The Structure of Polymarket Company Is a Mystery—Even to Some of Its Former Employees
There is no shortage Bonkers information about Polymarket. The government alleges that both a special forces soldier and a longtime Google employee used the prediction market to amass a small fortune through insider trading; CEO Shayne Coplan’s house was raided by FBI agents, who entered with a battering ram; and one of its executives reportedly paid influencers through his personal PayPal account to promote the company.
But one of the biggest mysteries about Polymarket remains somewhat overlooked: What happened to the Panamanian company that it set up to comply with the deal it made with the federal government? And why, as the WIRED report suggests, do some of the Panamanian company’s employees appear to have worked from New York?
The prediction market has ties to Donald Trump Jr. it has an unusual setup. In 2022, federal regulators said it was operating as an unlicensed alternative, banned it from the country, and banned it from serving US customers. Before the ban, Adventure One QSS, a Panama-based entity, was established, as first reported by Sportico. Adventure One QSS was based overseas to take over the operational responsibilities of Polymarket’s flagship platform. A separate US outfit, Polymarket US, was founded 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.
Outside of this building, WIRED has learned that Adventure One QSS had employees working outside the US. Former Polymarket employees told WIRED that some Adventure One QSS employees live in New York, including workers from the company’s Manhattan-based headquarters.
These workers did not go to Panama, report to anyone in Panama, or communicate with their colleagues based in Panama—because, they said, there were no colleagues there. Instead, they say, Adventure One QSS employees are spread across multiple countries, including the US.
The best points of this building are important. The 2022 settlement fined Blockratize—an entity associated with Polymarket—$1.4 million and ordered it to “take down” marketplaces that violate the Securities Exchange Act. The agreement also required the company to stop violating the CEA and other rules of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Former CFTC employees see the position of Adventure One employees as compatible with the settlement. “We would really like to know that the people who were supposed to be in Panama were not actually in Panama,” one former CFTC attorney told WIRED.
As Sportico reported, Adventure One QSS initially named Panamanian citizens in its 2021 incorporation papers, including Mario Ernesto García de Paredes, a lawyer called the company’s “resident agent”. A woman named Diana Munoz was listed as the company’s president two months before Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, who is based in New York, was hired. Another man who appears to be based in Panama, Omar Camargo, is listed as secretary. García de Paredes did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment, and Munoz and Camargo could not be reached for comment on their roles. Munoz and Camargo appear to have worked together before; they were listed as managers in filing securities linked to a company called the Internet Art Foundation.
WIRED’s reporting is consistent with previous coverage from NPR, which found that the company’s top-floor headquarters in Panama City were empty and that the company had no employees based in Panama. In contrast, the Adventure One QSS crew in the United States was said to be productive and present. One Polymarket employee said that New York workers who “touched the code,” created event contracts, or dealt with the overseas platform all worked for Adventure One QSS technically, “but there was no barrier” that separated the company’s arms operationally.
