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9 May 2026, 20:10

CertiK projects roughly 130 wrench attacks by 2026

Incidents of physical crypto attacks on investors are skyrocketing around the world, in what CertiK calls a “significantly underreported phenomenon.” In a study published Friday, blockchain security firm CertiK disclosed there have been 34 verified physical attacks on cryptocurrency holders in just the first four months of 2026. These assaults are referred to as “wrench attacks.” That figure represents a 41% increase over the same period last year, with estimated losses reaching $101 million. CertiK projects roughly 130 crypto attacks by 2026 Wrench attacks refer to physical assaults, kidnappings, and extortion to force crypto holders to hand over private keys or transfer digital assets. The term originates from the joke that no encryption survives a “$5 wrench” applied to the right person. The highest number of wrench attacks this year happened in January, with CertiK confirming 13 incidents. In February, there were only 5 cases, 10 cases in March, and another 5 in April. The report shows Europe now accounts for 82% of all recorded attacks, up from 39.5% across all of 2025. France alone logged 24 incidents in four months, exceeding its full-year 2025 total of 20. In April, Telegram founder Pavel Durov posted that France had witnessed 41 incidents of crypto-linked kidnappings in just the 3.5 months of 2026. He said the leaking of sensitive user data, including tax information, is what’s making crypto investors easy targets, Cryptopolitan reported . Meanwhile, reported incidents in North America fell from 9 to 3, and in Asia from 25 to 2 over the same period. CertiK projects roughly 130 incidents and losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars by the end of 2026, if the trend persists. Wrench attacks are getting more organized Similar to Durov’s claim, CertiK notes that the growing number of wrench attacks is due to “data-driven targeting.” Instead of physically tracking victims, attackers are buying names, addresses, and financial profiles from online brokers. The report also noted that the attackers now also go after relatives and associates of the target victim, using them as leverage. More than half of the incidents in France this year involved a family member of the main target. In some cases, relatives were attacked directly. Earlier this year, the 84-year-old mother of journalist Savannah Guthrie was kidnapped as part of a $6 million Bitcoin ransom demand. The study also found that the attacks are perpetuated by young people. French authorities indicted 88 suspects in late April. More than ten were minors. Charges included kidnapping, unlawful confinement, extortion, and money laundering, according to CertiK. How to protect yourself Security experts say protecting crypto assets now requires more than strong passwords and hardware wallets. Investors are being urged to reduce the public visibility of their holdings. That includes avoiding posts about wallet activity, crypto profits, or luxury purchases on social media. Experts also recommend separating personal identities from crypto accounts whenever possible. There’s a middle ground between leaving money in the bank and rolling the dice in crypto. Start with this free video on decentralized finance .

9 May 2026, 19:00

DeepBook up 23% after Predict debut: Can DEEP escape its 100-day rut?

Here's why DeepBook Protocol led the crypto market by gains in the past 24 hours.

