News linked to both this project and an event.
A cryptography expert advisory committee led by Coinbase released a report stating that Bitcoin should immediately begin preparing for potential quantum computing attacks. However, the committee did not take a clear stance on whether to freeze the millions of bitcoins potentially vulnerable to quantum-computing theft in the future. The committee includes several leading experts, such as Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. They argue that the current debate is not about *how* to introduce quantum-resistant signature schemes, but rather *how to handle* bitcoins held in long-dormant addresses that fail to migrate. One camp advocates setting a final deadline after which Bitcoin’s existing ECDSA and Schnorr signature schemes would no longer be supported, and unmigrated funds would be frozen—thereby preventing future quantum attackers from seizing large amounts of BTC and destabilizing markets. The other camp contends that freezing funds would effectively amount to asset confiscation, violating Bitcoin’s core principles of immutability and full user control over assets—and could set a precedent for future regulatory-driven freezes. The Coinbase advisory committee notes that these approaches are not mutually exclusive and could be combined. Yet it declines to state a position on whether “legacy BTC” should be frozen, asserting that the ultimate decision rests with Bitcoin’s community governance. It emphasizes two key points: first, technical development of quantum-resistant signature migration must begin immediately—not wait for governance debates to conclude; second, users must receive clear, timely risk communication to prevent prolonged uncertainty from harming the Bitcoin ecosystem.
law enforcement agencies from 11 countries have jointly shut down the money laundering network AudiA6, which processed over 336 million euros in illicit funds between 2022 and 2025. On June 10, law enforcement arrested two administrators of Russian and Ukrainian nationality in Georgia, seized 25 domain names, over 30 servers, and 80 vehicles, and froze approximately 778,000 euros in cryptocurrency. Operating as a "mixer-as-a-service," AudiA6 provided services to cybercriminals involved in ransomware attacks, helping them cash out crypto assets and conceal the flow of funds, charging commissions of 3% to 10% and claiming to complete the "cleaning" process within about an hour.Since 2021, the AudiA6 wallet has received approximately 10,333 BTC, valued at around $389 million at the time of the transactions. The investigation also revealed that the money laundering network used thousands of fake accounts created with stolen or purchased identities, involving over 6,000 KYC records; many of these accounts were linked to Russian-speaking intermediaries and were used to transfer criminal proceeds through cryptocurrency exchanges. The clearnet and darknet domains of AudiA6 and Dark2Web have been replaced with seizure banners. (Cointelegraph)
The Bitcoin Core Project released a security advisory confirming a privacy vulnerability in the -privatebroadcast feature introduced in version 31.0.
Odaily News, June 9th — BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes stated in his latest article "Reality Test" that if oil prices continue to rise due to the US-Iran conflict, it could trigger a collapse of the AI stock bubble and drag the entire crypto market down.Hayes said that if traffic restrictions in the Strait of Hormuz persist deep into the second quarter, spot prices for hydrocarbons and other key commodities could rise in the third quarter. If oil prices continue to climb and inflationary pressures impact the US midterm elections, Trump might pivot to a tough stance targeting data center construction, AI regulation, and taxation. Hayes believes the market could anticipate Trump limiting AI capital expenditure and taxing AI companies, thereby triggering the burst of the AI stock bubble.Hayes also noted that since November 2022, the scale of AI-related debt issuance has been approximately $1.5 trillion, and US M2 has increased by roughly the same amount during the same period. He believes the three factors that could pop the AI bubble include rising energy costs, the market's inability to absorb three major AI-related IPOs — namely SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI — and Trump's shift to opposing AI. In terms of portfolio, Hayes stated that Maelstrom's stock portfolio holds significant positions in US-listed energy producers; he has sold AI-related stocks and offloaded non-core crypto assets, having dumped HYPE, NEAR, and WLD last week, as well as selling ZEC due to the Orchard Pool vulnerability. He still holds Bitcoin and ETH and will execute tactical short trades via derivatives.
the US Department of Justice stated Saif Faiq has pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in a Bitcoin-related kidnapping and extortion case, facing a maximum of 20 years in prison, with sentencing scheduled for August 28.The case occurred in 2024. Faiq and his brother Adam Iza were accused of plotting to kidnap the parents of a crypto millionaire, recruiting six men from Florida to carry out the operation in Connecticut. The suspects carjacked the victims' Lamborghini Urus in broad daylight, assaulting them and briefly holding them captive.The victims were Sushil and Radhika Chetal, whose son Veer Chetal was previously involved in a social engineering fraud case, stealing approximately 4,100 Bitcoins, and has already pleaded guilty to the theft. Faiq and his brother have both acknowledged conspiring to interfere with commercial activities through robbery.
