Shayne Coplan (born 1998) is an American businessman who is the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Polymarket, a prediction market. [1] [2]
Shayne Coplan was born in 1998 and raised on the Upper West Side of New York City. [1] [3] He attended public schools in Hell's Kitchen. [1] Coplan studied computer science at New York University but left before completing his degree to pursue interests in cryptocurrencies and prediction markets. [1] [3]
In 2014, Coplan participated in the initial coin offering of Ethereum and acquired the cryptocurrency when it was priced significantly lower than its later value. [1] [3] His interest in crypto and blockchains led to the creation of Polymarket in 2020, which operates as a prediction market using smart contracts on the Polygon for settling wagers. [1] [3]
Simon Rosenberg is a Democratic political strategist and blogger. He was the founder of New Democrat Network (NDN), a centrist think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
Chris Dixon is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is also the co-founder and former CEO of Hunch. He was #1 on the Midas List in 2022. Dixon is known as a cryptocurrency and Web3 evangelist.
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Robinhood Markets, Inc. is an American financial services company headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The company provides an electronic trading platform accessible via mobile app that facilitates commission-free trades of stocks, exchange-traded funds and cryptocurrency, as well as cryptocurrency wallets, credit cards and other banking services. The company's revenue comes from transaction-based revenues, net interest income, and subscription fees. The company has 24.3 million funded customers, 11.0 million monthly active users, and $152 billion in assets under custody.
Augur is a decentralized prediction market platform built on the Ethereum blockchain. Augur is developed by Forecast Foundation, which was founded in 2014 by Jack Peterson, Joey Krug, and Jeremy Gardner. Forecast Foundation is advised by Ron Bernstein, founder of now-defunct company Intrade, and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
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Changpeng Zhao, commonly known as CZ, is a Chinese-born Canadian businessman. Zhao is the co-founder and former CEO of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume as of July 2024. He resigned as the CEO in November 2023 after pleading guilty to a money laundering charge in the United States and was sentenced to four months in prison in April 2024. Zhao was released from prison in September.
Brian Armstrong is an American business executive, billionaire, and investor who is CEO of cryptocurrency platform Coinbase. He received media attention for his policy of keeping the workplace free of political activism.
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Justin Sun is a Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur and business executive. He is the founder of TRON, a cryptocurrency with an associated blockchain DAO ecosystem and USDD, a stablecoin issued by TRON DAO Reserve. Sun is also the owner of Rainberry, which developed the BitTorrent protocol and under Sun's leadership developed the BTT cryptocurrency token. Sun also owns the crypto exchange Poloniex, and is affiliated with the crypto exchange HTX. Sun served as Permanent Representative of Grenada to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva from 2021 to 2023.
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FTX Trading Ltd., commonly known as FTX, is a bankrupt company that formerly operated a cryptocurrency exchange and crypto hedge fund. The exchange was founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang and collapsed in 2022 after massive fraud perpetrated by Bankman-Fried and his partner Caroline Ellison forced the company to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Crypto.com is a cryptocurrency exchange company based in Singapore that offers various financial services, including an app, exchange, and noncustodial DeFi wallet, NFT marketplace, and direct payment service in cryptocurrency. As of June 2023, the company reportedly had 100 million customers and 4,000 employees.
Alameda Research was a cryptocurrency trading firm, co-founded in September 2017 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Tara MacAulay. In November 2022, FTX, Alameda's sister cryptocurrency exchange, experienced a solvency crisis, and both FTX and Alameda filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. That same month, anonymous sources told The Wall Street Journal that FTX had lent more than half of its customers' funds to Alameda, which was explicitly forbidden by FTX's terms-of-service.
Polymarket is an American financial exchange and the world's largest prediction market, headquartered on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City and offering event contracts. Launched in 2020, it offers a decentralized platform where both retail and institutional traders can place bets on various future events, including economic indicators, weather patterns, awards, as well as political and legislative outcomes. Participants can deposit USDC cryptocurrency through the Polygon blockchain network and trade shares that represent the likelihood of specific outcomes occurring in the future.