We've been quiet recently because Mark Goodwin and I have been working to write the most comprehensive investigation into Polymarket's origins and ambitions to date.
We found that Polymarket's "official" origin story, that Shayne Coplan founded the company alone in 2020 and then built "the company in his bathroom", is a lie. Polymarket really started years earlier as another company called TokenBnk that was deeply tied to Israeli interests, specifically a crypto company founded by Benjamin Netanyahu's niece and nephew. Coplan has actively tried to obfuscate this company from his story and it's not the only thing either.
In Part 1 of this two-part series, we unravel the real history of Polymarket, directly connecting the company to Peter Thiel's efforts to resurrect controversial DARPA programs from its now defunct Information Awareness Office. Polymarket appears to have been chosen by Thiel and his associates to succeed in resurrecting DARPA's Policy Analysis Market where another Thiel-linked company, Augur, had previously failed.
Stay tuned for Part 2, where we explore the current influence of prediction markets and Polymarket, including how an insidious effort to have prediction markets replace representative democracy as a governance model is already being slowly implemented by the White House.
Read Part 1 here:
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2026/06/investigative-series/the-secret-history-of-polymarket-part-1/
