EMURGO, a co-founding entity of the Cardano blockchain, said on Saturday it had found a way to return assets to users of its SecondFi wallet, days after an exploit drained about $2.4 million worth of ADA.

In a statement posted to X, EMURGO CEO Phillip Pon said the company had completed its forensic investigation, validated wallet balances, and identified what he called “a clear recovery solution.” He put the timeline at roughly two weeks, with one week to build the recovery mechanism and a second to test it before any returns begin.

Pon told affected users not to move funds or take steps outside SecondFi’s official guidance, saying the recovery is being built around the current state of the compromised wallets. He added that no step requiring user participation had started, and that SecondFi would never ask for private keys, seed phrases, or wallet access.

The Saturday post is the first time the company has attached a concrete timeline to the recovery. It has not yet published a full technical postmortem, given per-user recovery amounts, or detailed how users will claim funds.

$2.4 million from 374 addresses taken

SecondFi, the wallet EMURGO rebranded from Yoroi in April, has described four wallet-draining events between June 21 and 23. Three were carried out by external attackers, who took about 16 million ADA, roughly $2.4 million at the time, from 374 addresses.

In the fourth event, SecondFi said it moved about 129 million ADA to an independent third-party custodian as an emergency measure to keep the funds away from the attackers. It said an external accounting firm has been engaged to verify those holdings, and that affected users can file claims through its support site.

The company said it identified two attacker wallets, one of which drained 171 wallets and the other 203, and that about 4 million ADA tied to the theft sits in a flagged collection address under monitoring. It said it has notified law enforcement.

A competing forensic account

SecondFi has blamed an address-level flaw in its wallet-generation software that exposed users’ private keys. It has warned that restoring an affected recovery phrase in another wallet does not remove the risk, because the exposure is triggered when a compromised address signs a transaction.

A more specific account has come from Tibane Labs, which published a forensic report on the incident on Saturday. Tibane Labs is developing its own wallet, and its findings track public claims made earlier on X by Mark Karpelès, the former Mt. Gox chief executive who is part of that team, meaning its analysis comes from a competing party.

Tibane said the breach was not due to nonce reuse, the failure mode that broke the PlayStation 3 in 2010, but an Ed25519 signing error. According to the report, the wallet’s signer dropped the per-key secret that the standard mixes into each signature, so the value meant to be secret was computed from the public transaction data alone. That left it derivable by anyone and made a single signature enough to reconstruct the private key, with no second transaction or statistical attack required.

Tibane said the vulnerable signer was an experimental, unaudited SDK called trantor, published to npm by an independent developer, that replaced EMURGO’s previously shipped and audited build on June 8. The first compromised signature appears onchain that same day, according to the report.

Tibane said the underlying cryptographic library was sound and that the fault lay in how the wallet wired the key into it, leaving the secret nonce material unset. It said it decompiled the signed Android build, matched it to the trantor code, and recovered victim private keys from historical signatures to confirm the mechanism. The Block could not independently verify those findings.

EMURGO has not published a technical postmortem and has not publicly addressed Tibane’s attribution to a third-party SDK. Separately, security researcher Taylor Monahan said this week that SecondFi “rolled their own crypto” and that the software was closed source and unaudited.

A founding entity under scrutiny

Yoroi served as Cardano’s main lightweight wallet for years before the SecondFi rebrand, and EMURGO is one of the network’s three founding organizations. Tibane framed the episode less as a coding error than a governance failure, arguing that a founding entity shipped unaudited code to production in place of an audited build, without an independent review or a test that would have caught the flaw.

The exploit comes with ADA (ADA) trading near multi-year lows. It also follows a separate nonce-related failure earlier this year: The Block reported that the $280 million Drift Protocol exploit turned on the misuse of Solana “durable nonces,” though that breach was traced to social engineering rather than flawed wallet code.

By Tibane’s measure, only signatures made from June 8 onward are exposed, and transactions signed before that date used the audited implementation.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Cardano #ADA #CryptoHack #WalletSecurity #Blockchain #Cybersecurity #Crypto #DigitalAssets #Web3 #CryptoNews

Strategy briefly lost the premium that investors assigned to its bitcoin holdings on Friday, with its enterprise mNAV, a metric comparing the company’s overall market value with the value of its BTC, slipping below parity.

It happened as Strategy’s common shares (MSTR) fell to a recent low of $82.16 on Friday, before slipping to around $81.80 in after-hours trading.

Bitcoin (BTC), meanwhile, was trying to find its footing at around $59,560 after falling to $58,000 on Thursday.

Unlike the traditional mNAV metric that some crypto treasury companies use, which compares their equity market caps with the value of their digital asset holdings, Strategy now uses enterprise mNAV. The latter factors in things like debt, cash, and preferred stock.

In Strategy’s case, a reading below 1 means that investors value the company’s overall capital structure at less than the value of the bitcoin in its treasury.

Strategy mNAV. Source: Strategy
Throughout much of 2026, Strategy has relied heavily on the issuance of perpetual preferred shares like STRC to raise billions of dollars to fund the majority of its bitcoin purchases. But that doesn’t come without cost.

Those securities carry roughly $1.2 billion in annual dividend obligations, while the company’s cash reserves have dipped to around $1.4 billion, according to CryptoQuant.

Strategy’s dividend obligations vs. cash reserves. Source: CryptoQuant
This has created a negative feedback loop that has put pressure on STRC, which itself hit a fresh low of around $71.40 on Friday before recovering to close at $74.72. That’s nearly 26% below its intended $100 par value.

This is something that nearly every other bitcoin treasury strategy copycat has also been struggling with. Japan’s Metaplanet is currently trading at an enterprise mNAV of around 0.9, while the David Bailey-backed Nakamoto sits at around 0.92.

Strive, which adopted a similar preferred share funding strategy through its SATA perpetual stock, remains one of the few major bitcoin treasury companies still trading above parity, with an enterprise mNAV of about 1.24, according to BitcoinTreasuries data.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Bitcoin #BTC #Strategy #MSTR #MarketAnalysis #Crypto #Investing #Stocks #Finance #CryptoNews

Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $59,000 late Thursday in a broad crypto sell-off driven by macro risk-off sentiment, analysts said.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency briefly dropped to a low of around $58,200 earlier in the day before rebounding to $59,890 as of 11:50 p.m. Thursday, according to The Block’s price page. Ethereum (ETH) slid 3.8% over the past 24 hours to $1,555, while XRP lost 3.6% to trade at $1.03.

Asian equities also fell sharply on Friday morning. South Korea’s Kospi declined over 8%, triggering a circuit breaker. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index dropped 4.9%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index slid 2.3%.

Min Jung, research associate of Presto Research, told The Block that bitcoin is trading in lockstep with equities, coming under pressure during the Asia session as broader risk assets sold off.

“From here, the key question is whether BTC can reclaim $60,000 quickly. If $60,000 turns into resistance, traders will likely focus on the $54,000-$56,000 structural support zone,”said Jeff Ko, chief analyst of CoinEx.

Andri Fauzan Adziima, research lead at Bitrue Research Institute, shared similar views, noting that traders are watching whether BTC holds key support around the $58,000-$59,000 level, along with signs of ETF flow reversal and how the macro narrative shifts on future rate cut expectations. “Volatility stays elevated until we get clearer catalysts,” he added.

Expand Chart

Meanwhile, U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs saw $696.3 million in net outflows on Thursday, marking their largest daily outflow since May 27 and extending their outflow streak to six straight days, according to SoSoValue data.

“Focus also remains on spot ETF flows, derivatives positioning, and the July 2 U.S. jobless claims report,” said Dominick John, analyst of Zeus Research.

The U.S. Personal Consumption Expenditures price index increased 4.1% year-on-year in May, while the core PCE inflation advanced 3.4% year-on-year, keeping the possibility of a Federal Reserve interest rate hike this year on the table, according to Reuters.

Strategy’s STRC concerns

Jung of Presto also pointed out that concerns surrounding Strategy’s STRC add another layer of uncertainty.

Strategy’s STRC perpetual preferred stock fell to a record low Thursday, dropping as much as 26% below its $100 par value. The company’s common shares also hit their lowest level since February 2024 as bitcoin declined.

“Traders are closely watching how the Strategy situation evolves, alongside broader macro risk sentiment,” Jung added.

Ko of CoinEx also said Strategy remains a source of anxiety, raising questions about payout sustainability and the durability of its model.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Bitcoin #BTC #Crypto #BitcoinETF #Markets #Macro #StockMarket #Investing #Volatility #CryptoNews

Ripple has launched its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin in Japan after receiving regulatory approval, as the company continues to expand its global footprint.

In a statement released Wednesday, Ripple said that RLUSD is now available in Japan through a partnership with Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings and its crypto arm SBI VC Trade. The U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin is available to institutional and retail users on SBI VC Trade, the company said.

“Through our collaboration with SBI Group, RLUSD will serve as a bridge for payments, tokenization, and collateral management, connecting Japanese businesses and individuals more efficiently to global liquidity,” Jack McDonald, senior vice president of stablecoins at Ripple, said in the statement.

The stablecoin’s launch in Japan comes after the company received regulatory approval from the Japan Financial Services Agency. This classified RLUSD as a new type of electronic payment instrument under the Payment Services Act, according to the statement.

Launched in 2024, RLUSD is backed 1:1 by reserves including U.S. dollar deposits, short-term U.S. government bonds, and other cash equivalents, according to Ripple. The stablecoin has a market capitalization of $1.6 billion, with a 24-hour trading volume of $116.7 million, according to CoinGecko data.

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Japan has seen growing stablecoin adoption and development in recent months. Earlier on Wednesday, SBI Group launched the country’s first trust bank-backed yen stablecoin JPYSC in partnership with Singapore-based fintech company Startale Group.

Japan’s three megabanks — MUFG, SMBC, and Mizuho — also announced plans to begin live commercial transactions using a jointly issued stablecoin within the fiscal year ending March 2027.

Ref: https://www.paykalken.com

#Ripple #RLUSD #XRP #Stablecoin #Japan #Crypto #Blockchain #FinTech #DigitalAssets #CryptoNews

Cboe Global Markets Inc. has launched the first products in its new prediction markets suite called Cboe Predicts.

According to a Tuesday press release, Cboe Predicts features binary option contracts based on the Mini-S&P 500 Index (XSP). These contracts let customers bet on the performance of the S&P 500 at one-tenth the size of the full index, making them more retail-friendly.

The contracts, listed under tickers XSPBW and XSPBX, are currently available on Interactive Brokers and expected to launch on Charles Schwab in the coming months, confirming earlier reports.

The prediction market suite is an expansion of Cboe’s S&P Index options products, including SPX 0DTE — options that expire the same day, allowing traders to take a position on where the S&P 500 will close by the end of the trading session.

“Cboe’s S&P 500 options suite has long provided traders with flexibility to define their outcomes through traditional options strategies,” said JJ Kinahan, head of retail expansion and alternative investment products at Cboe. “With Cboe Predicts, we are expanding that choice by offering simple ‘yes-or-no’ payout event contracts.”

