Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, has announced a strategic investment of up to $2bn in Polymarket.
The deal values the crypto prediction market at approximately $8bn pre-investment, according to a statement released by ICE on Tuesday.
It comes amid increasing hype about the prediction market space, which last week resulted in significant damage to the share prices of the sports betting operators.
Under the terms of the agreement, ICE will also become a global distributor of Polymarket’s event-driven data, providing customers with sentiment indicators on topics of market relevance.
Shayne Coplan, founder and chief executive of Polymarket, said: “Our partnership with ICE marks a major step in bringing prediction markets into the financial mainstream. Together, we’re expanding how individuals and institutions use probabilities to understand and price the future.”
By combining ICE’s institutional scale and credibility with Polymarket’s consumer savvy, we will be able to deliver world-class products for the modern investor. Realising the potential of new technologies, such as tokenisation, will require collaboration between established market leaders and next-generation innovators”
In a separate X post, Coplan said the deal valued Polymarket at $9bn post-money. He described the partnership as a monumental step forward for decentralised finance.
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Jeffrey Sprecher, chair and chief executive of ICE, added: “Our investment blends ICE, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, which was founded in 1792, with a forward-thinking, revolutionary company pioneering change within the decentralised finance space,”
“There are opportunities across markets which ICE together with Polymarket can uniquely serve and we are excited about where this investment can take us.”
Polymarket allows users to express their views on events by buying and selling shares of potential outcomes, with every trade matched peer to peer through smart contracts.
The platform gained significant attention last year for its markets on the US presidential election.
In September, Coplan said Polymarket now has the regulatory approvals needed to launch in the US after several years locked out of the market following a deal with CFTC.