Polymarket Faked Bets for Clout

Base Launches Beryl Upgrade June 25 | Bitcoin Microtransactions Hit 80% of Volume

Marco Manoppo & Karon Pangestu
June 22, 2026

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Good Morning,

Polymarket's path back to US regulatory legitimacy just got a lot harder after a WSJ investigation found the platform ran a structured fake-bet campaign targeting the exact users it's legally banned from reaching, and this is the second time this month it's been caught paying undisclosed influencers.

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In Today's Email:

What Matters: Polymarket Faked Bets for Clout 👀
Product of the Week: Base Launches Beryl Upgrade June 25 🚀
Charts: Bitcoin Microtransactions Hit 80% of Volume 📊

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Narratives: Block Space Squeeze

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WHAT MATTERS

Polymarket Faked Bets for Clout

State of play: A WSJ investigation found Polymarket paid creators to film fake winning bets on dummy sites, targeting US users it's legally barred from serving since a 2022 CFTC settlement.

Polymarket built near-identical replica sites where creators staged roughly $1.9M in fabricated bets across 1,105 videos.
Creators were paid $2,000 to $3,000 monthly and instructed not to disclose the arrangement, drawing 140M views across TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.
The campaign deliberately targeted US audiences, with creators paid only when 60% or more of their viewers were US-based.
This is the second disclosure scandal this month, following a June 5 Politico report on CMO Matthew Modabber paying creators via personal PayPal without ad disclosures.
Polymarket said it will audit its promotional content and maintains it prohibits trading on confidential data.

Why it matters: Polymarket is fighting to reverse its 2022 CFTC ban and go onshore, a coordinated fake-bet campaign targeting US users is the worst possible timing.

Our take: Two disclosure scandals in one month points to a culture problem, not a vendor oversight issue. The dummy URLs and deliberate US audience targeting make this hard to walk back with an audit announcement.

For builders and investors: Kalshi is now the cleaner onshore story for institutional backers. Polymarket's regulatory goodwill is the asset it can least afford to burn right now.

PRODUCT OF THE WEEK

Base Launches Beryl Upgrade June 25

Base's second network upgrade, Beryl, introduces a native token standard and faster Ethereum withdrawals, with mainnet activation scheduled for June 25.

B20 is a native token standard built into Base's node software in Rust rather than as a smart contract, fully compatible with ERC-20 wallets and exchanges.
B20 ships with an Issuer Toolkit covering role-based access, mint/burn functions, transfer policies, and a freeze-and-seize mechanism for regulated issuers.
Beryl cuts the standard withdrawal delay from Base to Ethereum from seven days to five, targeting the slower single-proof path most bridging providers use.
The upgrade also ships Reth V2, reducing disk usage and allowing Base to raise block gas targets without overloading its sequencer.
Next upgrade, Cobalt, is targeted for September and will introduce native account abstraction at the protocol level.

Other cool products:

RockawayX launches Tori yield vault.
Saturn launches Morpho USDC vault.
EtherFi launches RWA Vault with Plume.
infiniFi launched a new siUSD Pendle market.
Superform launched its first SuperformOS vault on Flare.

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CHARTS OF THE WEEK

Bitcoin Microtransactions Hit 80% of Volume

State of play: Bitcoin transactions below 0.01 BTC now make up 80% of daily activity, up from 44% in 2023, driven by Runes, Ordinals, and data-inscription protocols rather than financial transfers.

Sub-0.01 BTC transactions dominate daily counts, with some as low as 546 satoshis (~$0.35), driven by OP_RETURN opcode usage hitting near-record levels.
Total daily bitcoin transactions have climbed above 800,000, near the highs of the 2023-2025 bull cycle and more than double 2025 lows.
The bitcoin mempool reached 128,000 unconfirmed transactions, its highest count since February 2025, with congestion concentrated in low-fee transfers.
CryptoQuant's Bitcoin Network Activity Index is now only 7% below its all-time high from September 2024, despite weak BTC prices.
If non-financial onchain activity keeps expanding, it could raise fees and block space competition for time-sensitive economic transactions.

Our Take: High tx counts with low value throughput is a vanity metric. Runes and Ordinals keep the mempool busy but price out real economic activity during congestion. Watch whether this structural shift starts pushing fees up for users who need fast settlement.

Sonic Labs Overhauls Leadership Amid Collapse

State of play: Andre Cronje and two other Sonic Labs board members resigned Friday as the S token trades 97% below its January 2025 peak, triggering a full leadership overhaul.

Cronje, former CEO Michael Kong, and executive chairman David Richardson are stepping down, with Matt Visser named CEO and Kosta Kourkoumelis COO.
The S token trades around $0.028, down 10% on the news, with market cap near $107M and DeFi TVL at $26M, down from a $1.1B peak in May 2025.
Cronje distanced himself from key decisions, stating he did not design the FTM-to-S migration, the airdrop, or the token emissions structure.
This is Sonic's second leadership change in nine months, following the resignation of CEO Mitchell Demeter in February 2026.
New CEO Visser said his focus is operational discipline and transparent governance, not promising an instant turnaround.

Our take: A 97% drawdown, $26M TVL, and Cronje publicly distancing himself from his own project is a wind-down in slow motion, not a restructuring. The real tell: Flying Tulip already has more TVL than all of Sonic combined.

QUICK BITES

Kalshi holds early IPO talks with investment banks.
Ethereum's biggest 'sandwich' bot drained of $7.5M in ironic exploit.
Franklin Templeton files for ETFs that reinvest stock dividends into BTC.
Schwab to join prediction markets race with S&P 500 event-based options.
Ethereum could face core development 'funding crisis' within nine months.
Microsoft found malware that hijacks crypto wallets and spreads through USB.
Base targets June 25 mainnet launch for Beryl upgrade and B20 token standard.

NOTEWORTHY READS & MEME

Bmoney’s read on Your First Crypto Card.
Arkham’s read on Top 10 Richest Crypto Holders.
Chainlink’s read on The Global Expansion of Onchain Finance.

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