With the success of Polymarket and Kalshi, multiple traditional financial players have launched prediction market businesses over the past year, including Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, and Coinbase. However, the regulatory environment for event contracts remains unsettled, with ongoing jurisdictional disputes between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and state authorities.

Cboe has positioned its products differently, noting that its XSP prediction market contracts are security options that will trade under the same regulatory framework as U.S.-listed options.

Ref: https://www.paykalken.com

#Cboe #SP500 #PredictionMarkets #Trading #Investing #Stocks #Finance #Markets #Options #MarketNews

The Ethereum Foundation has concluded a months-long reorganization process, emerging with a new five-cluster operational structure and 54 fewer staff, or roughly 20% of its total workforce, as it implements its Mandate and Treasury Management Policy.

The foundation announced the changes Tuesday in a post on its official blog, saying the changes give the organization “the structure, activities, and people necessary for execution on the critical tasks ahead.”

Departing colleagues will also receive severance at the higher of one month’s pay per year worked at the EF or the locally mandated amount for their jurisdiction — the same package offered to colleagues who left in prior months.

The EF said transition support will include ecosystem placement assistance and a small grant to cover individual transition costs such as career coaching. Many of the departing staff, the foundation said, are expected to continue contributing to the Ethereum ecosystem from outside the organization.

The move comes just one day after a new Ethereum R&D organization called Ethlabs launched, to help with institutional adoption, and a wave of resignations of several EF executives, including two co-executive directors and the three co-leads of the major Protocol Cluster. In previous announcements, the EF has announced it will now focus its efforts on developing and supporting censorship resistant, open source, private, and secure (CROPS) technologies.

5-cluster system

The new structure organizes the EF into five domain-focused clusters — protocol layer, access layer, user layer, community layer, and institutional layer — alongside a dedicated operations cluster and a management cluster comprising teams that directly support leadership.

Each cluster is designed with its own internal structure and accountability framework tailored to its function.

The protocol cluster sits at the core, tasked with hardening and scaling the Ethereum base protocol against capture and censorship while advancing long-horizon work including post-quantum security, zkEVM development, and L1 privacy.

Next, the access layer cluster focuses on ensuring users can read the chain, transact, prove, delegate, and exit without relying on unverifiable intermediaries. Its governing principle, per the blog post, is a “zero option” standard: for every intermediated path, a credible intermediary-free alternative must remain available.

The user layer is designed to keep EF decision-making grounded in the needs of actual users and organizations, feeding real-world input into Protocol and Access Layer choices.

The community cluster governs how the foundation presents itself — both inside and beyond the Ethereum ecosystem — and is tasked with differentiating the EF from what the blog post called “zero-sum financial crypto” and “corpo-compromised crypto.”

Meanwhile, the institutional layer handles the EF’s engagement with financial institutions, enterprises, governments, universities, and nonprofits integrating Ethereum, while also working with academics and advocacy organizations on policy and regulatory developments.

18-month process

The restructuring is the formal conclusion of a transformation that has reshaped the EF’s leadership and team composition over the past 18 months.

Buterin announced sweeping leadership changes in January 2025 amid calls from figures including Joseph Lubin for new direction at the foundation, with Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stanczak later appointed co-executive directors.

Both have since departed — Stanczak in February 2026, Wang earlier this month — alongside a wave of senior figures including Josh Stark, Protocol team leads Tim Beiko and Barnabe Monnot, and researchers Carl Beek and Julian Ma, as The Block has reported extensively.

Former EF researchers have already begun organizing outside the foundation. Ethlabs, a nonprofit focused on Ethereum’s institutional growth phase and backed by Joe Lubin, Bitmine, and SharpLink, launched in recent days and has ties to the departed researcher cohort.

The EF said it will share more on how each cluster operates and how the broader ecosystem can engage with the new structure in the weeks ahead.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Ethereum #ETH #EthereumFoundation #Web3 #Blockchain #Crypto #CryptoNews #Vitalik #OpenSource #Innovation

 Plaintiffs pegged maximum damages at $12.08 million. The settlement still needs court approval.

#Hut8 #USBTC #Bitcoin #BTC #Crypto #Mining #CryptoNews #Investing #Markets #LegalNews

Ethereum-based rollup Taiko has confirmed a compromise of its chain state verification mechanism.

In a statement on the social media platform X, Taiko said that due to the compromise, all bridges deployed on the protocol are no longer considered secure.

“We are actively coordinating with the Security Council and ecosystem partners to contain the incident, pause affected systems where possible, and take all necessary technical and legal actions,” Taiko wrote. “We strongly advise all users to withdraw their funds from all bridges deployed on Taiko immediately.”

Taiko also requested that centralized exchanges suspend deposits of its native token immediately until further notice from the protocol.

In a follow-up X post, Taiko wrote that all of its proposers have halted the production of new blocks while the team investigates the issue.

At around 2:08 a.m. ET on Monday, Taiko published an update saying that the exploit has been contained, and withdrawals through the L1 Bridge and the ERC20Vault have been fully stopped.

Flaw in proof validation

“What happened: an attacker exploited a flaw in our bridge message-proof verification,” Taiko wrote in its latest update. “Forged message proofs were accepted on L1 without a legitimate event on the source chain, which let them register fraudulent withdrawals and pull funds from the bridge and token vault.”

Taiko’s confirmation of the exploit followed an earlier report from onchain security firm Blockaid, which pointed to a flaw in the Taiko bridge’s source-signal proof validation as the likely root cause.

“Crafted message proofs were accepted as valid on Ethereum L1 without corresponding legitimate MessageSent events on the Taiko source chain,” Blockaid wrote. “This allowed the attacker to register and later retrieve fraudulent bridge messages, resulting in unauthorized asset releases from the ERC20 vault.”

While Blockaid reported the losses to be around $1 million, follow-up reports from onchain analytics platform PeckShield said the stolen amount totals around $1.7 million, and the exploiter has moved 1.99 million Taiko tokens (worth about $169,702) to an address on the MEXC exchange.

In its latest update, Taiko confirmed that the estimated losses were around $1.7 million before the pause. The team also said it is preparing a full post-mortem of the incident.

Taiko is a based rollup — a type of rollup that relies on Ethereum block validators to sequence transactions. It launched on mainnet in May 2024 after being in development since 2022.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Taiko #ETH #Ethereum #Layer2 #Crypto #Hack #Security #DeFi #Web3 #BreakingNews

Polymarket paid dozens of social media creators to film themselves placing fake bets, and sometimes faking wins, on close replicas of its website, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation published Saturday.

The Journal reviewed 1,105 videos from 10 creators posted between December 2025 and mid-May. A bet appeared in about 70% of them. None of the wagers, worth roughly $1.9 million, were real.

In one January clip, college student George Makihara showed a $100,000 win on a bet that President Donald Trump would say “McDonald’s” that month. The footage of Trump saying the word was two months old. More than 50 real accounts placed the same bet in January, and all of them lost, the Journal found.

Polymarket built dummy sites for the videos, including one at the misspelled URL “poiymarket.com,” which resembles the true “polymarket.com” domain when the ‘i’ is capitalized. Across 118 videos, creators celebrated nearly $900,000 in fabricated winnings. Those bets would actually have lost more than $166,000.

Creators were paid about $2,000 to $3,000 a month and told not to disclose the arrangement, the Journal reported. Some added “@polymarket partner” to their bios only after the paper started asking questions. The firm worked closely with a hired marketing contractor in order to promote the site, per the report.

The campaign targeted U.S. users. Polymarket has been barred from offering its main prediction market platform to Americans since a 2022 settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, under then-President Biden, though they can still reach the site through a VPN. Marketing firm Virality managed a network of “clippers” and paid them only when at least 60% of their audience was based in the U.S. The clips drew more than 140 million views across TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, per analytics provider Tubular.

Polymarket told the Journal it is “committed to maintaining accurate, fair, and transparent markets” and plans a comprehensive audit of its promotional content.

The findings land as Polymarket continues to court mainstream legitimacy. The company is seeking to reverse the effect of its 2022 settlement and bring its offshore exchange back onshore, and it has been expanding aggressively, recently rolling out markets on private-company valuations and IPOs. Various state officials are pushing the other way: Kentucky sued Polymarket and rival Kalshi this week, accusing both of running unlicensed sports wagering.

It is also the second disclosure flap to hit Polymarket’s marketing operation this month. Politico reported on June 5 that Chief Marketing Officer Matthew Modabber used a personal PayPal account to pay creators who promoted Polymarket odds on X without labeling the posts as ads. The report found that Modabber sent at least $350,000 to creators or influencers, while the account sent more than $2.5 million to more than 800 people overall.

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Polymarket is trailing rival Kalshi in monthly volume, according to The Block’s data dashboard, with its regulated onshore U.S. exchange in a distant third.

The Journal also reported that streamer Adin Ross has a multimillion-dollar deal with Polymarket, and that Polymarket paid clippers to promote at least 19 videos discussing how to trade on inside information. Polymarket said it prohibits trading based on stolen or confidential data.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Polymarket #PredictionMarkets #Crypto #Web3 #Transparency #Marketing #Regulation #Kalshi #CryptoNews #News

Two brothers pleaded guilty this week to robbing a Minnesota family of more than $8 million in cryptocurrency after holding them at gunpoint for more than eight hours during a September 2025 home invasion, federal prosecutors said.

Isiah Angelo Garcia, 25, and Raymond Christian Garcia, 24, both of Waller, Texas, each pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of interference with commerce by robbery before U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery in Minneapolis, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota.

The brothers traveled from Texas to Grant, Minnesota, on Sept. 19, 2025, where they held the victim and his family at gunpoint in their home, according to court documents. They zip-tied the family and demanded access to their cryptocurrency accounts.

Isiah Garcia then drove one of the victims to the family’s cabin in northern Minnesota, where he forced him to retrieve additional cryptocurrency storage devices and transfer the funds, prosecutors said. The brothers ultimately forced the victim to transfer more than $8 million in crypto over the course of the scheme.

The ordeal ended after the victim’s son called 911. The Garcias fled the area, but investigators traced items left behind at the home, used them to identify the brothers, and arrested them near Houston.

Both defendants admitted to using firearms to threaten the victims. They agreed to pay more than $8 million in restitution and face up to 20 years in federal prison at sentencing, which has not yet been scheduled.

The case fits a wider pattern of armed robberies and kidnappings targeting crypto holders.

A Florida man pleaded guilty earlier this month to a separate bitcoin-related carjacking and kidnapping scheme, and French authorities have charged dozens of people this year amid a surge of so-called “wrench attacks” across the country.

“No one should ever feel unsafe in their own home,” stated FBI Minneapolis Field Office Special Agent in Charge Christopher Dotson, who said the violence displayed by the Garcia brothers would always be aggressively investigated by the FBI and its law enforcement partners.

