Decrypt's person of the year is... 🏆

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📝 What you need to know

In case you missed it, Decrypt’s story of the year for 2024—which we posted Wednesday—was about the surge of crypto money that changed American politics. Today, we named our person of the year: The man behind the crypto platform that signaled many of those shifts before they actually happened.

Shayne Coplan is the 26-year-old founder behind Polymarket, the crypto prediction market that surged to mainstream awareness (and notoriety) in the lead-up to election day, as bettors plunked down billions of dollars worth of total bets—and strongly favored Donald Trump. When he won, Polymarket and Coplan were vindicated.

While Polymarket took off like a rocket ship in recent months, success wasn’t quick. The startup had been building in the crypto fringes for years, and even was penalized by the CFTC in 2022, barring it from serving U.S. bettors. Despite all of that, Coplan and his team continued to build, as he told Decrypt, focused on their vision.

“Most ideas don’t instantly become overnight successes,” Coplan said. “You only lose when you give up.”

💬 Quote of the Day

From our partner

Cosmos is expanding: Skip joins the Interchain Foundation

The Interchain Foundation has acquired Skip, one of Cosmos’ leading teams, to bring their excellence in engineering, product strategy, and execution in-house and usher in an era of growth for Cosmos, and its vision for the interchain.

Skip will rename to Interchain Inc. and become the ICF’s main subsidiary, concentrating product, vision, and go-to-market for the Interchain Stack and Cosmos – aligning the Interchain Stack’s vision, and the vision for a Cosmos Hub that is at the center of the ecosystem, driving user and liquidity growth for the entirety of the Cosmos’ interchain ecosystem.

🌐 From Our Hubs

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