymarket?
Because Polymarket sits at the intersection of three massive markets: sports betting, financial derivatives, and real-time information. If event contracts become an accepted asset class, Polymarket’s global liquidity and data could resemble a “CME for real-world outcomes.”
Founder & Story FAQs
Q5. Who founded Polymarket?
Polymarket was founded in 2020 by Shayne Coplan, a New York University dropout who launched the company at age 21. He wanted to combat misinformation by letting markets, not pundits, reveal the probability of events.
Q6. How did Shayne Coplan become a billionaire?
Coplan retained a significant stake in Polymarket through multiple funding rounds. When Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the NYSE, invested up to $2B at an ~$9B valuation in 2025, his equity stake made him one of the world’s youngest self-made billionaires.
Q7. What was the original vision behind Polymarket?
Coplan’s original vision was to “bet on your beliefs” and use market odds as a real-time truth signal about world events. The idea is that people with skin in the game, not just opinions, create more accurate probabilities.
Product & Technology FAQs
Q8. How does Polymarket work under the hood?
Polymarket runs on smart contracts deployed on Ethereum via the Polygon sidechain. It uses an automated market maker plus a hybrid order book to provide continuous liquidity, and decentralized oracles (like Chainlink and UMA-based mechanisms) to resolve markets and settle payouts.
Q9. What kinds of markets can you trade on Polymarket?
Users can trade yes/no and event contracts on politics, macroeconomics, crypto, sports, pop culture, and global news. Examples include elections, Fed rate decisions, Bitcoin ETF approvals, sports championships, and major geopolitical outcomes.
Q10. How did Polymarket solve the liquidity problem prediction markets usually have?
Polymarket initially used AMMs so that traders could always buy or sell shares without needing a direct counterparty. Over time, it added a hybrid order book on top, which improved pricing, reduced slippage, and scaled volume while still settling trades on-chain.
Q11. How are outcomes resolved on Polymarket?
Outcomes are resolved via a mix of Polymarket’s own resolutions, community dispute processes using UMA Protocol, and external oracles like Chainlink for numerical events. This mix aims to keep resolutions both reliable and resistant to manipulation.
Q12. What makes Polymarket different from older prediction markets like Augur?
Augur put everything on-chain, including order books, which led to slow, expensive, and confusing UX that never scaled. Polymarket took a hybrid approach: crypto rails and on-chain settlement where it matters, but a centralized front-end and curated markets to deliver speed, usability, and real liquidity.
Growth & Traction FAQs
Q13. When did Polymarket hit product-market fit?
Polymarket really hit product-market fit in 2024 during the U.S. presidential election cycle. That year it handled around $9B in volume, with $3.6B wagered on the presidential race alone and active traders skyrocketing from ~4,000 to over 300,000+ per month.
Q14. How much money was bet on the 2024 U.S. election on Polymarket?
On the single question “Who will win the presidency in 2024?”, users wagered roughly $3.6B. That made Polymarket the dominant venue globally for election prediction trading.
Q15. Did Polymarket correctly predict the 2024 U.S. election outcome?
Yes. Polymarket’s odds signaled the eventual winner earlier and more consistently than many traditional polls, reinforcing the idea that markets can be more accurate than punditry.
Q16. How fast did Polymarket grow in 2024?
Monthly volume went from about $54M in January 2024 to $2.63B in November 2024—roughly a 48× increase. Active traders grew from around 4,000 to over 314,000 by December 2024, with very strong month-over-month growth.
Q17. What happened to Polymarket after the election spike faded?
Even after election month, Polymarket maintained 10-figure monthly volume and continued growing its active user base. Users shifted from mainly political markets to sports, macro, and pop culture trades, which kept engagement high.
Business Model & Monetization FAQs
Q18. How does Polymarket make money if it charges zero fees?
As of 2025, Polymarket has essentially not monetized trading—there are no platform fees on trades, only blockchain network fees. The company has focused on growth and liquidity first, supported by venture capital, with early monetization coming from institutional data partnerships (for example via ICE).
Q19. Why does Polymarket charge no trading fees?
Zero fees lower friction, attract high-volume traders, and help the platform win the liquidity war in a new category. Once Polymarket is the default venue for event trading, it has multiple levers to monetize later (fees, spreads, tokens, data, or enterprise products).
Q20. What are Polymarket’s potential future revenue streams?
Likely paths include: introducing small trading fees, earning spreads as a market maker on certain markets, launching a token with protocol economics, selling premium data feeds to funds and media, and white-label or enterprise event-contract products.
Regulation, Legal Risk & U.S. Market FAQs
Q21. Is Polymarket legal in the U.S.?
In 2022, the CFTC fined Polymarket for operating unregistered event-based binary options and forced it to shut down non-compliant markets and geoblock U.S. users. Since then, the main global platform has remained inaccessible to U.S. residents, while the company works on a fully regulated U.S. version.
Q22. What happened with the CFTC and Polymarket in 2022?
The CFTC ruled that Polymarket’s event markets were effectively unregistered binary options. Polymarket agreed to pay a $1.4M penalty, wind down certain markets, and block U.S. users—an outcome that might have killed a smaller startup but instead became a forcing function to get serious about compliance.
