A Wall Street Journal investigation published June 21 found that Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market, paid mostly college-age content creators to film fake winning bets on copycat websites designed to mirror its real platform, then pushed the clips past 140 million views through a hired marketing firm. Across 1,105 videos, none of the roughly $1.9 million in bets shown were real; some used domains such as poiymarket.com built specifically for staged trades that no blockchain ledger could verify. One set of clips across 118 videos showed creators celebrating roughly $900,000 in fabricated wins on a bet that, on the actual Polymarket platform, more than 50 accounts placed — and all lost. Creators were paid about $2,000 to $3,000 a month and told not to disclose the payments. The campaign specifically targeted American users despite Polymarket being barred from allowing US residents to trade on its offshore platform; American users can reach the site via VPN. Polymarket said it will audit its promotional content following the Journal’s findings.
The deception is particularly striking given Polymarket’s core pitch: every real trade settles on the Polygon blockchain in USDC and resolves through UMA’s permissionless oracle, which anyone can audit — the opposite of staged trades on fake sites. A separate Journal analysis found most Polymarket users lose money overall, even as the promotional videos sold the platform as an easy route to profit. The findings arrive as Polymarket has won regulated US market entry and is seeking to bring its exchange onshore to compete with licensed rival Kalshi; the promotional review is now changing how regulators view that onshore push. Polymarket has processed billions in cumulative trading volume and in January announced an exclusive data partnership with Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal — an arrangement that makes the newspaper both the platform’s media partner and its most prominent critic this week.