Ref: https://www.paykalken.com

#CryptoSecurity #Bitcoin #BTC #Crypto #SelfCustody #Security #CryptoCrime #DigitalAssets #CryptoNews #StaySafe

Former Ethereum Foundation contributor Trent VanEpps warned Thursday that the network’s core development ecosystem could run into a “slow-burning” funding crisis within the next three to nine months as the EF scales back spending and a major client funding program expires.

VanEpps, who coordinated core development at the EF from May 2021 until April 2026, said in an X post that the expiration of the Client Incentive Program in April 2026 and the foundation’s ongoing treasury reductions risk undermining the institutional capacity built across Ethereum’s core development ecosystem over the past decade.

The CIP, a four-year program that funded client teams through staking-based rewards, ended in April and “no replacement appears to be forthcoming,” VanEpps said.

According to VanEpps, Ethereum’s core development ecosystem requires roughly $30 million in annual funding to maintain the secure delivery of features and maintenance across more than 10 client teams, research groups, and coordination teams.

VanEpps cautioned that without consistent funding, the network risks losing contributors with critical institutional context built up over years, and falling behind on long-term challenges, including quantum computing and scaling. He said contributor availability cannot be assumed once funding conditions improve.

“I believe we are underweighting the risk of this underinvestment in continuity,” VanEpps wrote in the post, adding that, “When we register the resulting symptoms in 12-18 months, the damage will be much harder and more costly to reverse.”

Questions over stewardship emerge

VanEpps also revisited the Ethereum Foundation’s long-standing philosophy of “subtraction,” a policy intended to reduce the organization’s influence over time.

He said the approach succeeded in communicating that the foundation was not intended to become Ethereum’s sole center of power. Still, he argued it has been less effective in defining which responsibilities should move elsewhere, leaving gaps that the broader ecosystem has struggled to fill.

VanEpps also raised succession planning, arguing that the Ethereum Foundation was never intended to serve as the network’s permanent steward and that new institutions and funding mechanisms will eventually be needed.

He cited recent comments from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin that the foundation completed the work outlined in Ethereum’s original pre-launch documents in 2022 and “was not designed to be an eternal steward.”

He called for new institutions and funding mechanisms to take over stewardship of Ethereum’s shared resources, including software, the network, and the ETH asset, and said scalable, accountable, and neutral funding models must be established to avoid an unfunded mandate.

Departures

The discussion came the same day Ethereum Foundation co-executive director and board member Hsiao-Wei Wang announced her departure following a sabbatical. Wang, who joined the foundation in 2017 and became co-executive director in March 2025, said she was stepping down effective immediately after serving through what Buterin described as one of the most challenging periods for the organization.

The departure followed another wave of personnel changes. In May, researchers Carl Beek and Julian Ma announced they were leaving the foundation, adding to a list of recent exits that includes former co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak, Josh Stark, and Protocol cluster leaders Barnabé Monnot and Tim Beiko, while Alex Stokes entered a sabbatical.

Amid the departures, Buterin said in May that the Ethereum Foundation would become “a smaller ship than in previous years” and would prioritize longevity over breadth while narrowing its focus to censorship resistance, open source development, privacy, and security.

Ether traded near $1,688 on Friday, down 3.1% over the past 24 hours, according to The Block’s ETH price page. The cryptocurrency remains about 65.7% below its record high of $4,946 reached in August last year.

Ref: https://scamers.net

#Ethereum #ETH #EthereumFoundation #Vitalik #Web3 #Crypto #Blockchain #OpenSource #DeFi #CryptoNews

The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have reached a deal to advance a comprehensive housing legislation that also includes language banning the issuance of a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

On Tuesday, Senator Tim Scott, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Rep. French Hill, and Rep. Maxine Waters released an updated version of the “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” which reflects bipartisan, bicameral agreement on the bill.

The legislation contains a housing affordability package to boost housing supply in the U.S. and make it more affordable by preventing corporate landlords from dominating the market. New changes to the bill include a three-year sunset provision for a disaster relief program, which was a compromise to address concerns from the House.

“This bill is the result of years of work to lower costs, expand housing supply, cut red tape, protect taxpayers, and help more Americans achieve the dream of homeownership,” Scott said in a joint statement. “It is time to move forward, get this bill across the finish line, and deliver real relief for the American people.”

CBDC ban

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act includes language banning the Federal Reserve from issuing or creating a CBDC or any digital asset “substantially similar” to a CBDC, effective until Dec. 31, 2030.

While attaching an anti-CBDC provision to a housing bill is unusual, it highlights a common legislative strategy of hitching unrelated policies to must-pass legislation. House Republicans pushed for the inclusion of the anti-CBDC provision, as previously reported by journalist Eleanor Terrett.

The current Trump administration also has a solid stance against CBDCs. Last month, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reiterated that CBDCs are clearly “off the table,” and that the administration will focus on getting the digital asset-focused Clarity Act across the finish line.

The updated legislation will now head for its first procedural vote at the Senate, Politico reported Tuesday, citing Senate Majority Leader John Thune. The bill would then move to the House for another vote, reportedly expected to happen immediately after lawmakers return from recess around June 23, potentially clearing the way for the president’s final sign-off.

Ref: https://www.paykalken.com

#CBDC #Bitcoin #BTC #Crypto #Fed #Congress #Senate #House #DigitalDollar #CryptoNews

Coinbase’s quantum advisory board says roughly 7 million bitcoin sit in addresses exposed to a future quantum attack, and that much of that exposure is not lost Satoshi-era coins but active funds, including cold wallets operated by known exchanges. The estimate appears in a report published Thursday by the company’s Independent Advisory Board on Quantum Computing and Blockchain.

The board splits the exposure into two buckets. About 1.7 million bitcoin sit across roughly 20,000 legacy pay-to-public-key (P2PK) addresses, where the public key itself is the address and is fully visible onchain, leaving those coins directly vulnerable to a future attack. Many are assumed to belong to bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator or to owners who lost their keys long ago.

The second and larger bucket is the one tied to address reuse. Citing the quantum-security firm Project Eleven, the report puts about 5 million bitcoin at risk because their public keys have already been revealed, and says most of those coins are assumed to belong to active users rather than lost wallets, with large amounts sitting in cold wallets of known exchanges or showing recent activity. The report does not name specific crypto exchanges.

The report presents the argument that owners who have lost their keys do not need protection because they have already lost practical control of their coins, so the genuine question is what to do about holders who still control their funds but fail to move them before any migration deadline. By the report’s own framing, that group could include the exchanges and active holders behind the 5 million reused-key coins.

The report sets out two opposing positions on solutions. The first would set a deadline after which quantum-vulnerable signatures, such as ECDSA and Schnorr, are no longer accepted, permanently freezing any coins not migrated. Proponents argue that broken cryptography voids the proof of ownership those signatures provide, that lost coins flooding the market after a quantum break would unfairly hit other holders, and that freezing would stop a sanctioned actor such as North Korea from seizing a large bitcoin stash.

The second position would enable post-quantum addresses and otherwise leave the risk with each owner. Backers argue that burning coins amounts to confiscation at the network level, breaking with bitcoin’s property-rights ethos and setting a precedent that could invite future pressure to seize funds for other reasons, and that there is no reliable way to tell a negligent owner from one who is imprisoned, has died, or has only temporarily lost a key.

Between the two, the report describes intermediate proposals it says are mutually compatible. An “Hourglass” design would cap how many P2PK coins can move per block to prevent a sudden supply shock. The draft BIP-361 proposal would bar legacy signatures after a set time but let users prove ownership with a quantum-resistant zero-knowledge proof, an option available to wallets generated from seed phrases. Provable Address-Control Timestamps, or PACTs, originally proposed by Paradigm researcher Dan Robinson, would let holders commit today to a future quantum-safe transfer without publicly moving funds onchain.

The board declined to back any single approach, saying there is no correct answer and that the community must decide. Its members include Yehuda Lindell, who leads cryptography at Coinbase and is a professor at Bar-Ilan University, alongside Stanford professor Dan Boneh, UT Austin professor Scott Aaronson, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, Sreeram Kannan of Eigen Labs and the University of Washington, and UCSB professor Dahlia Malkhi.

The report did make two recommendations, however. It urged developers to start the technical migration work now, arguing that building post-quantum signature support is independent of the abandoned-coins fight and should not wait for it, and it called for clearer communication so users are not left guessing about timelines and plans.

The exchange-exposure point echoes earlier warnings. When Jefferies strategist Christopher Wood pulled bitcoin from his model portfolio in January over quantum risk, the research he cited flagged exchange and institutional wallets as among the most exposed because of address reuse. Bitcoin developers have separately floated the phased sunset of legacy signatures under BIP-361, and Google said in March it was setting a 2029 timeline for its own post-quantum cryptography migration, citing faster progress in quantum-related research.

The board stressed that no quantum computer can break blockchain cryptography today and that the threat remains uncertain. Its argument is that migration and the governance debate will each take years to resolve, so waiting until a cryptographically relevant quantum computer actually exists would be too late.

Ref: https://www.paykalken.com

Bitcoin #BTC #Coinbase #QuantumComputing #CryptoSecurity #Blockchain #BitcoinNews #CryptoNews #QuantumRisk #CyberSecurity #DigitalAssets #CryptoMarket #BitcoinWallet #CryptoInvesting #Web3 #Cryptocurrency #DeFi #TechNews #FutureOfFinance #BlockchainTechnology

Bitcoin-native financial firms have been expanding beyond exchange and custody platforms into lending, payments and banking services, with some industry executives arguing the next phase of adoption will be building bitcoin-centric alternatives to traditional banks.

Speaking with The Block on Thursday at the BTC Prague conference, Blockrise CEO Jos Lazet said his vision is for bitcoin-centric financial platforms to transform into full-service banking alternatives on bitcoin’s self-sovereign wavelength.

“My dream goal of Blockrise is a Bitcoin bank,” Lazet said.

Across the digital asset industry, companies have been introducing and experimenting with products like bitcoin-backed lending, crypto payment cards, yield services and retail banking services.

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Lazet noted that Blockrise recently launched bitcoin-friendly bank accounts with International Bank Account Numbers, or IBANs, and is exploring subscription pricing models similar to neobanks like Revolut.

But unlike traditional fintechs, Lazet argued that bitcoin-native companies have an opportunity to build something different on the fundamental level.

“Today’s neobanks are just an optimized version of traditional banks,” he said. “They offer more integrated features, but they’re not anarchistic — they’re not against the system.”

“The opportunity that we have is to have an anarchistic neobank,” he said.

According to Lazet, this would entail building services around user ownership and self-custody, essentially giving customers more control over their assets while still providing them with everything they need in day-to-day banking.

Bitcoin adoption

Changing gears, Lazet also argued that bitcoin adoption in his home country of the Netherlands is stronger now than at any point in his more than a decade in the industry, despite regulatory shifts and proposals that could increase capital gains taxes.

“I would say even to some extent, Bitcoin adoption is at a peak,” he said, pointing to growing institutional acceptance and support for bitcoin exchange-traded funds among Dutch banks.

