FBI Raids Home of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan

> "This is obvious political retribution by the outgoing administration against Polymarket for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election," a Polymarket spokesperson tells Axios.

When I saw that statement, from a company spokesperson, it was striking.

Is it now respectable and advisable for a corporation to make official statements like this?

Respectable is subjective. Advisable? If they're probably guilty then appealing to the biases of the incoming administration is probably a good idea. On the other hand, if they're innocent and their accusation of bias is accurate, then saying as much is probably a good idea too.

If the bar for decorum is the President-elect, then yes this would be considered an acceptable statement.

Corporations have been making these kinds of statements for almost the past decade.

Have corporations ever not played the "aggrieved victim" card?

The social/political appeal part is the new part. Companies have always released "we did nothing wrong" statements.

Respectable and advisable? No. Smart? Yes.

Their audience here is the incoming administration, which is founded on party loyalty and an "us-vs-them" mindset, where "them" are the corrupt elites.

They're making a bet that whoever is prosecuting them in 4 months is going to be a lot friendlier to them if they act like victims of a vengeful democratic elite, and they're probably right. Really smart, honestly.

Given Peter Thiel is a big investor in polymarket, and is JD Vance's daddy, I'm sure they will have no problem getting this case dismissed.

Wild take that might actually be true: by attacking the Biden administration, the company wants to appeal to Trump and maybe even get Trump's attention (and favor), hoping that the Trump administration will loosen the regulations on betting and eventually make it legal to operate their business in the US.

This is not a wild take at all. Every major corporation in the US is currently sucking up to Trump because his presidency will be entirely transactional and without regard to the constitutional purpose of the office. If you scratch his back, he will find a way to scratch yours - until it’s no longer convenient for him to do so.

There’s people in the comments characterising this as political positioning, and I think they’re dead on. However, it continues to do my head in how utterly ridiculous this statement is. Literally, there’s not even a motive.

Yeah, the reflexive accusations of "witch hunts" and "crooked hit jobs" are a recent development. Their lineage is obvious and ... I guess you can't blame them because they (somehow) play with a significant percentage of the population.

> Corporations have been making these kinds of statements for almost the past decade.

For ever...

Does it have anything to do with his statements about firing and enacting severe penalties, federal investigations in, and changes around the censorship requirements that many of these corporations engaged in with government agencies? He promised retraction of billions in federal funding- and many of these corporations are implicated.

No, it has much more to do with he changed his tone on EVs after Musk started to publicly supported him and pretty much said the phrase "I had to, he's helping me".

Or all the people he pardon'd in exchange for indirect money.

It's literally transactional.

Ridiculous is also that they say this when Polymarket gave Trump only 60%-40% odds. They're falling for the same logical fallacy as everyone who knows nothing about prediction markets.

Blaming the incident on “political retribution” (their words) implies that the US government is corrupt.

Such a weird thing to blame it on.

why? Is the US gov immune from corruption?

If they can curry favor with the incoming (extremely crypto friendly) administration, their problems with the FBI go away.

This kind of conspiratorial thinking dominates the Republican party and such a story would play well with the base. There is a clear motive for this approach - and it seems likely to work.

It’s a signal to the incoming President to protect them ASAP

Polymarket is a market. Not sure if AMM or order book but whatever. Anyone attempting to control it wasting money.

Polymarket also had Harris at 70% to win the popular vote right up to election day, which has transpired to be wrong. Plus; all the betting markets had similar odds for Trump winning; smarket, predictit etc.

Unless my memory is completely off, I don't recall Polymarket giving "Trump will win" vibes in the general lead up to the election. When they did, it was probably in the last few days.

If that's the case, I would've expected to the statement to be something like, "From our understanding, our only crime is to have presented an analysis that the outgoing administration also understood to be valid."

Sounds par for the course with the Biden administration. Watch what Ben and Marc have to say about them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4jWb-0nj44 They talk about how Biden has spent the last four years going beyond the law to destroy all the a16z crypto startups. So it doesn't surprise me that they'd use all their power to go after prediction markets too. I'm really glad I'm not working in upstart finance.

>Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and one of the president-elect’s closest advisors, wrote, “This seems messed up” in response to the news.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/13/fbi-raid-...

Serious answer: I don't know, but we shouldn't rush to judge until all the facts come out. All we know is they did a raid on the CEO home (not the business?) and the CEO claimed politics is involved.

I sincerely hope Congress performs their duty of oversight on the FBI well, so we can learn the truth of the matter. Overt politicization of federal law enforcement is a scary development.

Are you joking?

The current US government is the most corrupt entity in the history of the world, if you multiple corruption times power.

And I love my country (USA), but just hate what the government has become over the past 60-80 years.

> It is not clear what the FBI was seeking when numerous agents entered Coplan's apartment at around 6am, or if Coplan and/or Polymarket are the targets of an investigation.

We have no information about why they are there, so you conclude it must be political retribution and they must be protected. THIS is why Trump won. So many people have zero critical thinking skills. When you see something that for which you have no information, you can say "I wonder what is going on." Then, you stop. Things that could be:

* Using collected data to facility spear phishing campaigns. * Running a child pornography/sex trafficking ring. * Participating in dogfighting. * Been a back channel for selling trade secrets. * Had some people killed. * Routing all the information collected to foreign groups, like Russia. * or.. has the other half of messages to someone under investigation whose phone locked.

But, given I have zero evidence to support any of this, let's stick with "let's see what they say."

Before you place bets on Polymarket you need to check the box which says something like this: "I promise I'm not from US". Pinky swear that I'm not using VPN to place illegal bets. That's why FBI is investigating them, so case still hangs in the balance.

Elon likes to weigh in on all sorts of matters outside his domain, such as UK or Italian politics. He's a classic example of intensity matching. Building rockets and cars doesn't transfer to credibility on non-scientific matters.

What evidence do you have of that being the case?

Each of these are _completely_ invented and then dishonestly presented as valid:

- Using collected data to facility spear phishing campaigns. - Running a child pornography/sex trafficking ring. - Participating in dogfighting. - Been a back channel for selling trade secrets. - Had some people killed. - Routing all the information collected to foreign groups, like Russia. - or.. has the other half of messages to someone under investigation whose phone locked.

A real-world example of "zero evidence". Let's stick with "no lying". Also, in late 2024, giving the monstrously corrupt FBI the dishonesty-based benefit-of-the-doubt is beyond naive and comfortably in the realm of dishonest.

It has been days since I have seen such an example of "zero critical thinking skills"

He shits out his perspective into every conversation and buys himself a bigger voice, let's not spread his drivel for him.

> Such a weird thing to blame it on.

Yeah, should't be weird, should be obvious. (lobby, insider trading, etc)

> The current US government is the most corrupt entity in the history of the world

Current ? "Mark Twain: 'There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress'"