New York Supreme Court Judge Kathy J. King has signed an order to pause proceedings in a lawsuit seeking ownership claims over 39,069 dormant bitcoin wallets, and has scheduled a hearing for July 14 regarding a key amicus curiae brief.The plaintiffs in the case are an anonymous individual referred to as "Noah Doe" and two shell companies, who are seeking to claim ownership of these wallets under the New York State Abandoned Property Law. Attorney Ian R. Cohen submitted an amicus curiae brief opposing the plaintiffs' claims. He argues that the Abandoned Property Law is intended for tangible items, whereas blockchain addresses are always visible to the world; if the original owner was unable to withdraw assets due to a security breach, this constitutes a passive loss of access rather than a voluntary abandonment. (The Block)
Odaily, Cypherpunk, the company managing the ZEC treasury, stated that all software has vulnerabilities. Historically, Bitcoin once "over-minted" 184 billion BTC due to a bug. However, this does not mean abandoning blockchain technology; rather, security should be enhanced through formal verification and provable correctness.Cypherpunk emphasized that with the development of AI technology, vulnerability detection will become faster and broader, but the key lies in who can discover issues before malicious actors. Zcash will demonstrate this capability through an upcoming update.
Cypherpunk, the ZEC treasury company, responded on X to the market volatility of the ZEC token, stating that all software contains vulnerabilities and citing the historical Bitcoin incident in which a bug led to the accidental minting of 184 billion BTC. However, this does not mean blockchain technology should be abandoned; instead, security should be enhanced through formal verification and provable correctness.
according to Onchain Lens monitoring, due to the Orchard Pool vulnerability, ZEC fell below $400. The 3x leveraged ZEC short position of “1011 insider whale” Garrett Jin has a floating profit of over $13.5 million, while his 5x leveraged BTC long position has a floating loss of over $17 million.
Adam Iza, a California cryptocurrency executive, admitted on Monday to orchestrating an attempted kidnapping of Veer Chetal's parents. The case is related to the $245 million Bitcoin theft that Veer Chetal was previously involved in.Adam Iza, 25, also known as Ahmed Faiq, who ran the crypto trading company Zort and called himself the "Godfather," along with Veer Chetal and two others, impersonated technical support staff from Google and crypto exchanges to steal 4,100 Bitcoins from a Washington resident, valued at approximately $245 million at the time. Adam Iza and his accomplices attempted to obtain part of the stolen funds by kidnapping Veer Chetal's parents. Additionally, Adam Iza admitted to fraudulently accessing Meta's business manager accounts and credit lines to steal over $37 million between 2020 and 2022. Federal prosecutors are seeking at least 14 years in prison for his sentence. (fortune)
A man in Florida, USA, was arrested for allegedly stealing approximately $1.9 million worth of Bitcoin using the mnemonic phrase of his former employer’s hardware wallet. According to police, the unauthorized transfer of the stolen funds occurred in 2020, when the suspect still had access to critical security information.
multiple blockchain and post-quantum cryptography researchers have warned that artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating the development of quantum computing and could potentially impact the security systems of mainstream blockchains, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, earlier than anticipated.Alex Pruden, CEO of Project Eleven, a firm focused on quantum-resistant infrastructure, stated that the combination of AI and quantum computing is fundamentally reshaping the future security landscape. "People will no longer be able to rely on existing security assumptions as they have in the past," he said.Researchers point out that AI is already being used to optimize quantum error correction, which is one of the key technical bottlenecks in the development of quantum computing. Illia Polosukhin also noted that AI has been accelerating scientific breakthroughs for years, and in the future, there may even be a circular acceleration effect where "AI helps build the next generation of quantum computers."One of the industry's biggest current concerns is the "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later" strategy, where governments or advanced attackers begin mass-collecting encrypted data now, waiting to decrypt it all at once once quantum computing matures. Polosukhin warned that if quantum computers become viable within a few years, "most of today's important data on the internet could be decrypted in the future."Given that most blockchain networks and internet infrastructure currently rely on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could theoretically derive a private key from a public key, directly breaking wallets and on-chain systems. Simultaneously, AI itself is strengthening hacking capabilities. Pruden stated that AI models are becoming increasingly adept at discovering software vulnerabilities and cryptography implementation flaws, and may even be able to crack some encryption algorithms directly in the future.However, AI is also being used by developers for code auditing, formal verification, and testing post-quantum security systems, creating a "long-term security arms race" with simultaneous upgrades on both the offensive and defensive sides. Researchers believe the most significant change brought by AI and quantum computing together is that the core assumption of "long-term cryptographic reliability" in the digital age is being challenged. Future security systems may shift from "static upgrades" to continuous dynamic evolution. (CoinDesk)
According to Cointelegraph, Bitcoin mining company MARA Holdings spent $4.3 million on CEO Fred Thiel’s personal security in 2025, including $430,780 for vehicle armor, as well as residential and personal security expenses. Filings show related spending for 2024 totaled $191,040. In the same year, MARA also spent $3.9 million on CFO Salman Khan’s personal security. The report notes that personal safety costs for companies are rising amid an increase in “wrench attacks” targeting cryptocurrency executives and investors.
