Does Pokémon Go recognize gym prestige higher than 52k?

I joined a level 10 gym with 60k/50k prestige, which was seemingly a gym fortress. But, in less than 45 minutes, I checked the gym's health and it had been demoted into a level 9 gym with 42k/50k prestige. Was 18k really removed that quickly?

This gym was created by putting 5 Pokémon in the gym. Next, prestige was taken to 50k while leaving all the openings unfilled. Finally, the openings were filled (2k added per addition), which created a 60k/50k gym.

Now, maybe 60k is just being displayed, but not stored as actual gym health. Does that mean that 52k is the max prestige? Or could a gang of attackers really inflict that much damage so quickly?

Solution 1:

Unfortunately, no, the prestige was never actually at 60k, despite being displayed that way. Prestige never actually is higher than 50k, regardless of how it appears. See this post:

The gym is not actually at 52k prestige - this is simply a bug. The gym is actually at 50k prestige, but due to the way the game handles adding a Pokemon (adding +2,000 Prestige each time) when you add the last defender possible to a Level 10 (maxed out) gym, it makes it go from 50,000/50,000 to - artificially - 52,000/50,000. It really is at 50,000 though. So if you were to attack it, according to recent findings (somebody tested this), it should actually drop down from 52,000 to below 48,000, resulting in somebody getting kicked out (it's just that the total Prestige drop displayed to you may not always match up, essentially because of the bug giving you false numbers to begin with).