FBI Seizes Polymarket Founder s Phone in Raid of Home – WSJ

The Federal Bureau of Investigation seized the phone of the founder and chief executive of Polymarket, the crypto-based prediction market that was a popular platform for bets on the U.S. presidential election, a person familiar with the matter said.

Federal agents woke Shayne Coplan at his Manhattan home early Wednesday morning to carry out the search, the person said. The raid was earlier reported by the New York Post. 

It wasn t immediately clear what prompted the FBI s search of Coplan, the 26-year-old entrepreneur behind one of the most successful prediction markets in history. But Polymarket quickly tied the raid to its track record in the recent presidential election, in which bettors on its platform correctly anticipated that Donald Trump would beat Vice President Kamala Harris.

This is obvious political retribution by the outgoing administration against Polymarket for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election, said a spokesman for the New York-based company. 

via www.wsj.com

This certainly looks like plain old political retribution. Perhaps Polymarket ran afoul of some ridiculous regulation or other. It’s hard to avoid.