Morning Crypto Market Overview for June 22: Polymarket Under Fire, Secret Network Hacked for $4.7 Million, and Japanese Pension Fund Enters Crypto
The cryptocurrency market started the day on June 22 with sideways movement. Bitcoin (BTC) is trading around $63,889, showing minimal volatility in the range of $63,221 – $64,712 over the last 24 hours. Ethereum (ETH) is also flat at $1,731. Among the top 10 by market cap, Tron leads (+0.51% daily), while Solana (+3.49%) is among the weekly leaders. The worst performers are Hyperliquid (-5.97% daily) and Dogecoin (-6.64% weekly). In the top 100 assets, SKYAI (+9.15% daily) and Aerodrome Finance (+34.93% weekly) stand out, while Humanity (-10.51%) and Audiera (-68.18%) are the biggest losers.
Polymarket accused of betting manipulation
The prediction market platform Polymarket has found itself at the center of a new scandal. It turns out the company paid dozens of bloggers between $2,000 and $3,000 per month to create fake videos showing "wins" on counterfeit copies of the site. Out of 1,105 reviewed videos, none of the shown bets totaling about $1.9 million were real. In one video, a student supposedly won $100,000 — in reality, that bet was lost by over 50 users. For filming, Polymarket created fake sites with similar addresses. This is the second marketing scandal in a month: previously, the marketing director paid for native advertising through personal PayPal. Polymarket has promised to audit its promotional content. Reminder: since 2022, the platform has been banned for users from the U.S., although the marketing was clearly aimed at Americans.
Secret Network bridge hack for $4.67 million
The Secret Network bridge was exploited through an infinite minting vulnerability. The attacker used a smart contract that did not verify the source of incoming transfers and created unbacked wrapped tokens: saUSDT, saUSDC, saWETH, saWBTC, and others. The attack occurred on June 10 but was only discovered a week later — after a transaction failed due to insufficient funds in the drained pool. The stolen assets were converted to ether, distributed across approximately 30 wallets, and withdrawn to exchanges. This hack is one of the largest in a series of June attacks, the number of which has exceeded 22.
Japanese pension fund invests 1% in cryptocurrency
The National Corporate Pension Fund from Okayama (Japan), with assets of about 21.3 billion yen ($130 million), plans to allocate roughly 1% of its funds to purchase cryptocurrencies in the 2026 fiscal year. The funds will be invested in a passive fund managed by a major hedge fund that already holds several crypto assets. This is part of a diversification strategy: currently, 80% of the fund's assets are in yen, and 15% in dollars. The move signals growing institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies in Japan.
My analysis: The Polymarket scandal undermines trust in prediction markets but does not kill the segment — it only highlights the need for data verification. The Secret Network hack is another wake-up call for DeFi: smart contract vulnerabilities remain the main threat. However, the Japanese pension fund's decision is a bullish signal for the market: institutions continue to enter despite local disruptions.