Polymarket, the largest prediction market platform cited in the source material, is facing renewed scrutiny after investigative journalist Whitney Webb published a lengthy report challenging its founding narrative. On July 1, 2026, Webb said on X that she and Mark Goodwin had completed The Secret History of Polymarket – Part 1, a deep-dive report that connects the company to an earlier crypto venture, Israeli capital ties, and a controversial prediction market program once backed by DARPA.
According to the source, the post drew more than 24,000 likes and 2.39 million views within two days, triggering a sharp split in response. Supporters praised the report’s OSINT work. Critics argued the claims were overstretched and framed the piece as conspiratorial.
The report disputes Polymarket’s well-known startup story
Polymarket has often been associated with the public narrative that founder Shayne Coplan built the company in 2020 from a bathroom in his New York apartment during the pandemic. Webb’s report rejects that account. Drawing on archived web material and historical records, she argues that the platform’s roots reach back to 2017, when it allegedly operated as TokenBnk, later renamed TokenUnion.
The source says Webb links that earlier entity to the Israeli crypto scene through integration with Bancor. It also notes that Bancor co-founders Guy Benartzi and Galia Benartzi are the nephew and niece of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and that Galia Benartzi previously served as a partner at Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund focused on Israel investments. Based on that history, Webb accuses Coplan of obscuring Polymarket’s early background through repeated domain redirects and a clean-slate branding strategy.
DARPA’s canceled PAM program sits at the center of the claim
The most consequential allegation in the report is that Polymarket should be viewed in relation to DARPA’s Policy Analysis Market (PAM), launched with support in 2001. PAM was designed to use prediction markets to model Middle East political stability, oil prices, and even the probability of terrorist attacks. The program was condemned in the media as a “terrorism futures” market and was shut down in 2003 after strong opposition in Congress.
Webb places Polymarket inside a broader pattern in which Silicon Valley companies, in her view, became commercial successors to state security projects. The source says she compares this to claims surrounding Palantir and Facebook, then argues that Polymarket emerged as the vehicle selected by Thiel’s network to revive PAM in privatized form. It adds that after the Thiel-linked prediction market Augur failed to gain traction, Polymarket, backed by Founders Fund, took over that role and even hired an early PAM-related advocate as head of expansion.
Part two is expected to focus on futarchy
Webb said the second part of her investigation will examine the current political influence of prediction markets and the idea of futarchy, a governance model that seeks to replace representative decision-making with market-based forecasting. The source also points to the Trump family’s deeper involvement in crypto, Don Jr.’s advisory role at a prediction platform, and changing CFTC attitudes as factors that make this debate more charged.
At this stage, the material centers on the investigation’s claims and the controversy surrounding them, rather than any final resolution.