Q23. How is Polymarket planning to re-enter the U.S. market?
Polymarket quietly acquired a small CFTC-regulated exchange (QCX) for about $112M, intending to use it as a vehicle for a U.S.-compliant platform. The idea is to run a regulated Polymarket US alongside its global crypto-native platform.
Q24. Why did Polymarket bring on ex-CFTC Chair Chris Giancarlo (“CryptoDad”)?
Hiring Giancarlo as an advisor in 2022 signaled serious intent to work with regulators rather than around them. He helps Polymarket navigate the path to compliant U.S. event markets and bridge the gap between crypto-native innovation and traditional regulation.
Q25. Is Polymarket just gambling or a new kind of financial market?
That debate is still live. Critics see it as high-tech gambling, while supporters argue that event contracts are a powerful forecasting and hedging tool that reveal real probabilities and can be used as financial instruments by traders and institutions.
Competitive Landscape FAQs
Q26. Who are Polymarket’s main competitors?
The primary direct rival is Kalshi, a fully regulated U.S. event-exchange. Indirect competitors include legacy prediction sites like PredictIt (now largely shuttered), older crypto projects like Augur, play-money sites like Manifold, and large betting exchanges and sportsbooks such as Betfair or DraftKings.
Q27. How does Polymarket compare to Kalshi?
Polymarket is crypto-first, global, and currently fee-free, with strong traction outside the U.S. Kalshi is U.S.-regulated, fiat-onramped, and charges fees, and it has built a strong position in U.S. sports and political markets. Together, they’re shaping a duopoly: Polymarket leads globally and in Web3, Kalshi in regulated U.S. flow.
Q28. What advantage does Polymarket have over traditional sportsbooks?
Polymarket offers exchange-style markets where odds are set by traders, not a bookmaker, and limits are effectively much higher. It covers a broader range of events (macro, tech, politics, crypto) and uses crypto for global access, whereas traditional books focus mainly on sports and local users.
Q29. Why did Augur and other early crypto prediction markets fail to scale?
They were too early and too on-chain: clunky UX, high gas fees, slow settlement, and complex resolution mechanics scared off mainstream users. Polymarket learned from that by prioritizing speed, low fees via L2s, curated markets, and a clean web and mobile interface.
Funding & Investor FAQs
Q30. How much funding has Polymarket raised?
From 2020 to 2025, Polymarket raised roughly $2.3B across seed, Series A/B/C, and a massive strategic round led by ICE. Early checks were in the single-digit millions; later rounds were in the hundreds of millions to billions.
Q31. Who are Polymarket’s key investors?
Notable backers include Polychain Capital, Founders Fund, Vitalik Buterin, Coinbase Ventures, Point72 Ventures, 1789 Capital, and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). Advisors include former CFTC Chair Chris Giancarlo and statistician Nate Silver.
Q32. Why did ICE, the owner of the NYSE, invest $2B in Polymarket?
ICE sees event contracts and prediction markets as an emerging asset class with significant data value. The investment gives ICE exposure to crypto-native liquidity and lets it package Polymarket’s data for institutional clients, while giving Polymarket regulatory credibility and deep distribution.
Market, Macro & Use-Case FAQs
Q33. How are institutions using Polymarket?
Macro traders and funds use Polymarket to hedge and speculate on events like Fed rate decisions or regulatory approvals. Media outlets and analysts increasingly use Polymarket’s odds as a sentiment and probability signal in coverage and research.
Q34. Can prediction markets like Polymarket improve democracy or policy?
Proponents argue that liquid event markets surface honest probabilities on elections, policy outcomes, and macro events, which can discipline narratives and expose misinformation. Critics worry about the optics and ethics of betting on politics, but the data they produce is undeniably informative.
Q35. How big can the prediction market category get?
If event contracts become standardized like options or futures, the addressable market spans politics, macro, sports, entertainment, and corporate events—potentially hundreds of billions in annual notional volume. Polymarket aims to be the default global venue for that flow.
Practical / User FAQs
Q36. Can U.S. users legally trade on Polymarket right now?
The main global site is geoblocked for U.S. users due to the 2022 CFTC settlement. Any U.S. participation via VPNs is at odds with Polymarket’s stated policies and carries regulatory risk; the company is working on a fully compliant U.S. offering instead.
Q37. What do users need to start trading on Polymarket?
Non-U.S. users typically sign up with an email or connect a crypto wallet, deposit USDC on Polygon, and then buy “Yes” or “No” shares in listed markets. Trades are near-instant and fees are limited to small blockchain transaction costs.
Q38. What are the main risks of using Polymarket?
Users face event risk (being wrong), market risk (liquidity and slippage), smart contract and oracle risk, and regulatory risk depending on jurisdiction. Like all crypto and derivatives platforms, users should only trade amounts they can afford to lose.
Sources:
CoinDesk – “Polymarket Raises $4M Seed Round”. CoinDesk via Nasdaq, Oct 2020. (Confirmation of Polymarket’s 2020 seed funding by Polychain Capital and Naval Ravikant)[8].