“The market doesn’t reflect it. That’s fine. But as long as the story gets told and we’re increasing adoption, the Netherlands has a lot of potential to be one of the leading Bitcoin countries in Europe.”

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Bitcoin #BTC #BitcoinBank #SelfCustody #CryptoBanking #FinancialFreedom #DigitalAssets #BitcoinAdoption #CryptoNews #BTCPrague

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has filed the fourth amendment for its proposed bitcoin exchange-traded fund.

According to the official filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, BlackRock submitted the latest amendment to the registration statement for iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF on Tuesday.

The ETF, unveiled in January, combines spot bitcoin exposure with a yield-generating mechanism to provide investors with steady income.

“The purpose of the Trust is to reflect generally the performance of the price of bitcoin while providing premium income through an actively managed strategy of writing (selling) call options primarily on IBIT shares and, from time to time, on ETP Indices,” the ETF filing said.

The latest amendment revealed that the fund will hold a sponsor’s fee of 0.65%. As noted in previous filings, the ETF is set to be listed and traded on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol BITA.

Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas noted that the upcoming fund’s fee is lower than the two biggest “covered call” bitcoin ETFs — likely YBTC and BTCI — which hold 0.95% and 0.99% in fees.

“My guess is this is going to launch very soon,” Balchunas said. “They’re under gun to beat Goldman to [market] who is going to be effective around July 1. Game on.”

BlackRock’s Nasdaq-listed iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) is the largest spot bitcoin fund, with about $47.21 billion in net assets.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#BlackRock #BitcoinETF #IBIT #Bitcoin #BTC #CryptoNews #ETF #InstitutionalAdoption #CryptoMarket #DigitalAssets

Prolific crypto venture capital firm Paradigm and Hyperliquid Policy Center, a DeFi advocacy group, jointly issued a letter Tuesday urging the U.S. Treasury to alter a proposed anti-money laundering rule that they say would subject stablecoin issuers “to strict liability for transactions they cannot meaningfully police.”

The Hyperliquid-backed lobby group and Paradigm, a backer of Hyperliquid, are seeking to prevent rules they say would limit decentralized stablecoin usage on public blockchains.

Back in April, the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) jointly proposed a rule to implement provisions of the GENIUS Act related to treating stablecoin issuers like financial institutions for purposes of the Bank Secrecy Act.

“We broadly support the proposed rule, and in particular FinCEN’s decision to tailor most issuer obligations to the primary market, but write to recommend that certain secondary market obligations be clarified or narrowed to avoid unintended consequences for permissionless blockchain infrastructure and the DeFi ecosystem,” Hyperliquid Policy Center (HPC) and Paradigm said in their letter.

HPC and Paradigm said they support FinCEN’s approach of focusing on compliance obligations on the primary market, where issuers know their customers, and take a lighter approach in the secondary market, where issuers only see wallet addresses and transaction amounts. “The same principle should guide the agencies’ implementation of AML and sanctions requirements for stablecoins deployed to permissionless environments,” they said.

OFAC’s proposal to extend issuer liability to secondary market activity through smart contracts imposes unnecessarily strict liability for transactions issuers cannot control, HPC and Paradigm argue.

“An issuer facing obligations it cannot meet on the secondary market has a strong incentive to deploy only to permissioned environments, pulling U.S.-regulated stablecoins out of DeFi and creating a void filled by unregulated, offshore, non-dollar alternatives,” they added. “It would undo the current regulatory spring and restore the brutal winter of the past administration.”

Congress passed the GENIUS Act last year in part due to President Donald Trump’s administration supporting the digital assets industry. Now, the legislation is in the implementation phase, which includes rules being proposed and then eventually agreed upon, before the stablecoin bill goes into full effect.

HPC and Paradigm made a series of specific suggestions in their letter from Tuesday, including narrowing “the definition of ‘payment stablecoin-related activity'” and reconsidering “OFAC’s treatment of smart contract interactions.”

Hyperliquid Foundation helped create HPC in February with a donation of roughly $29 million worth of HYPE tokens. Jake Chervinsky acts as HPC’s CEO.

Ref: https://www.scamers.net

#Hyperliquid #Paradigm #Stablecoins #DeFi #CryptoPolicy #GENIUSAct #AML #Blockchain #CryptoRegulation #Web3

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the broader cryptocurrency market rebounded late Sunday night following an extended decline over the past week.

According to The Block’s crypto price page, bitcoin rose 3% to $63,168 in the past 24 hours leading up to 10:25 p.m. ET on Sunday. Ethereum added 6.5% to $1,687, while Solana gained 4.7% to $66.3.

Analysts told The Block that bitcoin’s latest rebound appears to be a “classic oversold relief rally.”

“Bitcoin’s roughly 5% rebound this morning may be partly due to the market becoming oversold after last week’s sharp selloff,” Min Jung, associate researcher at Presto Research, told The Block.

Jung pointed out that bitcoin remains down roughly 15% in the past week despite today’s recovery, and has underperformed many other risk assets. This suggests a significant amount of negative news may have already been priced in over the weekend, he said.

In the past week, bitcoin dropped to its lowest level in more than two months due to a combination of negative catalysts, including large outflows from crypto spot exchange-traded funds, Strategy’s BTC sale against its “never sell” narrative, and persistent tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

Along with bitcoin’s partial recovery, Strategy Chairman Michael Saylor posted a Strategy bitcoin acquisition tracker chart on Sunday morning with the caption “A good time to add more dots,” a widely understood signal that the firm may disclose a fresh BTC purchase in the coming week.

Korean equities plunge

Meanwhile, bitcoin’s recovery coincided with a major decline in South Korea’s stock market, which had benefited from a massive tech-led rally in recent weeks.

South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI fell more than 8% after markets opened Monday morning in Asia, triggering a circuit breaker to halt the market.

A harsh sell-off in semiconductor-related stocks drove the decline — Samsung dropped 7.3%, while SK Hynix lost 4%.

“Traders may be reducing exposure to tech stocks as the risks of a prolonged U.S.-Iran conflict, high oil prices, and interest rate hikes continue to weigh on the market,” BTSE COO Jeff Mei said.

The structural overlap between South Korea’s retail equity and cryptocurrency markets may suggest a major capital migration from domestic stocks to digital assets. Analysts, however, said it is unlikely.

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“The KOSPI’s plunge didn’t cause bitcoin’s rebound, but it highlights the same macro forces driving risk markets,” said Zeus Research Analyst Dominick John. “Equities were pricing in fear, bitcoin benefited from a deeply oversold setup, short-covering, and renewed institutional optimism.”

Presto’s Jung also noted that KOSPI’s crash may have had some impact on bitcoin’s recovery, but not substantially.

“The KOSPI decline likely had some impact on overall risk sentiment, but much of that weakness may have already been reflected in crypto prices during the weekend,” Jung said.

Many other Asian equity markets declined on Monday morning. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index fell 4%, Taiwan’s TAIEX slid 4.25%, and the Shanghai Composite dropped 1%.

According to analysts, digital assets face the same macroeconomic headwinds as traditional equities. There is growing anticipation of a Fed rate hike, fueled by April data showing U.S. job openings at their highest level in nearly two years.

Geopolitical tensions persist as Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel during the weekend, triggering retaliatory Israeli airstrikes and stalling U.S. diplomatic initiatives.

“Bitcoin holding above the key $60,000 support zone keeps the bullish structure intact and signals that the broader uptrend is still in play, with room for further upside if momentum holds,” John said. “The main risk remains external, as rising geopolitical tensions or weakening macro conditions could easily pressure even well-established support levels and shift market sentiment quickly.”

Ref: http://www.scamers.net

#Bitcoin #BTC #CryptoNews #BitcoinPrice #Ethereum #Solana #KOSPI #MarketRecovery #BuyTheDip #CryptoMarket

Michael Saylor, Strategy’s co-founder and executive chairman, posted a Strategy bitcoin acquisition tracker chart to X on Sunday morning with the caption “A good time to add more dots,” a commonly-understood signal that the largest corporate bitcoin holder may disclose a fresh BTC purchase this upcoming week.

Saylor posting the “orange dots” graphic has historically preceded a Monday 8-K filing which confirms that Strategy acquired BTC the preceding week. The framing this time goes further than the usual nod toward another buy, in that it explicitly positions current price levels as attractive, with bitcoin currently trading in the low $60,000 range.

According to Strategy’s latest disclosure, the firm held 843,706 BTC at an average purchase price of $75,699 as of May 31, a position worth roughly $52.2 billion at prevailing prices. The company is sitting on an unrealized loss of roughly $11.7 billion, or about 18%.

Sunday’s signal is also the first such post since Strategy disclosed on June 1 that it had sold 32 BTC between May 26 and May 31, which marked its first bitcoin sale since late 2022. The sale returned roughly $2.5 million at an average net price of $77,135, with proceeds earmarked for the dividend on STRC, Strategy’s variable-rate perpetual preferred stock.

The sale was small relative to Strategy’s total stash, representing just 0.004% of the firm’s overall holdings, but it ended a streak that had defined Saylor’s public posture and drew criticism from investors who found the sale conflicted with Saylor’s typical “never sell” posture. Saylor told interviewers in early May that Strategy would buy “10 to 20” bitcoin for every coin it sells.

If this week’s signal precedes a disclosed purchase at current prices, the implied price math is favorable. Strategy sold 32 BTC at an average net of $77,135 just over a week ago and would now be adding more at roughly 20% below that level.

The post also lands one day before Strategy’s June 8 annual meeting, at which voting closes on a proposal to shift STRC dividend payments from monthly to twice monthly. The company has said retail shareholders hold roughly 80% of outstanding STRC shares, making retail turnout central to whether the amendment passes.

The signal arrives at a difficult moment for the broader market. Bitcoin fell below $61,000 last week after dropping on Friday’s stronger-than-expected May jobs report. The decline came after U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded 13 consecutive sessions of net outflows through early June, the longest stretch since the funds launched. A brief $3 million net inflow on June 4 ended the streak before redemptions resumed on June 5 with $325.7 million in outflows, per SoSoValue data.

Bitcoin is currently trading at about $61,900, a 1.8% increase over the past 24 hours, according to The Block’s Bitcoin Price page.

The post also follows a Friday essay from Saylor arguing that bitcoin’s long-term success depends on accommodating competing visions rather than embracing a single ideology. The piece was published as observers debated whether Strategy’s June 1 disclosure had itself contributed to the latest leg lower.

Whether Strategy can execute a sizable buy this week depends on its capital position. The firm’s USD reserve stood at $900 million as of May 31, down from roughly $2 billion before May’s repurchase of $1.5 billion in 2029 convertible notes. Strategy raised $128.3 million through its MSTR at-the-market program in the week ending May 31, with no STRC issuance disclosed.

Scamers.net

#Bitcoin #BTC #MichaelSaylor #Strategy #MicroStrategy #BitcoinNews #CryptoNews #BuyTheDip #BTCBullish #DigitalGold

In the crypto world, nothing is more valuable than liquidity, and the best liquidity often comes from the fear of retail investors.

