Polymarket News – Huge Win for One Guy – CEO Arrested
Scott Morris | November 15, 2024
Polymarket is an online betting platform which allows you to bet on future and upcoming events. It lists itself as “The World’s Largest Prediction Market”. It’s like the many betting exchanges that have come before it, however it is less focused on sporting events and more focused on pop culture, entertainment and politics.
As you may have seen during election week, many news sources quoted stats and figures from this website to show how the general betting population was feeling about the Presidential race. It was one alternative to the various polls that they also showed.
There had been some heat around the site by critics who claim that people should not be able to bet on politics for fear that it would somehow corrupt the outcome. Polymarket quelled these fears by announcing that those people living in the United States were not allowed to bet on the election.
Apparently this was not good enough for the power that be because the FBI raided Polymarket’s CEO’s apartment in new York yesterday confiscating electronic devices. 26 year old Shayne Coplan founded the company in 2020 and is the CEO in question.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission halted Polymarket’s operations in 2022 and only allowed it to continue when they agreed not to let Americans wager on the election. It is believed by many that this raid is due to the fact that perhaps the Feds believed that this agreement was violated.
Polymarket has taken in a total of $3.6B in total wagers on the 2024 Presidential election. There were many different ways to wager on the outcome of the election but by far the most popular offering was the straight up winner of the election. $1.5B was bet on Trump and about $1B was wagered on Harris.
Polymarket CEO Coplan recently stated on X: “It’s discouraging that the current administration would seek a last-ditch effort to go after companies they deem to be associated with political opponents. Polymarket has provided value to 10’s of millions of people this election cycle, while causing harm to nobody.”
$85 Million Trump Bettor
One of the biggest winners (if not the biggest winner) at Polymarket this election cycle was a man simply known as “Trump whale”. The bettor cleaned up this election with straight up wagers as well as popular vote wagers totaling in excess of $85M.
No word on if “Trump whale” has cashed out his winnings yet but you can bet he has been celebrating the election as much or more than anyone other than Trump himself.
