Currently dominating World Cup prediction trades, controversial Polymarket has now launched markets allowing customers to bet on private companies’ performance – despite being deeply embroiled in a slew of insider trading betting scandals.
The new launch will take-in future valuations of all the current tech heavy-hitters, companies such as Anduril, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI and SpaceX, et al.
“If ever there was a recipe for insider trading, then this is it,” quipped one top gambling industry, who asked not to be named.
Founded in June 2020 by 28-year-old Shayne Coplan, currently the world’s youngest billionaire, and headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, Polymarket’s parent company is Delaware-registered Blockratize Inc.
Its international platform is operated through Adventure One Ltd, a related entity incorporated in Panama, while its U.S. platform–banned and blocked to American residents from January 2022 until December 2, 2025–operates through QCX LLC, trading as Polymarket U.S.
Insider Trading
The company is fighting a number of alleged insider trading court cases, among them claims that a U.S. Special Forces soldier made US$400,000 (£304,045) by correctly “predicting” the timing of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro’s sequestration in January this year, and a second conflict-related deal regarding the timing of joint U.S.-Israeli air assault on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025.
Now valued in excess of US$20 billion (£15.19bn), and projecting; with a clutch of über-powerful financial backers, among them Peter Thiel of Palantir and PayPal fame, Steve Cohen, owner of the New York Mets, and the U.S. president’s own son, Donald J. Trump Jr., who sits on the board, perhaps it’s unsurprising that Polymarket continues to operate with seemingly bullet-proof impunity in New World iGaming (NWiG).
Although Coplan’s brainchild was banned by the regulatory U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in mid-Covid 2022 for operating as an unregistered derivatives platform, it has since found a warm fuzzy home under the new CFTC regime of Chair Michael S. Selig and pro-prediction markets President Trump.
Winning World Cup Odds
And Polymarket is also poised to win the battle of the World Cup prediction markets hands down.
With three-weeks still to play, latest data shows Polymarket has taken close to US$2 billion (US$1.52bn) in bets, or trades, on FIFA 2026 outcomes – compared to Kalshi’s US$125 million (£95.07m) and a frankly desultory US$100,000 (£76.076) wagered on ADI Predictstreet, FIFA’s recently-designated “official”, Abu Dhabi-backed, prediction market of the World Cup.
While financial gurus Macquarie estimate that this Mundiale’s gaming take will total around US$50 billion, traditional bookies and online sportsbook, remain way ahead of the NWiG tyros on raw volume.
But few–not even DraftKings and Flutter’s FanDuel–can compete with the zest, confidence and sheer institutional financial fire-power of bullet-proof Polymarket and its NWiG acolytes.
