"As the then-26-year-old would later learn, the raid was part of a high-level investigation into his company. A prediction market platform allowing users to gamble on real-life events, Polymarket wasn't cleared for use by US citizens, though that didn't stop them from placing prop bets on the presidential election anyway - a fact federal regulators believed Coplan was keenly aware of."
"Finally, at 4pm the day of the raid, Coplan issued his much-awaited statement on X-formerly-Twitter: "new phone, who dis?" What looked like just another smarmy startup founder was actually a perfect pitch for Polymarket's core audience: people who believe regulation is for losers, and that pithy tech bros are the funniest guys in the world. And whether calculated or compulsive, Coplan's public persona was about to become central to Polymarket's story."
"Ruling like a petty tyrant from the company's headquarters in lower Manhattan, Coplan isn't an easy boss to work with, according to new reporting by the Wall Street Journal. The 20-something CEO is said to frequently holler at his employees, and occasionally shows up to company Zoom calls shirtless. At first, "a lot of people wouldn't invest because they thought Shayne was nuts," Polymarket investor Samir Vasavada told the WSJ. "It was to an extreme the amount he believed in himself.""
Shayne Coplan's social media went silent after an early-morning FBI raid on his Manhattan penthouse that seized his phone and laptop. The raid targeted Polymarket, a prediction-market platform alleged to have allowed US users to place bets, including on the presidential election, despite lacking US clearance. Coplan later posted "new phone, who dis?", a persona that appealed to users who reject regulation and admire irreverent tech founders. He runs the company from lower Manhattan, often hollering at employees and even joining shirtless on Zoom; investors were wary but the company nonetheless grew to a multibillion-dollar valuation.
Read at Futurism
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