CFTC Press Release – “CFTC Orders Polymarket to Pay $1.4M Penalty”. Jan 3, 2022. (Details of the CFTC settlement, fine, and requirement to wind down non-compliant markets)[14][43].
Phemex Academy – “What Is Polymarket? Regulatory Journey”. Oct 2025. (Overview of Polymarket’s founding, CFTC settlement and pivot to compliance, including Giancarlo joining as advisor)[3][4].
CBS News – 60 Minutes Transcript: “Meet Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan”. Nov 30, 2025. (Describes Polymarket’s success in predicting the 2024 election, $3.6B bet volume on that market, and ICE’s $2B investment at $9B valuation making Coplan a billionaire)[5][10][11].
The Block (via CoinGlass) – “Polymarket’s huge year: $9B volume and 314K traders in 2024”. Jan 3, 2025. (Data on Polymarket’s 2024 growth: monthly volume peaking at $2.63B in Nov, 314,500 active traders in Dec, 66% MoM growth, post-election shift to sports markets)[6][44].
Investing.com News – “Polymarket traders rise to 450,000 in January 2025”. Feb 7, 2025. (Notes that active traders hit 450K post-election, up 91% from Oct, and January 2025 volume was $1.23B vs. $2.6B in Nov 2024; also mentions Polymarket expanding into Super Bowl and other sports markets)[45][20].
Axios – “Exclusive: Nate Silver joins Polymarket”. Jul 16, 2024. (Highlights that Polymarket had raised $70M by 2024, was handling hundreds of millions in trades without monetizing yet, and captured 80% of global prediction volume on US elections; includes comment that Polymarket plans to eventually charge fees)[46][47].
Blockworks – “ICE takes $2B stake in Polymarket at ~$9B valuation”. Oct 7, 2025. (Report on Intercontinental Exchange investing $2B in Polymarket, valuing it around $8–9B; notes Polymarket was cleared to operate in the U.S. and had earlier taken funding from 1789 Capital, linked to Donald Trump Jr.)[24][26].
Reuters – “Kalshi’s valuation doubles on interest in prediction markets”. Dec 2, 2025. (Covers Kalshi’s $1B raise at $11B valuation, notes Polymarket was reportedly in talks at $12–15B valuation, and cites Kalshi volumes topping $1B weekly in late 2025)[27][12].
Will Ventures Blog – “A Comprehensive Guide to Prediction Markets”. Nov 2025. (Context on how investors view Polymarket and Kalshi’s long-term vision; mentions combined volume of $7.4B in Oct 2025 and comparison to major exchanges)[48][49].
Wikimedia Commons – Polymarket Logo. (Public domain image of Polymarket’s company logo, 2020)[50][51].
![[50]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Company_Logo_Polymarket.png%23:~:text=Date%25201%2520March%25202020%2520Source,Own%2520work%2520Author%25201924848uejdjfik){kind=link}
![[51]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Company_Logo_Polymarket.png%23:~:text=This%2520logo%2520image%2520consists%2520only,textlogo%2520for%2520more%2520information){kind=link}
Disclaimer: This newsletter is for educational purposes only and not financial advice. Prediction markets and cryptocurrencies carry high risks. Please do your own research before participating in these markets. The views expressed are the authors’ and sources cited. Predictions and forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future outcomes.
[1] [3] [4] [9] [38] [39] What Is Polymarket? The Future of Prediction Markets Explained
https://phemex.com/academy/what-is-polymarket
[2] [14] [43] CFTC Orders Event-Based Binary Options Markets Operator to Pay $1.4 Million Penalty | CFTC
https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8478-22
[5] [10] [11] [30] [31] [32] Meet Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, the college dropout turned billionaire behind the online betting platform - CBS News
[6] [7] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [44] $9 billion in volume and 314,000 active traders redefine prediction markets | CoinGlass
https://www.coinglass.com/tr/news/275047
[8] [13] Predictions Platform Polymarket Raises $4M From Polychain, Naval Ravikant and More | Nasdaq
[12] [27] [28] [33] [37] Kalshi’s valuation doubles on strong interest in prediction markets platforms | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/business/kalshi-valued-11-billion-latest-financing-round-2025-12-02/
[20] [21] [22] [45] Polymarket traders rise 91% to 450,000 in January post-election By Investing.com
[23] [29] [46] [47] Nate Silver joins prediction market startup Polymarket
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/16/nate-silver-polymarket
[24] [25] [26] Intercontinental Exchange takes $2B stake in Polymarket - Blockworks
https://blockworks.co/news/intercontinental-exchange-polymarket
[34] [35] How betting platform PredictIt’s legal struggle could hamper ...
[36] Fun Fact: The first DApp on Ethereum was the prediction market Augur
[40] Exclusive: Election betting site Polymarket is rife with fake ‘wash ...
https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/10/30/polymarket-trump-election-crypto-wash-trading-researchers/
[41] [42] [48] [49] A Momentarily Comprehensive Guide to Prediction Markets | Will Ventures
https://www.willventures.com/blog/a-momentarily-comprehensive-guide-to-prediction-markets
[50] [51] File:Company Logo Polymarket.png - Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Company_Logo_Polymarket.png
