A retired fabricator was tricked into entering his seed phrase on a fake Coinbase site, losing a crypto portfolio worth $2 million. Retired artist Ed Suman lost over $2 million in cryptocurrency earlier this year after falling victim to a scam involving someone posing as a Coinbase support representative. Suman, 67, spent nearly two decades as a fabricator in the art world, helping build high-profile works such as Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog sculptures, according to a May 17 report by Bloomberg. After retiring, he turned to cryptocurrency investing, eventually accumulating 17.5 Bitcoin (BTC) and 225 Ether (ETH) — a portfolio that comprised most of his retirement savings. Read more
UK crypto firms will need to report customer transactions on their platforms from 2026 onward as part of an initiative to strengthen crypto tax reporting practices. United Kingdom crypto companies will need to collect and report data from every customer trade and transfer beginning Jan. 1, 2026 as part of a broader effort to improve crypto tax reporting, the UK government said. Everything from the user’s full name, home address and tax identification number will need to be collected and reported for every transaction, including the cryptocurrency used and the amount moved, the UK Revenue and Customs department said in a May 14 statement. Details of companies, trusts and charities transacting on crypto platforms will also need to be reported. Failure to comply or inaccurate reporting may incur penalties of up to 300 British pounds ($398.4) per user. The UK Revenue and Customs department said it would inform companies on how to comply with the incoming measures in due course. Read more
Hong Kong police have arrested 12 people tied to a $15 million crypto laundering operation, which was dismantled on the same day. Hong Kong police arrested 12 people involved in a cross-border money laundering scheme that relied on crypto and over 500 stooge bank accounts to launder HK$118 million ($15 million), local news outlets reported. The syndicate was dismantled on May 15, resulting in the arrest of nine men and three women in mainland China and Hong Kong. The suspects allegedly recruited others to open bank accounts to receive proceeds from fraud cases, which were then converted into crypto at crypto exchange shops to launder the illicit funds, Hong Kong Commercial Daily reported on May 17. Read more
The blockchain sector has matured and now requires physical communication infrastructure, according to DoubleZero co-founder Austin Federa. Public internet infrastructure is the critical speed and performance constraint on high-throughput blockchain networks, according to Austin Federa, co-founder and CEO of DoubleZero, a project developing high-speed fiber optic communication rails for blockchains. "The downside of the public internet is it was never built for high-performance systems. It was always built for this sort of relationship of one big server talking to one little server," Federa told Cointelegraph in an interview at Consensus 2025. The executive explained: The executive added that the constraint posed by public internet infrastructure is now the limiting factor in blockchain performance and not compute power or software development. Read more
Arthur Hayes predicts Bitcoin could reach $1 million by 2028, an analyst says altcoins “powerful rally” looms: Hodler’s Digest Bitcoin has two strong tailwinds that will help propel it to seven digits in a few years, according to former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes. For Hayes, shifting capital controls worldwide and US Treasury devaluation means that Bitcoin will become the go-to safety net for investors everywhere. He summarized: Read more
Rising debt and no concrete plans to reduce government spending are the primary drivers behind the reduced credit assessment for the US. Moody's credit rating agency downgraded the credit rating of the United States government from Aaa to Aa1, citing the rising national debt as the primary driver behind the reduction in creditworthiness. According to the May 16 announcement from the rating agency, US lawmakers have failed to stem annual deficits or reduce spending over the years, leading to a growing national debt. The rating agency wrote: The credit downgrade is only one degree out of the 21-notch rating scale used by the company to assess the credit health of an entity. Read more
Unsustainable costs and opaque pricing have created a major pain point for large financial institutions, Michael James told Cointelegraph. Michael James, the head of institutional business development at Douro Labs — the company that developed the Pyth high-speed blockchain oracle network — told Cointelegraph that oracle networks like Pyth are disrupting the $50 billion financial data industry that provides critical price information to exchanges, brokerages, trading firms, and other institutional entities. In an interview at Consensus 2025, the executive said that Pyth Network's data pull model sets it apart from traditional pricing oracles, allowing customers to pay for data on demand, reducing costs for institutions reliant on real-time market data. According to the executive, the financial data industry is currently monopolized by around eight major providers that continually raise prices on clients arbitrarily. James added: Read more