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The owner of the New York Stock Exchange has announced it would invest up to $2bn in Polymarket, the offshore, crypto-based prediction market that counts one of Donald Trump’s sons as a member of its advisory board.
Intercontinental Exchange on Tuesday said the all-cash transaction would give Polymarket a pre-investment valuation of $8bn. It added it would become a distributor of the prediction market’s “event-driven data” and partner with it on “future tokenisation initiatives”.
The deal will give ICE exposure to an increasingly popular segment of the market while the investment and credibility offered by the exchange may help bring to fruition Polymarket’s expansion ambitions, though it has been blocked in the US since 2022 and is banned in several other countries.
“Our partnership with ICE marks a major step in bringing prediction markets into the financial mainstream,” said Shayne Coplan, Polymarket’s founder and chief executive, who also described ICE as the “gold standard for trusted financial infrastructure”.
Polymarket agreed to wind down operations in the US as part of a settlement in 2022 with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which accused it of running an illegal exchange. But in July, it purchased Florida-based derivatives exchange QCX and affiliated clearinghouse QC Clearing — together known as QCEX — in a $112mn deal, giving it a path to legal status in the US.
The outlook for the prediction betting industry has improved over the past year, buoyed by several legal victories and the Trump administration, which has appeared more open to the industry than Joe Biden’s White House.
Kalshi, a Polymarket rival, last year won a court ruling allowing users to bet on prediction outcomes. In July, PredictIt, one of the first digital platforms to offer trading on the outcome of presidential elections and other events, prevailed in its legal battle to continue offering such bets.
Those in the administration’s orbit have also shown an openness towards prediction markets. Donald Trump Jr joined Polymarket’s advisory board in August when his venture fund, 1789 Capital, made a strategic investment in the start-up.
Polymarket’s popularity surged in the lead-up to last November’s US presidential election, attracting billions of dollars in trades.
The Department of Justice and the CFTC launched an investigation into Polymarket in the days after Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory, focusing on whether the platform facilitated bets by people in the US. The FBI raided Coplan’s home in November as part of the inquiry. Coplan in July said the probe had been closed.
ICE on Tuesday said the Polymarket investment was not expected to have a material impact on its 2025 financial results.