Hackers reportedly claiming to be good actors have drained about $320 million worth of Bitcoin from Liquid Network's federation wallet, according to a CoinDesk report. In an X post on September 6, Liquid — a Bitcoin sidechain developed by blockchain infrastructure company Blockstream — confirmed that 4,000 BTC, roughly 95% of the entire wallet's balance, had been withdrawn.

Interestingly, the post referred to those behind the exploit as “purported white-hat hackers,” echoing the hackers’ own claim, after they self-identified as “whitehats” in a message embedded in a Bitcoin transaction. They also reportedly requested an audience with Liquid via the on-chain message, promising to return the money once the vulnerability that enabled the exploit is fixed.

“Please fix the bug first,” the on-chain message said. "The chain is under risk at latest commit right now. Make sure every node is patched. Then we will transfer the money back safely after confirming the fix.” Liquid responded on-chain with its security team's contact and has reportedly moved communications to an encrypted channel. Meanwhile, the platform said it has suspended transactions and warns of service disruptions as federation members work to restore service.

Launched in 2018, Liquid is a federated sidechain designed to move Bitcoin faster and more privately than the main chain. Users lock BTC on Bitcoin and receive an equivalent token, L-BTC, on Liquid, which settles blocks roughly every minute and finalizes in about two minutes. Rather than relying on miners, the network is secured by a federation of more than 80 exchanges, brokers, and other financial firms. The block signing and the multisig wallet holding the pegged-in Bitcoin are handled by 15 rotating functionaries that require 11 signatures to move funds.

The mechanics behind the exploit are also unusual, as nothing appears to have been stolen in the conventional sense. For example, in January, the Solana-based platform Step Finance lost roughly $40 million after attackers compromised devices belonging to its executive team, gaining access to the keys that guarded its treasury wallets. According to Liquid, the coins left through the Peg-out Authorization Key (PAK), belonging to SideSwap, a decentralized exchange built on the sidechain.

However, Liquid said that the key had not been compromised, nor had any others. SideSwap gave a matching account, stating a customer sent 4,000 L-BTC to its peg-out service at 14:05 UTC, the service processed the order as it would any other, and the Liquid Federation paid out 3,996 BTC to the customer's Bitcoin address twenty-three minutes later. According to SideSwap, its systems had no way of distinguishing those coins from any other L-BTC.

The incident lands in what has already been a punishing stretch for crypto infrastructure. Recently, the trading platform Drift suspended deposits and withdrawals after a suspected $270 million hack in April. In 2025, roughly $17 billion worth of Bitcoin was stolen, driven largely by impersonation schemes and AI-assisted scams.

There was a time in the United States when the richest moguls, regardless of their many personal shortcomings, embraced philanthropy in a cynical effort to keep the angry mobs at bay. Andrew Carnegie famously built libraries, John D Rockefeller helped fund research that eventually eradicated hookworm, while JP Morgan donated vast collections of art and books to museums and other cultural institutions.

Today’s robber barons aren’t in such a giving mood. Sure, there are some figures like Microsoft’s Bill Gates — who has plenty of his own problems, to be clear — but they seem to be quickly becoming the minority.

Case in point, the billionaire CEO of cyrpto-trading company Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, recently went on a tirade about how charity is actually a “net negative on the world.”

“The common view is that philanthropy is a noble cause,” Amstrong said during a recent appearance on the right-wing Katie Miller Podcast. “And like, Bill Gates after the DoJ thing is like, ‘I’m going to go rehabilitate my image, I’m going to do philanthropy.'”

That’s a fool’s errand to Armstrong, however, as such philanthropic aspirations — selfish as they are — can become “captured by ideology.”

“I guess I have sort of a contrarian view where a lot of charities and philanthropies are actually net negative on the world,” Armstrong continued. “And they get captured. It’s actually remarkably hard to find a foundation that has not gotten captured by ideology.”