Every time the market starts to falter, bad news appears as if by prearrangement. Prices fall, confidence erodes, and warnings of a crisis echo across all platforms. Many retail investors begin to believe this may be the beginning of a major collapse. When fear replaces reason, the sell-off begins.

Interestingly, in the initial stages of the fall, the big players aren’t the only sellers. They merely ignited the first spark, then let the panic of retail investors take over. The price falls further, fear intensifies, fear leads to more selling, and the more they sell, the lower the price plummets—a self-destructive cycle driven by the crowd.

Long-term holding turns into self-questioning; confidence turns to despair; “I can wait” becomes “I’d better get out now.”

Finally, when the pain accumulates to an unbearable point, many retail investors hit the cut-loss button, believing they are making a rational decision, when in reality, they are handing their assets to those waiting to buy at the bottom.

Once retail investors have given up, the market quiets down. Hope was drained from the system. Crypto news was ignored. People started saying crypto was over. This time was different from all the previous times, and that’s when the massive accumulation began.

Coins that had been discarded in fear were gradually picked up again, one by one, in one wallet, day by day, until the selling pressure subsided.

After that, what was once considered worthless began to be pushed back up. Prices started to recover, good news returned, and confidence began to grow.

The same retail investors who fled the market are now watching the assets they sold continue to rise.

The cycle repeats itself:

Retail investors sell out of fear.

Elite investors buy because others are afraid.

And when prices rise again, retail investors come back in with hope.

Before the whole game starts all over again.

In the crypto market, the biggest losers aren’t those who hold the wrong assets, but those who are led to believe that their fear is the best decision.

Ref: http://www.scamers.net

#CryptoMarket #Bitcoin #BTC #MarketPsychology #FearAndGreed #RetailInvestors #Whales #SmartMoney #CryptoCycle #BuyTheFear

The digital asset treasury, or DAT, boom has swept through public markets over the past two years, spawning dozens of companies with the primary goal of accumulating cryptocurrencies ranging from bitcoin and ether to Solana, Zcash, and lately, Hyperliquid’s HYPE token.

For much of that period, soaring crypto prices and premiums fueled the trades, which in turn attracted more companies to adopt the playbook. But in the first half of 2026, a sharp downturn across most of the crypto market is exposing a divide between the sector’s winners and losers.

Virtually all major bitcoin, ether and Solana treasury companies are now sitting on billions of dollars in unrealized losses as the underlying assets slide to multi-year lows.

Meanwhile, the latest data from crypto analytics platform Artemis shows that Hyperliquid treasury firms are bucking the trend for the time being, and are the only ones still sitting on meaningful unrealized gains.

Hyperliquid Strategies, the largest (HYPE) treasury company, holds roughly 23.7 million HYPE and is up more than $1.1 billion on an unrealized basis despite the token’s recent pullback from an all-time high above $74 earlier this week.

Hyperion DeFi, which holds just over 2 million HYPE according to its latest SEC filing, is also still in positive territory with around $35 million in unrealized gains.

Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) unrealized gains and losses. Source: Artemis
Bitcoin DATs underwater

If there’s one company that best illustrates the trend’s decline, it’s Strategy (MSTR), the largest corporate bitcoin holder and the firm that popularized the blueprint for the modern crypto treasury model.

Data from SaylorTracker shows that Strategy is now sitting on more than $12.8 billion in unrealized losses despite first beginning to accumulate BTC when it traded near $10,000. The company’s average acquisition cost has climbed to roughly $75,000 per bitcoin after years of purchases.

The swings that Strategy has seen since then, especially in the past year, have been extreme. When bitcoin surpassed $126,000 last October, Strategy was sitting on more than $14 billion in unrealized gains. Those profits flipped into roughly $9.5 billion of losses in February before recovering into positive territory again in April.

But this week, after Strategy announced it sold 32 bitcoins for $2.5 billion, BTC began to sell off, culminating in setting a long-term low of around $59,100 on Friday afternoon, leaving Strategy with a paper loss of 20% on its holdings.

Its stock, MSTR, was down over 11% on Friday to around $116, not far above a two-year low.

Japan-based Metaplanet, one of the earliest and most aggressive adopters of Strategy’s bitcoin treasury playbook, is also feeling the pressure. The company is carrying nearly $1.7 billion in unrealized losses on its bitcoin holdings, while its U.S.-listed shares recently fell to around $1.40, their lowest prices since the company adopted the strategy in 2024.

Expand Chart

Ether, Solana treasuries take heavy hits

That pain has extended to Ethereum treasury companies after (ETH) plunged below $1,550 on Friday, its lowest level in more than a year.

Bitmine, chaired by Fundstrat’s Tom Lee and the world’s largest ether treasury company, holds more than 5.4 million ETH worth approximately $8.6 billion at current prices. Artemis data estimates the company is carrying roughly $10.5 billion in unrealized losses on those holdings.

Bitmine’s position is nearly 4.5% of Ethereum’s entire circulating supply, and the company has previously stated its goal is to push that to 5% of all ETH. Its stock, BMNR, was down more than 10% on Friday to around $16, marking a new low since launching its ether treasury strategy in June 2025.

Sharplink, another major ether DAT, has also not been spared. The firm holds nearly 869,000 ETH and is looking at a paper loss of around $1.8 billion.

Solana treasury firms, while being less established, have also come under pressure as (SOL) fell below $65 on Friday, its lowest level since late 2023. Forward Industries, the largest publicly traded Solana treasury company, now faces approximately $1.2 billion in unrealized losses on its holdings of more than 6.8 million SOL.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Hyperliquid #HYPE #CryptoTreasury #DigitalAssets #Bitcoin #Ethereum #Solana #CryptoStocks #DATs #CryptoMarket

Every crypto investor dreams of buying before everyone else and selling near the top.

Yet history suggests that most investors end up doing the exact opposite.

They buy when prices are already soaring, when optimism dominates headlines, and when social media is flooded with stories of overnight success. Then, when fear enters the market and prices begin to collapse, they panic and sell—often at precisely the wrong moment.

It is a cycle as old as the crypto market itself.

Some investors call it market psychology.

Others call it manipulation.

And many simply call it the dark side of crypto.

A Market Driven by Emotion

Unlike traditional assets, cryptocurrencies are highly influenced by sentiment. Prices can rise or fall dramatically based on narratives, expectations, and investor emotions.

During bull markets, confidence spreads rapidly.

Every new high creates even more optimism. Analysts raise price targets. Influencers predict unimaginable valuations. Investors who were previously skeptical suddenly become believers.

The atmosphere becomes intoxicating.

People begin to feel that prices can only move in one direction.

Up.

This is often the moment when the greatest risks are quietly building beneath the surface.

Markets rarely move in a straight line forever.

Eventually, negative news emerges. It may be economic uncertainty, regulatory concerns, geopolitical tensions, or simply a shift in investor sentiment.

Whatever the trigger, the result is often the same.

Fear enters the market.

The Beginning of the Panic

When prices begin to decline, most investors remain calm.

Initially, the drop is viewed as a healthy correction.

Then prices continue falling.

Five percent becomes ten.

Ten becomes twenty.

Soon investors who were celebrating gains just weeks earlier find themselves watching their portfolios shrink day after day.

Confidence begins to crack.

Questions replace certainty.

Doubt replaces conviction.

As fear spreads, market participants search for explanations.

Why is the market falling?

Who is selling?

How much lower can it go?

The deeper the decline becomes, the more desperate investors become for answers.

Unfortunately, fear often produces emotional decisions instead of rational ones.

The Story Many Crypto Investors Believe

Throughout every major crypto downturn, a familiar theory reappears.

It is the belief that large institutions, hedge funds, whales, and sophisticated investors benefit from periods of extreme fear.

According to this narrative, major market participants understand something that retail investors frequently overlook: fear creates opportunities.

When retail traders panic, they sell.

When leveraged traders are liquidated, they sell.

When confidence disappears, they sell.

This flood of selling pressure drives prices even lower.

For long-term investors with significant capital, however, lower prices may represent attractive opportunities to accumulate assets.

Whether one views this as strategic investing or simply the natural behavior of large market participants, the result often appears remarkably similar.

Assets move from fearful hands into patient hands.

Why Fear Is So Powerful

Fear is one of the strongest forces in financial markets.

Human beings are naturally wired to avoid pain.

Watching an investment lose value creates emotional discomfort. The larger the losses become, the stronger the desire to escape.

This emotional response can override logic.

Investors who once believed strongly in a project’s future suddenly focus only on short-term price declines.

Long-term plans disappear.

Risk management disappears.

Patience disappears.

All that remains is the urgent desire to stop the pain.

At that moment, selling feels safe.

Ironically, history has often shown that what feels safest during periods of panic is not always the best financial decision.

The Transfer of Wealth

There is a saying frequently repeated on Wall Street:

“Markets transfer wealth from the impatient to the patient.”

The crypto market may be one of the clearest examples of this principle.

Every major cycle has produced countless stories of investors who sold during periods of maximum fear, only to watch prices recover months later.

Meanwhile, investors with stronger conviction and longer investment horizons continued accumulating assets while pessimism dominated the market.

Over time, these differences in behavior create dramatically different outcomes.

The market rewards discipline more often than emotion.

The Recovery Nobody Believes

One of the most fascinating aspects of every market cycle is the recovery phase.

When prices first begin rising after a major decline, few investors trust the move.

Most remain convinced that another crash is coming.

Many wait for lower prices that never arrive.

Others stay on the sidelines because recent losses remain fresh in their minds.

Yet the recovery continues.

Slowly at first.

Then steadily.

Then rapidly.

Eventually the same investors who sold during panic begin buying again at significantly higher prices.

The cycle has completed itself.

Fear has transformed into optimism once more.

The Real Darkness of Crypto

Many people believe the darkness of the crypto market lies in institutional power, market volatility, or the actions of large investors.

But perhaps the true darkness lies somewhere else.

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing investors is not what institutions are doing.

It is understanding their own emotions.

The crypto market exposes human psychology in its purest form.

It reveals greed during periods of euphoria.

It reveals fear during periods of panic.

It reveals impatience when prices move against expectations.

And it rewards those who can remain disciplined while others lose control.

Whether institutions actively create opportunities or simply take advantage of them, one reality remains clear.

Fear changes behavior.

Panic changes behavior.

And markets have a long history of rewarding those who remain calm when everyone else is overwhelmed by emotion.

That is why every major crash creates both losers and winners.

Not because everyone sees different charts.

But because everyone responds differently to the same fear.

And in the world of cryptocurrency, fear may be the most valuable asset of all

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Bitcoin #Crypto #MarketPsychology #FearAndGreed #CryptoMarket #HODL #InvestorMindset #BearMarket #BullMarket #CryptoInvesting

Defunct crypto exchange Mt. Gox moved a combined $739 million worth of bitcoin (BTC) to two addresses early Tuesday, according to Arkham Intelligence data.