9 May 2026, 18:10

Circle Mints 250 Million USDC: What It Signals for Crypto Liquidity

BitcoinWorld Circle Mints 250 Million USDC: What It Signals for Crypto Liquidity Blockchain tracking service Whale Alert reported the minting of 250 million USD Coin (USDC) at the USDC Treasury. The transaction, recorded on the Ethereum blockchain, adds a significant amount of liquidity to the stablecoin’s circulating supply. While large-scale mints are not uncommon, they often correlate with institutional demand and market preparation. Context Behind the Mint The 250 million USDC mint follows a period of relative stability in the stablecoin market. Circle, the issuer of USDC, regularly adjusts supply based on demand from exchanges, DeFi protocols, and institutional clients. Large mints typically occur when new capital enters the crypto ecosystem or when market makers require additional stablecoins for trading operations. This specific mint comes amid a broader recovery in digital asset prices and increased on-chain activity. Stablecoin supply growth is often viewed as a bullish signal, as it suggests capital is ready to be deployed into other cryptocurrencies or yield-generating opportunities. Market Implications An increase in USDC supply can have several effects on the market: Liquidity injection: More stablecoins available on exchanges can reduce slippage and improve trading conditions. Institutional interest: Large mints often coincide with institutional onboarding or increased over-the-counter (OTC) trading volumes. DeFi activity: USDC is a primary asset in decentralized finance lending and borrowing protocols. Increased supply can lower borrowing rates and stimulate activity. Tracking Stablecoin Trends Stablecoin supply metrics are closely watched by analysts as leading indicators of market sentiment. When USDC or USDT supply expands, it typically precedes upward price movement in Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies. Conversely, prolonged supply contraction can signal bearish sentiment or capital flight to fiat. The current mint does not occur in isolation. Over the past month, the total market capitalization of stablecoins has edged higher, suggesting a cautious but optimistic outlook among large capital holders. Conclusion The minting of 250 million USDC is a routine but noteworthy event that reflects ongoing demand for dollar-pegged digital assets within the crypto economy. While a single mint does not guarantee a market rally, it adds to a pattern of increasing stablecoin liquidity that historically supports broader market activity. Readers should monitor whether this supply reaches exchanges or remains in treasury wallets for further signals. FAQs Q1: What does it mean when USDC is minted? Minting USDC means new coins are created by Circle in exchange for an equivalent amount of U.S. dollars held in reserve. It increases the total circulating supply of the stablecoin. Q2: Is a large USDC mint always bullish for crypto? Not always, but it is often interpreted as a positive signal because it indicates incoming capital or increased demand for stable liquidity within the ecosystem. Q3: How does Whale Alert track these transactions? Whale Alert monitors blockchain networks for large transactions and publicly reports them. The data comes directly from on-chain activity, making it transparent and verifiable. This post Circle Mints 250 Million USDC: What It Signals for Crypto Liquidity first appeared on BitcoinWorld .

9 May 2026, 17:49

Hacker Drains $5.9M From Ethereum Liquidity Provider TrustedVolumes

TrustedVolumes, a liquidity provider on the Ethereum blockchain, lost about $5.9 million in funds to a hacker on Thursday. The attacker was able to exploit a vulnerability within the custom trading system used by the platform and managed to withdraw the funds, which included ETH, WBTC, as well as USDT and USDC stablecoins. What Happened According to blockchain security firm Blockaid, which caught the exploit as it was happening, the stolen funds included 1,291 WETH, around 16.9 WBTC, roughly 206,000 USDT, and just under 1.27 million USDC. The attack worked by abusing a design flaw in TrustedVolumes’ custom order-settlement system, known as a Request for Quote (RFQ) proxy. GoPlus Security posted a breakdown showing that the attacker registered themselves as an authorized “order signer” using a function called “registerAllowedOrderSigner()” that was publicly accessible. The function allows anyone to designate their own address as a valid signer for trades they controlled, and while normally that would be harmless enough, the settlement function had a separate problem: it checked authorization against one address while actually pulling funds from a different one. As detailed in a technical report posted by security researcher Defi Nerd, the attacker used that gap to execute four drain transactions against the TrustedVolumes resolver contract, which had previously given the proxy permission to move its tokens. According to them, each time, the proxy pulled assets from the resolver and sent only a single raw USDC unit back. Then the attacker converted the stolen WETH back into ETH and forwarded everything to their own wallet. TrustedVolumes confirmed the exploit and publicly posted three wallet addresses holding the stolen funds, asking the hacker to get in touch about a “bug bounty and a mutually acceptable resolution.” 1inch Distances Itself as DeFi Hacks Continue Because TrustedVolumes functions as a liquidity provider and market maker on 1inch, some early reports framed the incident as a 1inch exploit. However, that is not accurate, and both 1inch and Blockaid put out statements clarifying that the protocol itself was not compromised and no user funds on 1inch were affected. TrustedVolumes operates independently across multiple platforms, not exclusively on 1inch. The attack occurred during an especially difficult period for the DeFi ecosystem since it followed a catastrophic month of April, where more than $650 million worth of crypto was stolen from different projects. KelpDAO and Drift Protocol were the most affected, having $292 million and $285.2 million taken away from them. So at $5.9 million, this latest exploit is smaller in scale. But the technical sophistication of the approach, deploying a helper contract, abusing self-service signer registration, and exploiting a maker/funding-source mismatch in a single transaction, puts it in a different category from a simple bug or misconfiguration. The post Hacker Drains $5.9M From Ethereum Liquidity Provider TrustedVolumes appeared first on CryptoPotato .

