Bithumb accidentally sent customers 620,000 Bitcoin instead of 620,000 Korean won in February. The Bank of Korea wants lawmakers to make it so it doesn't happen again. South Korea’s central bank says crypto exchanges should have their own “circuit breakers” that halt trading to prevent a repeat of the market fallout after Bithumb mistakenly sent more than $40 billion in Bitcoin to its customers in February. The Bank of Korea said in a payments report on Monday that lawmakers should consider introducing mechanisms similar to the Korea Exchange’s trading curbs to suspend trading if crypto prices suddenly fluctuate. “Currently, the virtual asset industry lacks internal control mechanisms and faces lower regulatory intensity compared to established financial institutions,” the bank said. Read more
Almost everyone has a hard time paying their bills every month, said crypto YouTuber Michaël van de Poppe, on why retail may be absent this cycle. Financial institutions have “accelerated” their participation in crypto markets this year, while retail investors have pulled out, said Exodus CEO JP Richardson on Sunday. “This might be the first cycle in crypto history where institutions are in a bull market, and retail doesn’t even know it,” the crypto executive said. Richardson cited a few examples, such as the stablecoin market capitalization all-time high this year, Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin (BTC) ETF launch, Schwab starting a waitlist for spot Bitcoin trading, Franklin Templeton announcing a crypto division and Fannie Mae accepting Bitcoin-backed mortgages. Read more
Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT said Garrett Dutton’s 5.9 Bitcoin has already been sent to deposit addresses associated with KuCoin. Garrett Dutton, an American musician better known as “G. Love,” said he lost $420,000 worth of Bitcoin after installing a malicious app impersonating the self-custody crypto app Ledger Live from Apple’s App Store and entering his seed phrase. “I had a really tough day,” Dutton told his 67,500 followers in a post on X on Saturday, adding that he lost his 5.9 Bitcoin (BTC) stash “in an instant” after spending about 10 years accumulating the coins to secure his retirement. In a follow-up post, crypto sleuth ZachXBT said that Dutton’s Bitcoin has been sent to deposit addresses linked to the crypto exchange KuCoin across nine transactions. KuCoin replied to the post with a statement typically addressed to customers. Read more
Bitcoin mining is becoming more centralized while AI may move the opposite way, driven by edge computing and open-source models. Bitcoin mining runs the risk of becoming more centralized as time goes on, while artificial intelligence may be moving in the opposite direction, according to Galaxy Research head Alex Thorn. Thorn said that while Bitcoin mining began decentralized, with users mining Bitcoin on their personal computers, it has since become far more centralized, requiring ASIC miners or industrial-scale farms. “AI may follow the opposite path,” Thorn said, explaining that AI began in centralized clusters but could decentralize as open-source models close the gap. Read more