An MEV bot known as “Yoink” front-ran an attacker attempting to exploit a custom Safe module, capturing the stolen rsETH before Kelp temporarily froze the receiving address. An attacker exploited a custom module connected to an Ethereum Safe wallet in an attempt to extract roughly $7.7 million in rsETH, only to have the funds intercepted by an MEV bot. According to blockchain security firm Blockaid, the attacker used a public keeper multicall to direct a custom Uniswap v4 liquidity module into an attacker-created hooked pool, where aEthrsETH was unwrapped into rsETH. Blockaid identified the affected wallet as a Safe belonging to an unidentified user and said about $7.73 million in rsETH had been lost at the time of its initial report.
Tether’s USDT stablecoin was part of a failed oil trade that reportedly cost a Polish energy giant $230 million in late 2023. The world’s largest stablecoin by market cap, Tether’s USDt, was reportedly used in a failed Venezuelan oil trade that cost Poland’s largest energy giant $230 million in late 2023, according to the Financial Times. That was after the Caracas-based state oil company, PDVSA, began demanding partial payments in USDT as a workaround to US financial sanctions. The $230 million was an advance payment paid largely in Tether USDt (USDT) in an oil trade orchestrated by Samer Awad, a former executive at Orlen Trading Switzerland (OTS), a trading subsidiary of Poland’s state-controlled energy giant, Orlen, to acquire 6 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil in November 2023 f…
The 114-page bill would change the tax treatment of crypto fees, stablecoins and lending while leaving existing reward-tax timing unchanged. The US House Ways and Means Committee will consider a 114-page crypto tax package on Wednesday that leaves out a provision that would have allowed miners and stakers to defer taxation of rewards until the tokens are sold. The Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, H.R. 10357, was published alongside the committee’s markup notice on Monday. The package does not include the reward-timing provision contained in Representative Mike Carey’s Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act, introduced in June. The provision would have allowed taxpayers to choose between recognizing newly created tokens as income when received or treating them similarly to self-created prop…
Ethereum and Base are pursuing different account abstraction designs after talks failed, according to Ethlabs researcher Derek Chiang. Ethereum and Base are set to implement different account abstraction standards after efforts to agree on a shared account abstraction standard broke down last week. Interoperability standards became secondary to each chain’s core goals, leading both to go their separate ways and “putting the burden on wallets,” Derek Chiang, founding member and researcher at Ethlabs, as well as a co-author of Ethereum’s EIP-8141 proposal, said in a Monday X post. The divergence could require wallet developers to support separate transaction formats to provide a consistent experience across networks. Account abstraction allows programmable rules for authorizing transactions…
Bitcoin short-term holders approached a full month in partial profit as analysis saw improving odds of an enduring bullish BTC price reversal. Bitcoin (BTC) speculators have held onto profits for nearly a month in what new analysis sees as a key sign of market strength. Key points:
Tether froze $61.19 million across 10 Tron addresses in 2025 that prosecutors allege were connected to black-market Iranian oil proceeds. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking forfeiture of more than $61 million in Tether’s USDT stablecoin, alleging the funds came from black-market sales of sanctioned Iranian oil and were intended to finance Iran’s government and military, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). On Monday, the DOJ alleged that Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale, both incorporated in Hong Kong, used Binance accounts to move proceeds from oil sold to buyers in China. A network of related addresses allegedly received and distributed more than $1.5 billion, including transfers to IRGC-linked money-transfer businesses, cryptocurrency addresses and an Iranian…
Solana raised its transaction size limit to 4,096 bytes, giving developers more room for zero-knowledge proofs and transactions with multiple signatures. Solana raised its maximum transaction size from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes to allow developers to fit more complex operations into a single transaction, including zero-knowledge proofs and new onchain signature schemes. The upgrade was activated on mainnet on Tuesday at the start of epoch 1,035 around 1:00 am UTC, according to blockchain data shared by the Solana Foundation. The upgrade also introduced the v1 transaction format, which maintains full backward compatibility with legacy transactions. Existing transaction formats continue working for applications and wallet providers, but protocols that want to benefit from the size increase…
