Polymarket’s Corporate Structure Is a Mystery—Even to Some of Its Former Employees
There’s no shortage of bonkers details about Polymarket. The government alleges that both a special forces soldier and a longtime Google employee used the prediction
There’s no shortage of bonkers details about Polymarket. The government alleges that both a special forces soldier and a longtime Google employee used the prediction market to amass small fortunes by insider trading; CEO Shayne Coplan had his apartment raided by FBI agents, who entered via battering ram; and one of its executives reportedly paid influencers through his personal PayPal account to hype up the company. But one of the biggest oddities about Polymarket has remained somewhat overlooked: What’s going on with the Panama-based company it set up to comply with a settlement it made with the federal government? And why, as WIRED’s reporting suggests, do some employees of the Panamanian company appear to have worked from New York? The prediction market with ties to Donald Trump Jr. has an unusually convoluted setup. In 2022, federal regulators said it was operating as an unlicensed derivatives exchange, kicked it out of the country, and barred it from serving US-based customers.
Prior to the ban, Adventure One QSS, a corporate entity in Panama, was established, as first reported by Sportico. Adventure One QSS was based offshore so that it could take over operational responsibilities for Polymarket’s flagship platform. A different US-based outfit, Polymarket US, was established in 2025 and is overseen by an entity called QCX LLC. To this day, Polymarket US is the only Polymarket platform that can legally serve US customers. Despite this structure, WIRED found that Adventure One QSS had staff working out of the US. Polymarket employees tell WIRED that some Adventure One QSS staffers have resided in New York, including some who worked from the company’s Manhattan-based headquarters. These employees did not travel to Panama, report to anyone in Panama, or interact with Panama-based colleagues—because, they say, there were no colleagues there. Instead, they say, the Adventure One QSS staff was spread out across a number of other countries, including the US.
The finer points of this structure are important. The 2022 settlement fined Blockratize—a corporate entity associated with Polymarket—$1.4 million and ordered it to “wind down” offering markets that violated the Commodity Exchange Act. The agreement also required the company to stop violating the CEA and other Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulations. CFTC employees see the location of Adventure One’s staff as relevant to the agreement. “We would have really liked to know that the people purportedly in Panama weren’t actually in Panama,” one former CFTC lawyer tells WIRED. As Sportico reported, Adventure One QSS did initially name Panama residents on its incorporation papers in 2021, including Mario Ernesto García de Paredes, a lawyer referred to as the company’s “resident agent.” A woman named Diana Munoz was listed as the company president for two months before being replaced by Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, who is based out of New York. Another man who appears to be based in Panama, Omar Camargo, was listed as secretary.
The BriefWire