Though Amstrong’s estimated net worth of around $8.7 billion puts him in the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent, he says that “so far, I’ve just been like ‘I’m not going to do that.’“

More on tech billionaires: AI Billionaires Are So Greedy That They’re Supercharging Sales of Yachts and Private Jets

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Bitcoin has unexpectedly topped the top cryptocurrencies for many years now. If we talk about other cryptocurrencies, then things can be simple. What is a cryptocurrency based on the present? Here’s our guide to most of Ethereum, Dogecoin, Bitcoin, Binance coin. The crypto market is a volatile business all over the world, and you have to be cautious. that cryptocurrency is not yet recommended.

It has been an indirect cryptocurrency bitcoin for years; the truth is that the markets are moving as fast today as they can be broken tomorrow. So, it is important that you first know about their options in the area you are thinking of investing in. And if you are thinking of investing in the crypto market, it is more volatile than traditional stocks, you should invest in crypto only when there is a rapid increase in the value of coins in the crypto market, because its value of coins Day by day. You can also take the reference from the crypto soft to clarify your doubt as per your requirements.

We know about bitcoin, that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have become a fascinating topic, with other cryptocurrencies being considered alternatives. We’ve compiled a guide for cryptocurrency artists, as well as their latest, current price news.

Ethereum (ETH)

Ethereum is a digital currency which we know as Ether. We use it for smart contracts. Ethereum is not controlled or issued by the government like bitcoin. Ethereum is an open network or we can also call it blockchain. Ethereum is the rising star of crypto currency in a way which is becoming very famous in the world nowadays. Ethereum has made its mark in a very short time and has become famous all over the world. Ethereum made its first move in 2015, after which its value in the world has increased by more than 7000 percent. that is the key to success. At this time the price of one Ethereum has been around $500.Every trader in the world is looking to get Ethereum and Bitcoin. The calculations are like a reward for the merchant. Ethereum’s cryptocurrency has exceeded almost 12 million. And it is increasing gradually day by day.

Bitcoin (BTC)

Largest network market cap, highest coin value for BTC (Bitcoin) users. Bitcoin was created by a group or unknown person known all over the world as Satoshi Nakamoto. You can use it to buy goods and services, which is simple. Bitcoin has not yet started in the world like crypto, but it is said that it will become more valuable in the world so that traders will get more profit. It rose from $1,000 to over $20,000 in 2017, but dropped to about $3,000 within a year. At the end of 2020, bitcoin began to skyrocket again, reaching highs from around $10,000 to over $60,000.

Binance Coin (BNB)

Binance’s launch in 2017 is that Binance Coin is the largest of all coins and more closely related to the major cryptocurrency exchange, Binance. Its number in the markets is increasing day by day. Coins are getting affected a lot in the last few years, due to which their value has increased. It is being used by merchant’s day by day for payment of trade and transactions. ETH is looking to acquire both Bitcoin and BNB use cases.

Ripple (XRP) –

Ripple (XRP) was launched in 2012 by a trio of developers. The fastest digital currency asset in the world, and it claims, enables real-time global payments in the world, allowing merchants to increase their payments and reduce the cost of foreign exchange that use XRP to settle. Huh. More than 80 billion in XRP were gifted. This is what makes XRP unique.

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Hackers made away with more than $100 million worth of Bitcoin from thousands of supposedly secured “cold” wallets hosted by Canada-based company Coinkite.

As Bloomberg reports, the hackers managed to infiltrate the wallets despite clients having a physical hardware key associated with their accounts, which was supposed to provide nearly impenetrable security.

“The moment it loaded I knew I was screwed because I saw red lines for withdrawals,” one of the victims, Johnathan Goodman, told Bloomberg. “Between 9:36 and 9:43 pm on July 29th, all three of my wallets were completely drained.”

Crypto insights company Galaxy Research estimated that around $110 million worth of Bitcoin had been drained from around 5,000 wallets last week, a figure that grew to at least 7,300 by Monday.