Banking groups also said the GOP’s final text leaves stablecoin reward loopholes, while tribal gaming interests warn that its prediction market provisions threaten tribal sovereignty. Odds of the CLARITY Act becoming law this year on Polymarket fell sharply again on Monday after spiking the day before, as key Senate Democrats reportedly said they had not been swayed by Republicans’ “final” crypto bill proposal. Polymarket traders initially saw a newly revised Republican proposal with expanded ethics provisions as a positive sign, sending the odds to 35%. However, their confidence was dashed as reservations about the revised text began mounting, with the odds falling back as low as 16% on Monday. US Senator Mark Warner, one of the Democrats involved in negotiations, reportedly said the r…
CoinEx said falling trading volumes and liquidity, along with rising regulatory and compliance costs, had exceeded “reasonable boundaries,” with withdrawals remaining open until Dec. 22. Crypto exchange CoinEx said it is winding down operations, citing a prolonged crypto market downturn, sinking trading volumes and liquidity, and rising regulatory and compliance costs, according to an announcement on Tuesday. As part of the wind-down, CoinEx will halt new user registrations, referral commissions and other rewards. Futures contracts will enter a “Reduce-Only” mode. CoinEx will also stop accepting new orders or subscriptions across its fiat, margin trading, lending, earn, staking and strategic trading services. “After much reflection, I have come to accept a hard truth. CoinEx did not become…
Balancer cut costs and shipped new products after restructuring, but Marcus Hardt says v3 failed to replace legacy revenue as November’s $128 million exploit continued to weigh on adoption. Balancer, a decentralized exchange and automated market maker, has proposed winding down the protocol after its post-exploit restructuring failed to generate enough revenue, with its leader saying he underestimated how much a $128 million exploit in November would continue to weigh on adoption. The proposal was authored by Balancer Labs CEO Marcus Hardt and published on the Balancer governance forum on Monday. It calls for an orderly wind-down of the protocol and the distribution of its remaining treasury, currently worth more than $9 million, to BAL tokenholders. The proposal comes after Balancer Labs…
Some Democrats remain dissatisfied with the bill’s crypto ethics provisions and will be sending a counterproposal just hours before a key procedural vote. Senate Democrats working on the crypto market structure bill are reportedly preparing a counterproposal to the Republicans’ latest revised CLARITY Act text, despite GOP lawmakers describing it as their “last, best and final offer” to Democrats when they released it Sunday. Democrats working on the bill met in Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office on Monday, according to Politico. It is understood that some Democrats remain unsatisfied with crypto ethics language in the latest bill text. “The Democrats who’ve been working on this in good faith are sending a counterproposal,” Senator Mark Warner told Politico as he exited the mee…
Kraken’s new xStocks vaults let investors earn yield on tokenized versions of Nvidia and major US stock market ETFs by lending the assets in DeFi markets. Crypto exchange Kraken has launched onchain yield vaults for select tokenized stocks and ETFs, allowing clients to earn returns by lending the assets through decentralized finance protocols, according to a Monday announcement. The new xStocks vaults support tokenized versions of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPYx), Invesco QQQ ETF (QQQx) and Nvidia (NVDAx), with yield generated by lending the assets through onchain markets. Yield is paid in the deposited xStocks, while withdrawal requests are processed within three days. The vaults use the same infrastructure as Kraken DeFi Earn, which launched in January and has since attracted more than $800 m…
Bitcoin’s price rose toward $80,000 after US President Donald Trump hinted that the US-Iran war would end, pushing oil prices lower. Bitcoin (BTC) returned to $79,000 after Monday’s Wall Street open as markets dissected mixed signals over the US-Iran war. Key points: Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD erasing its weekend losses and gaining around 3% on the day.
Strive’s latest Bitcoin purchase was funded entirely through its SATA preferred stock as the company continues its rapid climb among corporate BTC holders. Strive, a top-five Bitcoin treasury company and asset manager, purchased 469 Bitcoin for about $36.6 million last week, bringing its holdings to 25,000 BTC. According to a Monday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Strive acquired the Bitcoin between Sept. 8 and Sept. 11 at an average price of $77,954 per BTC, including fees and expenses. The biggest crypto by market cap was last trading at $78,823, according to Coingecko data.
