A 10,000-word investigation reveals the dark origin of Polymarket: the US military's DARPA intelligence program backed by Peter Thiel has been 'reincarnated'.

Polymarket is hardly a "bootstrapped" Web3 unicorn, but rather the "privatized" rebirth of a U.S. Defense Department intelligence program? Renowned investigative journalist Whitney Webb dropped a bombshell on July 1, releasing the first part of an in-depth investigation into Polymarket. The article exposes that founder Shayne Coplan concealed the platform's true early history and Israeli capital background, directly asserting that the world's largest prediction market was nurtured by the Peter Thiel network, aiming to revive the DARPA project that was once heavily criticized as "terrorism futures."

(Previous Summary: Polymarket hacked, 11 wallets looted for $3.1 million, second supply chain attack in six months) (Background Supplement: Polymarket launches real-name verification, blocks 35 countries, prediction market enters KYC era, official denial: only in testing phase)

Table of Contents

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• Breaking the "Bathroom Startup" Myth: Concealed TokenBnk and the Israeli Network
• Resurrection? From DARPA's "Terrorism Futures" to Polymarket
• Polymarket Origins: Official Narrative vs. Investigative Allegations
• Preview of Part Two: Replacing "Representative Democracy" with "Prediction Markets"?

The true face behind Polymarket, the prediction market giant that wields influence in global politics and crypto markets, may be more shocking than any movie plot.

On July 1, 2026, renowned independent investigative journalist Whitney Webb posted a tweet on X (formerly Twitter) that ignited the crypto community. She announced that she and Mark Goodwin had co-authored a 55-minute-long in-depth investigation — The Secret History of Polymarket – Part 1. The post garnered over 24,000 likes and 2.39 million views in just two days, sparking polarized and intense debate.

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: Concealed TokenBnk and the Israeli Network

Polymarket's official origin story has long been a crowd-pleaser: a young twenty-something Shayne Coplan, alone in his bathroom during the 2020 pandemic, coded the company into existence. However, Webb's report cites a wealth of historical archives and web cache records, calling this a "complete and utter lie."

The investigation found that Polymarket actually existed as early as 2017 under the name TokenBnk (later renamed TokenUnion), an early crypto company founded by Coplan with deep ties to the Israeli crypto scene. TokenUnion was deeply integrated with the Bancor protocol, whose founders, Guy Benartzi and Galia Benartzi, are the nephew and niece of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Galia was also a partner at Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, responsible for Israeli investments.

Webb alleges that Coplan deliberately erased this history from public view by constantly redirecting domains and packaging Polymarket as a sudden, independent grassroots project.

Resurrection? From DARPA's "Terrorism Futures" to Polymarket

Why conceal the true origin? The report points the finger at Silicon Valley venture capital godfather Peter Thiel and a highly controversial failed project from the early 2000s at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — the Policy Analysis Market (PAM).

In 2001, DARPA funded the establishment of PAM, attempting to use "prediction markets" to forecast Middle Eastern political stability, oil prices, and even the probability of terrorist attacks. The project was part of the Information Awareness Office (IAO) led by John Poindexter, but it was quickly condemned by mainstream media as a "terrorism futures market" and was forced to be canceled in 2003 due to strong opposition from the U.S. Congress.

In her report, Webb dissects a Silicon Valley script for "privatizing military intelligence": Just as Thiel's Palantir inherited DARPA's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, and Facebook took over the LifeLog program, Polymarket appears to be the carefully selected commercial shell for resurrecting the PAM program via the Thiel network. After the failure of Augur, another prediction market backed by Thiel-affiliated parties, Polymarket—funded by Founders Fund—successfully took up the baton, even hiring early PAM-related proponents as expansion leads.

Polymarket Origins: Official Narrative vs. Investigative Allegations

| Comparison Dimension | | --- | Polymarket Official PR Narrative | The Secret History Investigation Allegations | | --- | --- | --- | | Founding Time & Predecessor | 2020, founded alone by Coplan in his New York apartment bathroom. | Existed as early as 2017 under TokenBnk/TokenUnion, deliberately concealed. | | Core Capital & Connections | Independent Web3 startup team, later favored by various investors. | Deeply tied to Israeli crypto capital (Bancor) and the Peter Thiel (Founders Fund) network. | | Underlying System Intent | To provide a decentralized global information prediction and trading platform. | To privatize and commercially resurrect DARPA's failed PAM intelligence prediction program. |

Preview of Part Two: Replacing "Representative Democracy" with "Prediction Markets"?

This in-depth report has caused a seismic shock on X. Supporters praise its deep OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) digging capabilities; critics, however, dismiss the content as far-fetched, even tinged with anti-Semitic or conspiracy theory undertones.

In her post, Webb teases that the upcoming Part 2 will delve further into the current influence of prediction markets. Especially with the Trump family deeply involved in the crypto market (Donald Trump Jr. now serves as a prediction platform advisor) and the CFTC's shifting stance toward the industry, the ultimate ambition of this Silicon Valley tech oligarchy may be to push for so-called Futarchy (prediction market governance) — an extreme governance model that attempts to completely replace traditional representative democracy with monetary and probabilistic predictions.