Mt. Gox transferred 10,306 BTC, worth roughly $730.8 million, from its cold wallets to the unmarked address “14FE…c9eq” at around 4:47 a.m. UTC on Tuesday. It also moved 116.3 BTC to its hot wallet at the same time, Arkham data shows.

The Arkham page currently marks the transferred bitcoin as “unspent,” and it remains unclear whether the funds would be used for future creditor repayments. Large bitcoin movements in the past have often preceded distributions to creditors.

Tuesday’s transactions marked the entity’s first bitcoin movement since late March, when it shifted a relatively small amount of bitcoin between its wallets.

Mt. Gox currently holds 34,504 BTC, valued at roughly $2.43 billion, across its wallets, per Arkham data.

The Tokyo-based exchange began repaying creditors in July 2024 through partner exchanges including Kraken and Bitstamp. However, the exchange’s rehabilitation trustee last year extended the repayment deadline to October 2026, marking the third postponement since the original Oct. 31, 2023 deadline.

Mt. Gox was once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, handling around 70% of global bitcoin trades in 2013. It collapsed after losing around 850,000 BTC in a 2014 hack, leading the company to file for bankruptcy protection.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#MtGox #Bitcoin #BTC #Arkham #Crypto #Blockchain #CryptoNews #BitcoinNews #Kraken #Bitstamp

Coinbase has launched direct rails for Indian rupees (INR) for users in India, as the global crypto exchange continues expanding in Asia.

In a statement shared with The Block on Monday, the exchange said Indian users can now deposit and withdraw rupees directly from their bank accounts through the Immediate Payment Service, without needing to rely on peer-to-peer rails or intermediaries.

The Nasdaq-listed company also said it has established INR order books to provide dedicated liquidity for users in the country.

In addition to spot trading, Coinbase offers perpetual futures contracts covering major crypto assets for Indian customers, per the statement. The exchange also provides professional tools through Coinbase Advanced for clients seeking more advanced support, including institutional-grade APIs and WebSocket order book streaming.

The INR rail launch follows Coinbase’s successful registration with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU-IND), a government agency responsible for monitoring suspicious financial transactions, combating money laundering, and overseeing crypto compliance.

“India has long been one of the most important markets in crypto, in terms of developer talent, trading activity, and the broader adoption of blockchain technology,” John O’Loghlen, head of APAC at Coinbase, said in the statement. “We’re registered with FIU-IND and here for the long term.”

Indian presence

Coinbase has long sought to expand in India. In December 2025, it reportedly reopened its app and resumed onboarding users in the country after more than two years, returning to a market it had previously exited due to regulatory hurdles.

The company has also invested in CoinDCX, a major crypto exchange in the country, and said it has invested over $1 million in the local builder community through Base, the Ethereum Layer 2 network incubated by Coinbase.

“More than 4,000 builders in India have built on Base, with around 150 projects growing into startups,” said Coinbase.

India continues to see vibrant crypto activity. It ranked first in global crypto adoption for the third consecutive year, ahead of the U.S., Pakistan, the Philippines and Brazil, according to an October report from TRM Labs.

Coinbase’s Nasdaq-listed shares closed up 3.72% at $189.03 on Friday, though the stock remains down 30.7% over the past six months.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Coinbase #India #INR #Crypto #Bitcoin #Blockchain #Web3 #Perpetuals #DigitalAssets #CryptoNews

The United States has seized approximately $1 billion in Iran’s cryptocurrency assets, nearly double the government’s previous estimate.

Speaking on Friday at the 2026 Reagan National Economic Forum, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. believes Iran had been stealing about $400 to $500 million a month through sanctions evasion. “This is money that’s been stolen from the Iranian people,” Bessent said.

“I believe that we have seized about a billion dollars of their crypto,” Bessent told Fox News’ Larry Kudlow. “Just outright grabbed the wallets. Some of them may be typing in right now and might not realize that their wallet has been grabbed.”

On April 29, Bessent said the U.S. had seized “nearly $500 million” in Iranian crypto assets.

“We are freezing bank accounts everywhere. More importantly, we are making people less willing to deal with the regime,” Bessent said at the time.

In August 2025, Bessent said the U.S. government would not be buying bitcoin for its strategic reserve but would continue to use confiscated assets to build it up. He reaffirmed that front this past January.

“The policy of this government is to add seized bitcoin to our digital asset reserve after the damages are done,” Bessent said earlier this year. “So the bitcoin reserve, our view, was first you have to stop selling, which we have done, and then we can add the assets and asset forfeitures.”

The U.S. government holds approximately 328,372 BTC, according to Arkham, making it the largest known state holder of Bitcoin in the world. At current prices, that’s worth just over $24 billion.

The price of bitcoin (BTC) is trading around $73,500, according

http://www.scamers.net

#Crypto #Bitcoin #Iran #USTreasury #ScottBessent #Sanctions #Blockchain #BTC #DigitalAssets #CryptoNews

President Donald Trump is publicly backing his Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig in his push to have authority over prediction markets, calling the issue “critically important.”

On Tuesday, in a post on Truth Social, Trump voiced support for Selig, who he tapped to lead and is the sole leader at the derivatives regulator.

“It is critically important that the CFTC’s exclusive authority over Prediction Markets is maintained, and that they will thrive,” Trump said in the post.

Over the past year, Selig has argued that the agency has “exclusive jurisdiction” over the burgeoning prediction markets, suing five states in the process, including Wisconsin, Illinois, Arizona, Connecticut, and New York. Selig has also embarked on rulemaking and has said that the agency has a broad statute, despite pushback from states that say platforms are violating local gaming and gambling laws, particularly related to sports-related bets.

Prediction markets, like Polymarket and Kalshi, have surged in popularity in recent years, particularly after the 2024 U.S. presidential election cycle.

Trump also used the post to underscore his support for the cryptocurrency industry, describing it as a “major industry.”

“Other Countries are after this new form of Financial Market, and we want to remain at the top,” he said. “Likewise, and even more importantly, where we are currently the Crypto (Bitcoin, etc.) Capital of the World, other Countries are trying diligently to replace us in that capacity, but we won’t let that happen.”

A New York Times investigative report over the weekend found that career officials who raised concerns about Polymarket, Crypto.com, and other firms that had business ties to the Trump family were pushed out of the agency.

In response to the report, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., wrote on X that “the CFTC has become a craven tool of prediction markets & shady crypto firms—ignoring national security risks while bullying state regulators & retaliating against staff attempting to enforce the law.”

Ref: http://www.scamers.net

#Trump #CFTC #PredictionMarkets #Polymarket #Kalshi #Crypto #Bitcoin #Blockchain #Web3 #CryptoNews

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a lengthy post on X on Sunday addressing months of turbulence at the Ethereum Foundation (EF), defending the nonprofit’s ongoing restructuring and outlining what he sees as its long-term technical direction.

Buterin framed the post as his personal perspective rather than an official statement from the board, noting that interim co-Executive Director Bastian Aue, who took over from Tomasz Stanczak earlier this year, is the one executing much of the transition. The board “is in the process of expanding,” Buterin said, and his own influence within the organization will continue to shrink, “which is honestly what I want.”

The post lands amid a wave of high-profile departures from the EF that has reignited debate over the foundation’s direction. At least eight senior EF contributors have left or announced plans to leave in 2026, including five in May, while Stanczak separately stepped down as co-executive director and Alex Stokes, another Protocol Cluster co-lead, is on sabbatical.

Former EF developer Dankrad Feist, who left his full-time role at the foundation for Tempo last year, this week proposed raising $1 billion for a separate Ethereum advocacy organization “more economically aligned” with ETH the asset.

Buterin acknowledged he had been “regularly” hearing from community members who have felt the foundation’s actions don’t match the rhetoric of decentralization, privacy, and “sanctuary technology” that he and the foundation have publicly championed. That criticism, he implied, is the kind that makes him “feel pain.”

In response, Buterin reiterated that the EF should be understood as “one node, with a defined purpose, alongside other nodes” rather than the center of Ethereum. He noted the foundation holds roughly 0.16% of all ETH, less than many individual holders and well below the 10% to 50% he said is common at other blockchain foundations, and was originally chartered to complete the work outlined in Ethereum’s pre-launch documents, a task he said was finished in 2022.

Ethereum’s sale materials allocated roughly 6 million ETH to the Ethereum Foundation’s long-term endowment, equal to about 10% of the roughly 60 million ETH sold in the 2014 crowdsale and about 8.3% of Ethereum’s roughly 72 million ETH genesis supply.

“The EF is choosing to use its remaining resources to pursue longevity over breadth (yes, this means we sell less ETH),” Buterin wrote, arguing the foundation will now focus only on activities critical to Ethereum’s resilience that “would not happen otherwise.” That will mean some respected contributors and projects sitting outside the EF, he added, which is “in fact necessary if we want important tasks to be able to attract outside capital.”

The framing echoes the EF’s March 13 mandate, which codified the CROPS principles and described the foundation as “one of many stewards” of the network. That document later drew its own backlash over a reported internal loyalty pledge and Milady-inspired cultural signaling.

On the technical side, Buterin laid out three priorities he believes should define Ethereum’s next phase. The first is “provably bug-free Ethereum” via AI-assisted formal verification, a goal he said was widely considered impossible until roughly six months ago. The second is “available chain consensus,” which he said Ethereum already has and, with lean consensus, would continue to be the only chain offering both traditional BFT-style safety under asynchrony and Bitcoin-style PoW safety against 49% attackers under synchrony. The third is intermediary minimization, citing ongoing work on FOCIL, EIP-8141, EIP-7701, and the EF’s Kohaku wallet framework.

He explicitly rejected the argument that Ethereum should compete on speed alone, though he noted that his stated goals are compatible with high TPS. “Being as fast and as scalable as possible, and only a small epsilon more decentralized than the others, is a route to mediocrity, and if we try it we will lose,” Buterin wrote.

“… It is not OK for ethereum to rely on social consensus and hard forks to rescue ethereum from 34% of nodes going offline,” Buterin wrote. “It’s OK for chains like hyperledger, bnb, solana, tempo, etc. It’s not OK for bitcoin or ethereum or eg. zcash.”

The post also touched on ETH the asset, which Buterin called Ethereum’s “most high-value ‘product,’ financially speaking.” He said the properties he is pushing for are good for ETH, but acknowledged that some “necessary” work to support ETH falls outside the EF’s scope and will require “other heroes (some of whom hold more ETH than the EF does)” to step in. He said the EF has been thinking about how to relate to and seed such organizations.

Buterin closed by saying the EF will be “a smaller ship than in previous years, a more opinionated one, in some cases more opinionated in ways that might be difficult to comprehend, but a longer-lasting one.” The foundation’s new long-term form, he said, should stabilize over the next few months.

ETH was trading at roughly $2,100 as of 3:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, up about 2% over the past 24 hours, according to The Block’s Ethereum Price page.