9 May 2026, 15:30

BTC miners signal commitment to AI pivot in latest quarterly disclosures

The latest rounds of disclosures made across the week have revealed that publicly traded miners are selling mined BTC to fund operations, with many retiring ASIC hardware in favor of GPUs, while also securing and committing billions in contracts to serve AI cloud customers. While Bitcoin miners pivoting into AI is no longer novel, the announcements make the scale of those pivots hard to ignore. Mining revenue has been on a decline, and given the current AI boom, many have moved and pivoted to AI infrastructure, diverting their spending budgets there. MARA splashes $1.5 billion on a gas plant On April 30, MARA Holdings announced that it will be acquiring Long Ridge Energy & Power from FTAI Infrastructure for $1.5 billion, including $785 million in assumed debt. The deal gives MARA a 505 MW natural gas plant in Hannibal, Ohio, and more than 1,600 acres of industrially permitted land where it plans to build a data center campus. “It has all the key components for us, for the ideal data center campus,” MARA CEO Fred Thiel told Reuters . He said the company had already attracted interest from hyperscalers looking to lease space and expects to have a tenant secured around the time the deal closes later in 2026. MARA followed up with a consent solicitation on May 7 to amend the indenture on Long Ridge’s $600 million in senior secured notes, a procedural step required because MARA’s acquisition triggers a change-of-control clause under the existing debt terms. MARA holds 38,689 BTC on its balance sheet, the largest treasury position among publicly traded miners, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net. BTC miners are offloading tokens and taking on expenses to fund AI pivots. Source: BitcoinTreasuries.net. IREN posts $248 million loss as it swaps ASICs for Blackwell GPUs IREN Limited reported a Q3 FY26 revenue of $144.8 million , which is a 22% decline from the $184.7 million it recorded in the previous quarter. The company reported $3.1 billion in annual recurring revenue under contract and is targeting $3.7 billion by year-end. It signed a five-year AI cloud contract with NVIDIA worth $3.4 billion. NVIDIA will be providing it with air-cooled Blackwell GPUs, which will be deployed inside 60 MW of existing data center space at its Childress, Texas, facility starting in early 2027. It also entered a 5GW strategic partnership with NVIDIA covering infrastructure design across its global power portfolio. “The world is structurally short compute, and the bottleneck is delivered data center and GPU capacity,” said Daniel Roberts, IREN’s Co-Founder and Co-CEO. Smaller miners selling BTC, creating AI subsidiaries Small miners are also doing away with their BTC holdings and pivoting to AI infrastructure as well. DMG Blockchain Solutions reported mining 21 BTC in April, down from 23 BTC in March. DMG also announced the creation of a new subsidiary, DMG Infrastructure, dedicated to transitioning its Christina Lake data center to AI and high-performance computing workloads. CEO Sheldon Bennett said the company’s access to wholesale power at 3.5 to 5.0 cents Canadian per kilowatt-hour has provided a cost advantage during lower Bitcoin price periods. Bitdeer , meanwhile, reported that its BTC holdings separate from customer deposits are now zero. It stated that it had 193.8 BTC in mining output and had sold every coin mined. Cango Inc., which holds 1,026 BTC according to BitcoinTreasuries.net, launched its AI subsidiary EcoHash commercially in April. The company previously sold $305 million in Bitcoin holdings to retire debt and reset its balance sheet before pivoting toward AI inference services. The numbers tell the story These disclosures reveal that Bitcoin mining margins are getting compressed. AI infrastructure contracts, on the other hand, are coming in hot with some worth billions of dollars and backed by hyperscaler demand. IREN alone expects to reach 1,210MW of capacity by 2027. MARA is buying a 505MW gas plant. DMG is converting an entire facility. The infrastructure pipeline exceeds anything these companies have ever deployed for mining, and it is likely to go up as more miners make their own disclosures. Your bank is using your money. You’re getting the scraps. Watch our free video on becoming your own bank

