Polymarket is not a “bootstrapped” Web3 unicorn at all, but rather a privatized rebirth of a U.S. Department of Defense intelligence program? On July 1, renowned investigative journalist Whitney Webb dropped a bombshell, releasing the first part of an in-depth investigation into Polymarket. The article exposes founder Shayne Coplan for concealing the platform’s true early history and Israeli capital ties, and directly alleges that this world’s largest prediction market was nurtured behind the scenes by Peter Thiel’s network with the aim of reviving a DARPA project previously condemned as “terrorism futures.”
(Prior context: Polymarket hacked; 11 wallets looted of $3.1 million, second supply chain attack in six months)
(Background: Polymarket initiates identity verification and blocks 35 countries; prediction markets enter the KYC era; official denies, stating it’s only in testing phase)
The true story behind Polymarket, the dominant prediction market powerhouse influencing global politics and crypto markets, may be more terrifying than a movie plot.
On July 1, 2026, renowned independent investigative journalist Whitney Webb posted a viral thread on X (formerly Twitter), announcing the completion of a 55-minute read investigative report co-authored with Mark Goodwin—“The Secret History of Polymarket – Part 1.” The post garnered over 24,000 likes and 2.39 million views within just two days, sparking intense and polarized debates across the crypto community.
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…
— Whitney Webb (@_whitneywebb) July 1, 2026
Breaking the "Bathroom Startup" Myth: The Hidden Story of TokenBnk and the Israeli Internet
The official origin story of Polymarket has long been celebrated: Shayne Coplan, barely in his twenties, single-handedly coded the company into existence in his bathroom during the 2020 pandemic. However, Webb, in the report, presented extensive historical archives and web repository records, exposing it as a "complete fabrication."
Investigations reveal that Polymarket actually existed as early as 2017 under the name TokenBnk (later renamed TokenUnion), an early crypto company founded by Coplan, which had deep ties to Israel’s crypto community. At the time, TokenUnion integrated deeply with the Bancor protocol, whose founders, Guy Benartzi and Galia Benartzi, are the nephew and niece of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Galia was also a partner at Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, focused on investments in Israel.
Webb accuses Coplan of deliberately erasing this history from public view by continuously redirecting domains and other methods to portray Polymarket as an entirely new, grassroots project.
Resurrecting the Dead? From DARPA’s “Terrorism Futures” to Polymarket
Why hide the true origins? The report points to Silicon Valley venture capital icon Peter Thiel and a highly controversial failed initiative from the early 2000s by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)—the Policy Analysis Market (PAM).
In 2001, DARPA funded the establishment of the Policy Analysis Market (PAM) to use "prediction markets" to forecast Middle Eastern political stability, oil prices, and even the likelihood of terrorist attacks. The project was under the Information Awareness Office (IAO), led by John Poindexter, but was immediately harshly criticized by mainstream media as a "Terrorism futures" market and was forcibly canceled in 2003 due to strong opposition from the U.S. Congress.
Webb’s report dissects a Silicon Valley playbook of “military intelligence privatization”: just as Thiel’s Palantir inherited DARPA’s Total Information Awareness (TIA) program and Facebook absorbed the LifeLog project, Polymarket appears to be the carefully chosen commercial shell selected by Thiel’s network to revive the PAM program. After the failure of Augur, another prediction market backed by Thiel-affiliated entities, Polymarket—funded by Founders Fund—has successfully taken up the baton, even hiring early PAM advocates as heads of expansion.
Polymarket's origins: Official claims vs. investigative allegations
| Comparison dimensions | Polymarket official public relations narrative | The investigative report "Secret History" accuses |
|---|---|---|
| Founding date and predecessor | In 2020, it was founded alone by Coplan in a New York apartment bathroom. | Operated since 2017 under the names TokenBnk / TokenUnion, deliberately concealed. |
| Core capital and network | An independent Web3 startup that has since garnered support from various capital sources. | Deeply connected to Israeli crypto capital (Bancor) and Peter Thiel (Founders Fund) networks. |
| Underlying system intent | Provide a decentralized global information prediction and trading platform. | Privatize and commercially revive DARPA's failed PAM intelligence prediction program. |
Part 2 Preview: Replacing Representative Democracy with Prediction Markets?
This in-depth report sparked intense backlash on the X platform. Supporters praised its sophisticated open-source intelligence (OSINT) research, while critics condemned its content as far-fetched and even anti-Semitic or conspiratorial.
At the end of the post, Webb teases that Part 2 will delve deeper into the current influence of prediction markets. Given the Trump family’s deep involvement in the crypto market (Don Jr. Trump is now an advisor to a prediction platform) and the CFTC’s shifting stance toward the industry, the ultimate ambition of these Silicon Valley tech oligarchs may be to promote Futarchy—a radical governance model that seeks to replace traditional representative democracy entirely with financial incentives and probabilistic forecasting.