Ref: http://www.scamers.net

#Ethereum #ETH #Vitalik #EthereumFoundation #Crypto #Blockchain #Web3 #DeFi #ETHNews #CryptoNews

The Securities and Exchange Commission has delayed its plan for an anticipated exemption that would clarify the agency’s stance on tokenized assets, following concerns over third-party issuers, Bloomberg Law reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The SEC’s staff was slated to release language for an innovation exemption, and a draft of the plan had been created and reviewed, according to the people familiar who spoke with Bloomberg Law.

Over the past few days, the SEC staff has held discussions with stock exchange officials and market participants and is weighing their feedback. A particular sticking point has been “so-called third-party tokens, which would be issued without the backing or consent of the public companies involved,” Bloomberg reported.

A concern among several former regulators is guaranteeing that tokenized assets carry the same rights as regulated securities, such as dividends and voting rights. Former regulators have said it is unclear how firms can fulfill those obligations since tokens can change hands through blockchain networks, Bloomberg reported.

Several crypto-native firms like Securitize, Ondo and Superstate have developed tokenization infrastructure with integrated SEC-registered transfer agent functions that maintain official shareholder records.

The SEC declined a request for comment from The Block.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins has said the agency will soon debut its proposed innovation exemption that could function as a regulatory sandbox for onchain equities. Atkins had previously set a deadline for the end of last year to put that exemption in place.

Decisions have not been made to change the initial draft proposal, according to Bloomberg.

The SEC has also greenlit several entities to move forward with tokenized securities, including the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, which was authorized to tokenize certain highly liquid assets on pre-approved blockchains under a three-year authorization period. The New York Stock Exchange is also developing a tokenized equities platform, which could allow for 24/7 trading.

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce has taken a measured stance to tokenized assets, asserting that those assets are still securities and need to follow existing securities law.

On Thursday, in a post on X, Peirce said she had expected the exemption to be more limited and not apply to synthetic securities, or assets that mimic the performance of securities without offering direct ownership.

“Keep in mind: I’ve always expected that it’d be limited in scope & would facilitate trading only of digital representations of the same underlying equity security that an investor could purchase in the secondary market today, not synthetics,” she said.

“Commissioner Peirce clarified again today that the innovation exemption is focused on issuer-led tokens, and tokenized entitlements from SEC-registered firms, which are the approaches best equipped to convey all the same rights and obligations as ‘normal’ securities. Other approaches, such as permissionless synthetics, have received tremendous scrutiny,” Robert Leshner, founder of Superstate

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#SEC #Tokenization #Crypto #Blockchain #RWA #Finance #Web3 #Securities #Investing #DigitalAssets

Polymarket announced on Tuesday that it is launching a new category of prediction markets tied to private company milestones, including IPO timing, valuations, earnings, and secondary market activity.

The crypto-native prediction market platform said the new offerings will exclusively source resolution data from Nasdaq Private Market via a new partnership between the two.

“Prediction markets are one of the most powerful tools we have for democratizing access to financial information and opportunity,” Shayne Coplan said in a statement. “Today’s launch brings that power to one of the last frontiers of financial markets that retail participants have never been able to access.”

The launch comes as crypto platforms are expanding and experimenting with their own products tied to private company valuations and IPO expectations.

Earlier this month, the Hyperliquid-based TradeXYZ platform rolled out pre-IPO perpetual futures tied to companies like Cerebras and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Its goal is to turn private market sentiment into tradable onchain markets.

However, Polymarket’s new offerings focus more on event contracts tied to milestones and outcomes rather than equity ownership.

Early markets seen on the ‘New’ tab on Polymarket include contracts tied to companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, Databricks, and Kraken reaching specific valuation thresholds by certain dates.

Polymarket contracts tied to company valuations. Source: Polymarket
The company said it sees these markets as serving as a new real-time signal for institutional investors tracking sentiment and pricing trends.

“Polymarket has built the platform that can open access to a broader audience,” Tom Callahan said in a statement. “We are proud to provide the data that ensures every market resolves accurately.”

This will also help Polymarket continue to expand the number of contracts available on its platform. New market launches on Polymarket have climbed to consecutive monthly highs over the entire past year, according to The Block’s prediction market data. So far in 2026, the platform has recorded just shy of $39 billion in the United States alone.

#Polymarket #OpenAI #SpaceX #IPO #PredictionMarket #Crypto #Blockchain #Web3 #Investing #AI

A pair of SEC filings on Friday from VanEck and Grayscale signaled that the long-running race to launch the first U.S. spot BNB ETF may be entering its final stretch, while Canary Capital advances its staking Tron ETF proposal.

VanEck filed Amendment No. 5 to its Form S-1 for the VanEck BNB ETF, which is set to list on Nasdaq under the ticker VBNB. The asset manager has been refiling the document at a steady cadence since the original May 2025 submission, which has since been amended five times.

Grayscale, the second issuer to enter the BNB ETF race, filed Amendment No. 2 to its own registration statement on the same day. If approved, the Grayscale BNB ETF would trade on Nasdaq under the ticker GBNB. The firm filed its initial S-1 in January, followed by a first amendment in April.

Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst James Seyffart said on X that the parallel activity suggested both issuers are responding to SEC feedback and could be aiming for a near-term launch. Seyffart speculated that BNB could be the next crypto asset to clear the SEC’s review process for a spot ETF in the U.S.

Both filings continue to exclude staking at launch, a feature VanEck stripped from its proposal last November amid lingering U.S. regulatory uncertainty around treating staking yield as a security, though the proposals contain conditional staking language. The two trusts would each hold BNB directly and list under Nasdaq Rule 5711(d) for Commodity-Based Trust Shares. VanEck would price against the MarketVector BNB Index.

BNB is trading at about $657.23 as of publication time, down 2.4% in the past 24 hours, per The Block’s BNB Price page. The token is currently the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

Canary Capital eyes staked TRX ETF

The dual filings come as Canary Capital pushes its own altcoin product forward.

The Nashville-based asset manager filed Amendment No. 1 to its Canary Staked TRX ETF S-1 on Friday. Where the BNB filers have deferred staking, Canary’s amendment formalized the feature as a “secondary investment objective” of the trust, with the sponsor administering a staking program that earns additional TRX through participation in Tron’s proof-of-stake validation process.

The amendment also filled in service provider details that had been blank in the original April 2025 prospectus. U.S. Bancorp Fund Services would serve as transfer agent and administrator, U.S. Bank as cash custodian, and BitGo as the TRX custodian. CSC Delaware Trust Company remains the Trustee, and Canary Capital Group LLC remains the Sponsor. The exchange, ticker, and management fee remain undisclosed.

Canary first filed an S-1 last April for the Canary Staked TRX ETF. Tron’s native TRX is trading at about $0.35, up 0.61% on the day, per The Block’s Tron Price page.

The crypto ETF queue beyond BNB and TRX continues to expand. 21Shares’ Hyperliquid ETF launched earlier this week, initially beating rivals from Bitwise and Grayscale to market, though Bitwise’s BHYP began trading on Friday.

Ref: https://animalverse.social/community/?activity_search=%23BNB

#BNB #ETF #Crypto #VanEck #Grayscale #Binance #Altcoins #SEC #Blockchain #Investing

Crypto and decentralized finance security researchers are warning that artificial intelligence is tipping the scales in favor of hackers over defenders after a particularly rough stretch of DeFi exploits this year.

“In April, just last month, there were only three days without hacks,” CertiK co-founder and CEO Ronghui Gu said during an interview with The Block’s Gareth Jenkinson at the Consensus Miami conference. “More than $690 million got hacked last month in DeFi protocols.”

If the February 2025 Bybit exploit is excluded, Gu said April marked the highest monthly financial loss from DeFi hacks since March 2022.

Gu attributed much of the recent surge to AI tools that are making it easier for attackers to discover vulnerabilities and replicate attacks across protocols. He called this “an unfair game” because attackers can pour computing resources into probing a single protocol for weaknesses while security firms are forced to spread resources across dozens of clients.

Still, he argued that no system can ever be universally bug-free, pointing to what he called the “halting problem,” a computer science limitation on how programs will behave in every scenario.

“Even if you run an AI model for 30 hours and it doesn’t find a vulnerability, it can’t prove that your code is bug-free,” Gu said. “The only known way is through formal verification.”

DeFi attack spree

The April incidents Gu alluded to include attacks on Drift Protocol and Kelp DAO that together accounted for nearly $600 million in losses. They also gave security experts a closer look at how attackers are shifting their strategies.

Gu said that because smart contract auditing standards have improved significantly over the years, hackers are now going after security and supply-chain vulnerabilities instead of code flaws.

“Smart contracts become safer, so hackers look for supply chain, operational security, and so on,” Gu said. “The industry and most projects right now don’t pay enough attention to this.”

Drift Protocol, which suffered an exploit estimated at around $280 million in April, later linked the breach to an admin takeover tied to suspected North Korean attackers.

Kelp DAO’s $292 million exploit similarly stemmed from infrastructure and governance failures. Gu pointed to reporting that attackers compromised a LayerZero validator setup before routing stolen assets through Aave. That attack triggered a controversial freeze of roughly $72 million in assets by Arbitrum that then became tied up in legal disputes after plaintiffs from separate North Korean terrorism judgments sought to claim the funds as restitution.

Gu said these episodes illustrate just how complex incident responses have become in crypto as protocols, blockchain, and exchanges have to race against bad actors to coordinate freezes and recoveries.

“The industry needs to work together,” Gu said. “How to react as fast as possible to reduce the loss. How the community can work together to freeze tokens.”

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#DeFi #AI #Crypto #Hack #Cybersecurity #Blockchain #Web3 #SmartContract #CertiK #Security

The Senate voted to confirm President Donald Trump’s pick for Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, ushering in a crypto-friendly leader to the central bank.

On Wednesday, the Senate voted 54-45 for Warsh’s nomination, who will serve a term of four years. Current Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s term ends on Friday, but he reportedly has said he will remain on the Fed’s board until 2028.

On Tuesday, the Senate voted 51-45 to confirm Warsh as a member of the Fed’s Board of Governors for a 14-year term.

Warsh previously served on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011 under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and also worked as a banker at Morgan Stanley. Warsh had spoken a few times about crypto, calling bitcoin an “important asset that can help inform policymakers.”

Financial disclosures released during the nomination process revealed that Warsh holds investments tied to several crypto companies and projects, including decentralized derivatives exchange dYdX, decentralized exchange protocol Lighter, venture capital firm Polychain Capital, NFT company Dapper Labs, as well as direct exposure to native tokens for Solana and Optimism, among other holdings.

During an initial Senate Banking Committee hearing last month, Warsh faced extensive questioning about interest rates, an issue that became increasingly tense between Trump and Powell. Trump openly spoke out against Powell and tried to fire him and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook last year.

The Department of Justice had opened a criminal investigation against Powell, alleging false statements regarding a renovation of the central bank’s headquarters. Last month, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said the DOJ was dropping the investigation and was instead referring the matter to the central bank’s inspector general.

http://www.paykalken.com

#Fed #KevinWarsh #Bitcoin #Crypto #FederalReserve #Trump #BTC #Markets #Finance #Economy

Bitcoin (BTC) briefly surged to reclaim $82,000 on Sunday following a weekend rally, while Sui saw a notable price increase driven by institutional developments.