Trump’s ethics concession addresses one hurdle for the crypto bill, but 18 state attorneys general say the revised legislation would weaken state oversight. The CLARITY Act is heading for a crucial US Senate procedural vote on Tuesday after President Donald Trump agreed to most of a bipartisan proposal to strengthen ethics restrictions around public officials’ crypto interests, according to various reports. However, the latest compromise hasn’t resolved all of the opposition, with a bipartisan group of state attorneys general now urging senators to reject the bill over concerns that it would weaken state oversight of the crypto industry. A coalition of 18 state attorneys general, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, argued in a letter to Senate Banking committee leaders that the…
The investment brings together major financial institutions as Kaiko expands its data infrastructure for tokenized securities and onchain financial markets. S&P Global has led a strategic investment in Kaiko, extending the Paris-based crypto market data provider’s Series B funding to $110 million as it expands its data infrastructure for tokenized financial markets. The round also included BNP Paribas, Bpifrance, Broadridge, Canton Foundation, Coinbase Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, Nasdaq Ventures, Royal Bank of Canada, Stellar and Susquehanna Private Equity Investments. Kaiko said the funding will support its core digital asset market data business and its push into onchain financial infrastructure, including data services for tokenized Treasury bills, money market funds, equities and bo…
Bitmine now has more than 5 million ETH staked, turning most of its Ether holdings into a recurring income stream as it continues to accumulate. Bitmine Immersion Technologies added to its Ether holdings last week while projecting hundreds of millions of dollars in annual staking revenue, highlighting how its massive ETH treasury could generate income even during volatile market conditions. In a Monday announcement, Bitmine said it acquired 27,180 ETH last week, bringing its holdings to more than 5.95 million ETH, worth roughly $15.4 billion and representing about 4.9% of Ether’s circulating supply. Including cash and other crypto assets, Bitmine reported total holdings of approximately $15.8 billion. Bitmine said more than 5.06 million ETH is now staked, generating an estimated $334 milli…
AI’s biggest labs are suddenly calling for a slower pace of development. Is it because AI risks are catching up with the technology, or because the economics of the race are getting harder to justify? For years, the defining characteristic of the artificial intelligence race has been speed. Build a bigger model. Spend more on compute. Release it. Rinse and repeat, with litte regard for the unknown unknowns. The average “p/doom” (probability of AI eventually going catastrophically wrong) among AI researchers was estimated to be between 15% and 20% in 2024.
Token buybacks have pushed Hyperliquid to all time highs, but Alice Liu from CoinMarketCap warns that Binance poses a threat to the revenue stream it depends on to pay for them. Despite Bitcoin failing to hold above $80,000 following the recent rally, the cryptocurrency is unlikely to revisit the lower price levels it has hovered near for much of this year, according to CoinMarketCap Head of Research Alice Liu. “I think we might have already touched the bottom,” Liu tells Cointelegraph on Trade Secrets, referring to Bitcoin falling to around $59,000 in June this year, approximately 53% below its October all-time high of $126,100. Bitcoin recently tapped $81,600 at the start of September, an approximate 28% rally since mid-August. It pushed the CoinMarketCap Crypto Fear & Greed Index, whic…
Stablecoins may reduce trade finance friction, fragmented regulatory regimes limit their adoption to just 3% of global payments, according to the World Trade Organization. Fragmented regulatory regimes are limiting stablecoin adoption in international trade, according to Juan Marchetti, director of the trade in services and investment division at the World Trade Organization (WTO). “The constraint is not technology. It is actually regulation and the lack of development of regulatory frameworks,” said Marchetti during a Monday speech in Geneva, at the launch of WTO’s study on stablecoins in world trade. He cited an October 2025 report from the Financial Stability Board which found that only 39%, or 11 out of 28 surveyed jurisdictions, have finalized their stablecoin regulatory frameworks.
