Cryptodigest June 22: Polymarket caught faking, Secret Network hacked for $4.7 million, and Japanese pension fund enters crypto
The morning of June 22 brought several landmark events. The prediction market platform Polymarket found itself at the center of a fake betting scandal, the Secret Network bridge lost millions due to a smart contract vulnerability, and one of Japan's major pension funds officially decided to allocate a portion of its assets to cryptocurrency. We break down the key market movements and news.
Market: Sideways Movement Among Leaders
Bitcoin (BTC) started the day in a sideways movement. As of 07:30 MSK, the asset is trading at $63,889 (approximately ₽4,677,602). Over 24 hours, the range was from $63,221 to $64,712. Ethereum (ETH) is also showing a flat trend, settling around the $1,731 mark (approximately ₽126,659).
In the top 10 by market cap, Tron shows the best daily performance (+0.51%), and Solana (+3.49%) leads for the week. The worst result over 24 hours is Hyperliquid (-5.97%), and over seven days, Dogecoin (-6.64%).
In the top 100, the daily growth leader is SKYAI (+9.15%), and the weekly leader is Aerodrome Finance (+34.93%). The biggest drop over 24 hours is Humanity (-10.51%), and over the week, Audiera (-68.18%).
Polymarket: Marketing on Fakes
The prediction market platform Polymarket has come under fire. A journalistic investigation revealed that the company paid dozens of bloggers to film fake bets and winnings on counterfeit copies of its own website.
Of the 1,105 videos checked, none of the allegedly placed bets totaling around $1.9 million were real. In one video, a student demonstrated a "win" of $100,000 — in reality, this bet was lost by over 50 users. For the filming, Polymarket created fake websites, including some with similar domain name spellings.
Bloggers were paid $2,000–3,000 per month and asked not to disclose the collaboration. Notably, Polymarket has been banned from working with users in the US since 2022, but the campaign was specifically targeting Americans. This is the second scandal surrounding the company's marketing in a month. Earlier, it was revealed that the marketing director paid for undisclosed advertising through his personal PayPal. Polymarket has promised to audit its promotional content.
Expert opinion: For a platform claiming to be a "source of truth" in forecasting, such methods are a reputational catastrophe. If trust in the data is undermined, the entire business model loses its meaning.
Secret Network: Bridge Hack for $4.7 Million
The Secret Network bridge suffered an attack worth $4.67 million through an infinite minting vulnerability. The attacker exploited 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 — due to a transaction failure caused by a lack of funds in a depleted account. The stolen assets were converted to ether, distributed across approximately 30 wallets, and then 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 Enters Crypto
The National Corporate Pension Fund from Okayama (Japan), serving about 1,200 small and medium-sized enterprises, plans to allocate approximately 1% of its assets to purchase cryptocurrency in the 2026 fiscal year.
According to Nikkei, the fund, with assets of about 21.3 billion yen ($130 million), will invest in a passive fund managed by a major hedge fund that holds several crypto assets. The move is presented as part of a diversification strategy: currently, 80% of the fund's assets are denominated in yen, and 15% in dollars.
Expert opinion: Even 1% of $130 million is a modest sum, but the signal itself is important. When conservative pension funds begin diversifying into crypto, it confirms the trend of institutional adoption of the asset as a class.