According to The Block’s crypto price page, bitcoin rose 1.4% to $81,700 as of 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, ET. Earlier in the day, the cryptocurrency rose above $82,200, the highest level since May 6.

“Bitcoin hits $82,000 as institutional inflows accelerate, macro conditions improve, and persistent spot ETF demand continues to tighten supply,” said Zeus Research Analyst Dominick John. “Meanwhile, progress on the Clarity Act is boosting long-term sentiment.”

Last week, spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds reported $622.7 million in weekly net inflows, continuing their streak to six consecutive weeks of total inflows, according to SoSoValue data. During the six weeks, the ETFs have attracted a net inflow of over $3.4 billion.

Moreover, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee announced earlier that it will hold a markup hearing for the Clarity Act on May 14, advancing the much-anticipated bill that has been stuck in a legislative bottleneck for months.

Easing geopolitical tensions

Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East have also eased, though uncertainty surrounding the U.S.-Iran conflict persists.

“The current macro/geopolitical setup for crypto is cautiously supportive overall — easing Middle East tensions have helped reduce immediate risk-off spikes in oil and inflation fears, while broader liquidity and equity resilience provide a decent backdrop, though Fed policy uncertainty and sticky inflation remain watchpoints,” Andri Fauzan Adziima, Research Lead at Bitrue Research Institute, told The Block.

The U.S. and Iran have been discussing a potential extension to the ongoing ceasefire and possible end of war, though negotiations have so far remained deadlocked. On Sunday, President Donald Trump rejected the latest proposal from Iran, calling it “totally unacceptable.”

However, analysts said the current market momentum remains strong enough to drive the bitcoin price higher.

“The momentum does appear strong enough to challenge a sustained hold above the $80,000-$82,000 zone in the near term, backed by institutional flows and technical breaks, but it will need continued buying to clear resistance cleanly — pullbacks to $78,000-$80,000 support remain a healthy risk,” Adziima said.

SUI breakout

Meanwhile, Sui (SUI) emerged as the clear outperformer among altcoins today, surging 25% in the past 24 hours to $1.34, according to The Block’s price data.

The cryptocurrency’s sharp rally was driven by multiple events surrounding the Layer 1 blockchain, according to analysts.

Nasdaq-listed SUI Group Holdings (SUIG) recently announced that it is staking “substantially all of” the company’s 108.7 million SUI holdings. This removed a notable chunk of supply from the market, analysts noted.

Earlier in the week, Nigeria-based fintech firm Paga also announced a partnership with Sui blockchain to launch tokenized assets for cross-border payments. Bitrue’s Adziima added that CME Group’s recent launch of Sui crypto futures attracted regulated interest from institutions.

Additionally, Sui-based DeepBook launched its Predict feature on May 5, enabling onchain prediction markets, while Mysten Labs Co-founder and CPO Adeniyi Abiodun announced that the blockchain will launch confidential transactions later this year.

“With confidential transactions and more ecosystem milestones ahead, Sui is quickly emerging as one of the strongest Layer-1 growth stories this cycle,” Zeus Analyst John said.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Bitcoin #BTC #SUI #Crypto #Bullish #ETF #Altcoins #Trading #Blockchain #Markets

Coinbase Australia has launched support for self-directed retirement investing, offering trustees another avenue to diversify portfolios.

In a Monday blog post, Coinbase APAC Managing Director John O’Loghlen and executive Pete Patanapanlert said the company’s offering for self-managed super funds (SMSFs) includes downloadable data aligned with local accounting standards and a streamlined entity verification process tailored to domestic fund structures.

“With growing regulatory clarity in Australia and institutional adoption of digital assets, we see SMSFs as a core area of potential growth in Australia,” said O’Loghlen. “By combining security, simplicity, and global best practices, we’re helping Australians include crypto in their retirement strategy with total confidence.”

SMSFs are private retirement funds regulated by the Australian Taxation Office that give individuals direct control over their superannuation investments. Such funds are allowed to invest in a wide range of assets, including shares, property, and cryptocurrencies.

According to official data, the country had at least 664,000 SMSFs at the end of 2025, collectively holding an estimated AU$1.06 trillion ($758.2 billion) in assets.

Coinbase’s (COIN) push into SMSFs came after it obtained an Australian Financial Services License last month. The crypto exchange said at the time that it plans to offer crypto and equity perpetuals to Australian investors, followed by futures and options.

OKX, another global crypto exchange, has also expanded its presence in Australia and launched similar support for SMSFs last year. According to its FAQ page, eligible users can open dedicated crypto trading accounts for SMSFs and download transaction data for auditing purposes.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has taken a more proactive step in expanding crypto’s role in retirement systems. Last August, President Donald Trump signed an executive order permitting 401(k) plans to include crypto, and Indiana recently passed legislation allowing crypto allocations within certain state retirement plans.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Coinbase #Crypto #Retirement #Investing #SMSF #Finance #Australia #Web3 #Adoption #Wealth

Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, has completed its acquisition of Bitnomial, enabling it to offer crypto derivatives in the U.S.

With the deal closed, Payward now holds a full suite of U.S. derivatives licenses, including a Futures Commission Merchant, a Designated Contract Market, and a Derivatives Clearing Organization, according to a Friday company statement.

“This is the foundation that enables Payward to bring CFTC-regulated spot margin, perpetuals and options to eligible U.S. clients on Kraken and NinjaTrader,” the company said.

Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Payward and Kraken, said that the company will start with rolling out spot margin services on Kraken, with perpetuals and options to follow. “That stack is what makes the next set of products possible,” Sethi added.

Bitnomial is a Chicago-based crypto-native exchange that holds three licenses issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to run a full-stack domestic digital asset derivatives business. The platform has often been among the first in the country to list new assets, such as Aptos futures.

As part of the acquisition, Payward plans to expand Bitnomial’s team as it builds out its U.S. derivatives business, according to the press release. Bitnomial will operate within Payward while retaining its existing licenses, regulatory framework and third-party businesses.

The company did not disclose the final terms of the deal. When it first announced the acquisition in April, Payward said it planned to acquire Bitnomial for up to $550 million in cash and stock, in a transaction that would value Payward’s equity at $20 billion.

Derivatives push

Payward said the acquisition also creates a new channel for its partners — including banks, brokerages and payment providers — to offer U.S. derivatives to their end clients.

Outside the U.S., Payward said it operates regulated derivatives businesses in the UK after acquiring a crypto futures platform in 2019. It also launched regulated EU derivatives offerings last year.

The Bitnomial acquisition follows Payward’s disclosure earlier this month of a $200 million investment from Deutsche Borse Group, which runs the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and provides clearing infrastructure across Europe.

Payward has been gearing up for a potential public listing, and confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in November.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Kraken #Crypto #Derivatives #Trading #US #CFTC #Exchange #Finance #Web3 #Markets

Bitcoin’s recent price gains appear to be a “speculative rally” rather than fundamental buying support, increasing the risk of a correction, according to onchain analytics firm CryptoQuant.

Bitcoin rose about 20% in April, from around $66,000 to as high as $79,000. However, this rally was driven mainly by growth in perpetual futures demand, while spot demand remained negative throughout the period, CryptoQuant said.

“Perpetual futures demand was the sole driver of bitcoin’s April price rally, while spot apparent demand contracted throughout, a configuration historically associated with unsustained price gains during bear markets,” CryptoQuant’s head of research, Julio Moreno, wrote in a report.

This divergence, with rising futures demand alongside contracting spot demand, is one of the clearest onchain signals that the rally is speculative rather than structural, Moreno said, noting that it suggests the price rise is driven by leverage rather than fresh bitcoin accumulation.

“Historically, such configurations lack the structural foundation required to sustain price gains and typically resolve via correction once futures positioning unwinds,” Moreno said.

Mirroring the pattern of the 2022 bear market?

CryptoQuant said the current demand pattern driven by perpetual futures is similar to what was seen at the start of the 2022 bear market, noting that while this does not guarantee the same outcome this time, the current structure carries “meaningful downside risk.”

The divergence suggests that the rally is “not sustainable” and that sustained price rallies during a bull market coincide with demand growth. “Without a reversal in apparent demand from negative to positive, rallies back toward the $79,000 local peak will lack the onchain support needed for a sustained breakout,” the firm said.

The CryptoQuant Bull Score Index also declined from 50 to 40 in April, returning to bearish territory below the neutral threshold, the firm said, noting that this confirms onchain fundamentals deteriorated after the recent speculative futures-driven price rally.

“The Bull Score of returning back to 40 indicates conditions are ‘getting bearish’ and places the market in the same range that historically preceded continued price weakness,” the firm concluded. The CryptoQuant Bull Score Index aggregates multiple onchain and market indicators into a 0–100 scale. A score above 50 indicates bullish conditions and below 50 indicates bearish conditions.

Bitcoin is currently trading at around $78,500, nearly flat over the past 24 hours

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Bitcoin #BTC #Crypto #Market #Trading #Futures #Leverage #Correction #Onchain #Risk

A global task force led by the FBI has arrested 276 suspects and disrupted nine scam centers used for crypto investment schemes, officials announced Wednesday.

The FBI, working with police in Dubai, Thailand, and China, targeted international fraud rings that operated so-called “pig butchering” schemes, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Dubai police arrested 275 individuals, with three charged in the Southern District of California on counts of wire fraud and money laundering. Thai authorities also arrested one suspect.

The investigation began last year after FBI agents in San Diego identified multiple suspects and entities allegedly running crypto scam compounds. According to the statement, the group recruited individuals to work for three companies — Ko Thet Company, Sanduo Group, and Giant Company — which the authorities said functioned as scam centers.

The schemes followed a typical “pig butchering” model, where scammers build trust with victims over time before convincing them to invest in fraudulent crypto opportunities.

Specifically, the suspects allegedly targeted victims in the U.S. and other countries by promoting fictitious crypto investment returns. Victims’ funds were funneled through fraudulent platforms and transferred to accounts held by the scammers, who then laundered the proceeds through additional crypto wallets, according to the statement.

Rampant cross-border fraud

The authorities said investigators have identified “millions of dollars” in losses linked to these cross-border crypto investment schemes.

“Fraudsters who target Americans from overseas cannot operate with impunity, no matter where in the world they reside,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “Scam center organizers and fraudsters who defraud Americans and others will face justice in American courts and in courts around the world.”

“These scammers thought they were safe half a world away,” said U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon for the Southern District of California. “But their world has changed. Global crime now faces global justice.”

Crypto-related fraud has been on the rise, with losses hitting a record $11.3 billion last year, accounting for more than half of the $20.9 billion in total internet crime losses tracked by the FBI, according to a report released earlier this month.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#FBI #CryptoScam #Fraud #PigButchering #Cybercrime #Blockchain #Security #Global #Law #Crypto