according to monitoring by Specter Analyst, a high-net-worth investor holding significant assets on Kraken and Coinbase exchanges fell victim to an alleged personal intimidation attack, resulting in total losses of approximately $6.7 million across various assets.The attacker withdrew 1,554 ETH (approximately $3.3 million) and 10.5 BTC from the user's Kraken account. Simultaneously, the attacker also breached the user's Coinbase defenses, withdrawing 34.1 cbBTC. Subsequently, the attacker directly deposited over $5.3 million of the stolen funds into the privacy protocol Tornado Cash to obfuscate the transaction trail. (financefeeds)
Threshold Network posted on platform X, stating that on May 18, 2026, a malicious attacker attempted to mint tBTC without depositing the underlying Bitcoin. The attempt was unsuccessful; no invalid tBTC was issued, and user funds were not at risk.As a precautionary measure against high-frequency malicious activity in the broader crypto ecosystem, Optimistic Minting has been temporarily suspended. Currently, minting operations are conducted through the liquidation mechanism, with typical minting times increasing from approximately 1.5 hours to around 6 to 7 hours.
According to The Block, Bitcoin Depot (BTM), a Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin ATM operator, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on the 18th in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, announcing an orderly liquidation and asset sale. CEO Alex Holmes stated that increasingly stringent state-level compliance requirements, transaction limit restrictions, and operational bans in certain regions have rendered the company’s existing business model unsustainable. Previously, the company suffered a security breach in April 2026, resulting in a $3.7 million loss; its Q1 2026 revenue declined 49.2% year-on-year, with a net loss of $9.5 million. Currently, all over 9,000 Bitcoin ATMs operated globally by Bitcoin Depot have been taken offline, and its overseas entities—including those in Canada—will also be shut down.
According to a research report released by Binance Research, approximately 11% of illicit cryptocurrency transaction volume was seized in 2025—55 times the global fiat recovery rate (less than 1%). Even after excluding the single Prince Group case involving roughly $15 billion worth of BTC, the remaining seized amount still stands at about 10 times the fiat baseline. Data from on-chain security firms SlowMist and PeckShield shows that between 8.3% and 13.2% of stolen funds were recovered or frozen in 2025, reflecting continuously improving collaboration efficiency among exchanges, stablecoin issuers, and law enforcement agencies. Binance Research notes that blockchain’s inherent transparency is being fully leveraged by regulators and investigators, and the notion that “cryptocurrency is a breeding ground for illicit activity” is gradually becoming an outdated misconception.
following the $292 million exploit of Kelp DAO's LayerZero bridge, the security of cross-chain infrastructure has once again come under scrutiny. DeFi protocols Kelp DAO, Solv Protocol, Re, and crypto exchange Kraken have all taken similar migration measures, with the total value of this outflow reaching approximately $4 billion.Decentralized finance protocol Lombard has become the latest project to join the migration wave, announcing a gradual phase-out of LayerZero and the migration of over $1 billion in Bitcoin collateral assets to Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP). Bitcoin-related tokens issued by Lombard include LBTC and BTC.b. It is reported that Lombard's initial migration assets cover the Solana, Etherlink, Berachain, Corn, and TAC chains, while the use of LayerZero on Morph and Swell will also be terminated. As of now, LayerZero has not responded to requests for comment. (CoinDesk)
on-chain detective ZachXBT stated that the hacker "Dritan Kapplani Jr" transferred approximately $2.59 million in assets today, including 1.99 million DAI and 259 ETH. The funds were moved from address 0x4487...bba6 to address 0x67ec...125d. The stolen funds currently remain dormant.ZachXBT stated that on May 12, they published an investigation detailing the connection between Dritan Kapplani Jr and Trenton (Trent) Johnson in a social engineering theft involving 185 Bitcoin (approximately $13 million).
According to on-chain analyst PeckShield (@PeckShieldAlert), THORChain has been hacked, resulting in losses of approximately $10 million in crypto assets, including 36.75 BTC (around $3 million) and roughly $7 million in assets from BNB Chain, Ethereum, and Base.