9 May 2026, 15:20

Former Singapore naval officer sentenced to 82 months for stealing $2.3 million in crypto from friend

FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was dragged into the headlines after Zhang Rongxuan, a former captain in Singapore’s Naval Diving Unit, has been sentenced to six years and 10 months in prison for stealing crypto from a known associate. The 35-year-old Zhang allegedly stole 1.7 million Tether (USDT) from a friend’s cold wallet after sneaking into the victim’s apartment and photographing the device’s seed phrase. According to the accused, he needed the funds because of the heavy losses he took when FTX collapsed. Former Singapore officer steals crypto Zhang Rongxuan, 35, has pleaded guilty to charges including gaining illegal access and misuse of a computer system. The court heard that he stole approximately 1.7 million Tether (USDT) from a 30-year-old Chinese national’s cold wallet. Zhang met the victim through a mutual friend in June 2022. The cold wallet was something the victim mentioned to Zhang in casual conversation. The victim had deposited the funds into a Ledger Nano X hardware wallet on December 14, 2022, and kept the 24-word seed phrase that grants access to the crypto on a piece of paper hidden in his bedroom wardrobe. On December 18, 2022, the victim invited Zhang and another friend to watch a football match. When a second guest arrived, Zhang offered to go downstairs to let him in. The victim handed over his apartment access card, and Zhang never returned it. Thirteen days later, on New Year’s Eve, the three met again at Marina Bay to watch fireworks. After the victim left his apartment, Zhang used the access card to sneak inside. He found the cold wallet and the paper with the seed phrase inside a storage box, took photos of the recovery phrase, and left everything in place. By January 1, 2023, Zhang had used the seed phrase to drain all 1.7 million USDT from the wallet into his own accounts. The victim didn’t discover the theft until March 23, 2023, when he filed a police report and hired blockchain security firm SlowMist, which traced the funds back to Zhang. What did Zhang do with the money? Zhang spent the stolen funds on luxury items, gambling and paying off his debt. Court documents show he bought an Audi A5 and several luxury watches. He paid off roughly S$115,449 in remaining mortgage on his public housing flat. He also invested S$200,000 in shares of DiGi Selection Holdings, a company tied to a non-fungible token platform he co-ran with the victim. But Zhang lost a majority of the money, approximately S$1.57 million, to licensed betting outlets and illegal online gambling. When confronted about the theft , Zhang admitted it and made excuses that he had suffered heavy losses from the collapse of FTX and that the financial pressure drove him to steal. Zhang faced 16 charges under Singapore’s Computer Misuse Act and the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act and pleaded guilty to six. The remaining charges were taken into consideration during sentencing. Police managed to seize some of the assets, including some luxury watches, the Audi, and approximately S$130,000 in bank deposits. Zhang transferred his company shares back to the victim but made no other restitution. Singapore’s Ministry of Defense confirmed to Zaobao that Zhang is no longer a member of the Singapore Armed Forces. Physical access is becoming a major crypto security risk The Singapore case highlights a growing vulnerability in the crypto industry called “wrench attacks” involving the use of physical access, stealth, or violence to steal seed phrases or hardware wallets. In the United States, Marlon Ferro, a 20-year-old Californian, was recently sentenced to 78 months in federal prison for breaking into homes to steal hardware wallets as part of a $250 million crypto theft ring allegedly led by Singaporean Malone Lam. Deputy Attorney General Jeanine Pirro said Ferro “served as the criminal enterprise’s instrument of last resort” when remote hacking and social engineering failed. Cryptopolitan previously reported that France has been labeled the global capital of crypto kidnappings, with at least 19 of these wrench attacks recorded in 2025 and six more in the first weeks of 2026. Cold storage protects against remote hacking, but it cannot protect against someone who gains physical access to a seed phrase, whether by stealth, burglary, or force. The smartest crypto minds already read our newsletter. Want in? Join them .