Foreign media exposes influencer facade, Polymarket releases fake video, making easy money is all a scam

The Wall Street Journal reports that prediction market Polymarket pays creators to produce videos of fake trades by simulating websites for profit. The company has promised a comprehensive review of promotional content.

The prediction market platform Polymarket is under investigation by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which points out that the company appears to have paid many creators to film "fake trades" and "fake profits" to attract users on social media, misleading viewers into thinking that creators are actually placing bets on the platform and earning high returns.

According to WSJ’s investigation, a college student creator named George Makihara posted a video in January this year, seemingly showing him betting on whether Trump would say the word "McDonald’s" that month and winning $100k. In the video, he jumps for joy when Trump utters the relevant phrase, appearing to be an exaggerated but real prediction market profit.

However, WSJ states that this trade does not exist. The Trump clip used in the video is from two months prior, and Trump did not say the word publicly that month; additionally, on the actual Polymarket website, over 50 accounts bet on "McDonald’s" in January, all of which ultimately lost.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

WSJ analyzed over 1,100 videos and creator guidelines, and after interviewing creators who have worked with Polymarket, found that the company paid dozens of mostly college-aged creators to produce short videos about betting and profiting on the platform; but most of these videos’ bets were not real trades, instead operated on a "simulated website" that closely resembles Polymarket’s actual interface.

1,105 videos, $1.9 million in fake bets, 118 videos depicting nearly $900k in fake profits

WSJ reviewed 10 creators recommended by Polymarket marketing contractors, who posted a total of 1,105 videos from December 2025 to mid-May 2026. The investigation found that about 70% of these videos included betting screens, and clues within the videos indicated that none of these bets were real trades.

The total bet amounts shown in these videos amount to about $1.9 million; among them, 118 videos further staged reactions of creators "winning" due to outdated clips, fake news headlines, or simulated results, totaling nearly $900k in apparent profits. However, WSJ points out that if calculated based on actual market outcomes, these trades would have resulted in losses exceeding $166k.

The report states that Polymarket not only built a nearly identical simulated interface to the real website but also instructed creators to operate these fake sites in their videos, concealing that they were paid promotions by Polymarket. Some creators only added disclosures like "@polymarket partner" after WSJ began inquiring about the marketing practices.

Polymarket responded that the company is committed to maintaining accurate, fair, and transparent markets, and stated that as a rapidly growing industry, it will continue to evaluate how to improve engagement and build trust with its audience. The company also said it will conduct a comprehensive review of the current promotional content still in operation.

Fake sites nearly identical to Polymarket, even with similar URLs

WSJ’s investigation revealed that Polymarket or related parties used multiple simulated websites for creators to film videos, one of which is password-protected with the URL "poiymarket.com". Changing the "i" to uppercase makes it visually almost indistinguishable from "polymarket.com".

The investigation also found that these simulated sites differ from the real Polymarket interface in over a dozen ways. For example, some videos show charts with "Source: Polymarket.com," which the real site does not display; some betting buttons show "YES" and "NIR" instead of the normal "YES" and "NO." A few videos briefly displayed the URL, suggesting they might be test environments used by Polymarket engineers.

After WSJ inquired, Polymarket removed the "poiymarket" site.

Creators can earn up to $2,000–$3,000 per month, often using phrases like "free money" in videos

Creators who collaborated with Polymarket said the platform required them to submit completed videos for approval. If the videos were not engaging enough or showed obvious signs of fake trades, Polymarket asked for re-shoots. Some creators reported earning about $2,000 to $3,000 per month from this.

These videos often follow a fixed template: the creator opens Polymarket, selects a political, sports, or entertainment event market to bet on, then exaggerates to imply it’s "free money." WSJ’s analysis shows that about a quarter of the 1,105 creator videos used the word "free," with common phrases like "free money," "free bread," etc.; many videos also used attention-grabbing openings like "Am I missing something?", "Wait, what?", "Bro, what?".

One high-traffic creator, Haian Nguyen, posted a video on Instagram claiming she bet on whether Trump would say "Olympics" and win $60k; another showed the text "Polymarket funds my life," with footage of her dancing near the Golden Gate Bridge. After WSJ contacted her, Nguyen refused to comment and deleted related videos from her profile.

Polymarket’s competition with Kalshi heats up, with traffic anxiety fueling fake trades?

WSJ also contextualized this marketing controversy within the competition between Polymarket and Kalshi. Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan reportedly urged the growth team to make the company "impossible to ignore" online. Currently, Polymarket is competing with the regulated US prediction market Kalshi for trading volume and market attention.

Most of 2025, Polymarket and Kalshi’s trading volumes grew in tandem; but in recent months, Kalshi has started to pull ahead. According to The Block data, Kalshi’s trading volume last month was about twice that of Polymarket.

For Polymarket, viral marketing is almost the growth engine. The platform needs young users to believe that prediction markets are not complex financial products but social games where they can make money through political statements, sports events, celebrity news, and internet memes. Therefore, narratives of "quick bets, instant riches, free money" in short videos have become a key part of the platform’s growth strategy.

However, WSJ’s investigation shows that many of these stories of getting rich are not based on real trades but are part of a traffic-generating machine built by the platform, marketing contractors, paid creators, and sharing accounts.

Not just Polymarket: issues with simulated trading screens on crypto exchanges

In fact, the fake trades and profits exposed by WSJ are not unique to Polymarket. In the promotion of centralized crypto exchanges, derivatives platforms, and copy trading products, there has long been a pattern of creators, KOLs, agents, or community promoters using simulated accounts, test accounts, screenshots with edits, undisclosed sponsorships, or selectively showcasing successful trades to craft an "unstoppable profit" image.

This type of marketing often follows a routine: creators post high-profit screenshots on short videos, Telegram, Discord, X, or YouTube, claiming they doubled their money through contract trading, grid trading, copy trading, or exchange promotions; then they include referral codes, affiliate links, or agent group invites to direct users to register and trade. But external viewers often cannot tell whether the displayed trades are from real accounts, simulated accounts, test environments, demo accounts provided by the platform, or edited success stories.

The bigger issue is that creator economies on exchanges are highly incentivized. Many KOLs, agents, and community leaders do not profit from trading itself but from user registrations, deposits, trading fee rebates, and activity bonuses. When revenue depends on attracting users to trade rather than actual trading performance, marketing content easily shifts from risk disclosures to stories of instant wealth, turning trading education into hype-driven betting.

• This article is reprinted with permission from: "Chain News"
• Original title: "Crypto KOLs’ simulated trading screens and chaos! WSJ exposes Polymarket paying creators to produce fake profit videos"
• Original author: Neo