The incident highlights persistent lapses in security plaguing the largely unregulated cryptocurrency industry.

In the case of Coinkite, it was a particularly egregious lapse in security. The firm warned its customers on July 30 that hackers were exploiting a software bug that allowed them to reconstruct wallet “seed phrases,” which are sequences of random words that act as a master key to “cold” — or offline — wallets.

Coinkite promised in an email to Bloomberg in a followup story that it was racing to get a full picture of the embarrassing situation, saying it was working on “helping affected customers.” However, the company refused to estimate the scale of the losses, vowing to conduct a “post-mortem” at an unspecified future date.

“We’re not in a position to independently confirm total losses or validate the specific figures being reported by third parties,” the company told Bloomberg. “We won’t speculate on a number we can’t verify directly.”

The company also kicked off an “ongoing ecosystem-wide security audit” which has revealed “numerous critical bugs in key software systems across the ecosystem using frontier AI models.”

The cryptocurrency firm has since gone into full damage control mode as it investigates the major slipup.

In an “update on customer data retention” published on its website today, the company said that “due to legal obligations arising from the security incident, including the preservation of records that may be relevant to ongoing and anticipated legal proceedings, we have temporarily suspended our automated data-blanking process.”

“This means that customer records that would otherwise have been blanked under our standard schedule will be retained until further notice,” the company wrote.

More on crypto: Trump Boasts That He Can Profit Off Presidency as Much as He Wants: “I Found Out That Nobody Cared”

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Online advertising firm Adform suffered a supply-chain attack that delivered cryptocurrency-stealing scripts to websites using its ad platform, replacing wallet addresses copied to visitors' clipboards with ones controlled by an attacker. [...]

Three iPhone owners say a fake Sparrow Wallet app on the App Store led to $1.8 million in Bitcoin being stolen, and they’re suing Apple.

(via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)

Joe Rossignol (PDF):

The complaint alleges that Apple violated California’s Consumers Legal Remedies Act and other laws by failing to adequately review and monitor apps distributed through the App Store, despite marketing it as “a safe and trusted place to discover and download apps.” Due to these assurances in Apple’s marketing, the complaint said the plaintiffs trusted that a Sparrow Wallet app they downloaded from the App Store on iOS was legitimate, when in reality it was a fraudulent spoof designed to steal Bitcoin from users.

Sparrow Wallet is only available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. The popular Bitcoin wallet is not available on iOS, but scammers have released fake lookalike apps in the App Store that can trick users into giving up control of their funds.

[…]

Even when victims reported fraud, the lawsuit alleges that Apple often took little to no action, and it says other fake Sparrow apps remain in the App Store.

Sparrow Wallet developer Craig Raw has publicly addressed Apple’s slow response to multiple fake versions of his app appearing in the App Store. In a January 2024 social media post, for example, he said “there is still a scam ‘Sparrow Wallet’ app on the @Apple App Store, despite myself and others having reported it weeks ago.”

Craig Raw:

My attempt to protect users from scam apps on the @AppStore has gotten my Apple Developer account flagged for termination - ironically, for “dishonest activity”.

[…]

I’m the developer of the real Sparrow Wallet, a desktop app, and I hold the registered US trademarks for the name and logo. I have publicly warned @Apple and the community about these fake apps from early 2024, but they keep appearing.

The app @Apple flagged was a placeholder that was never published. Its only purpose was to warn users that Sparrow is desktop-only and that other “Sparrow” apps aren’t mine. This approach may have been misguided, but there was nothing dishonest about it.

Joe Rossignol:

In response to our request for comment, Apple said it has taken swift action to remove any apps impersonating Sparrow Wallet[…] Apple says it takes immediate action against apps that do not comply with its guidelines.

Previously:

• Hide My Email Vulnerability Exposes Real Address
• Sirius Pomodoro
• The App Store Scammer Strikes Back
• Sanctioned Entities Slip Through App Store Controls
• Some of the Apps in the App Store
• Fake Bitcoin Wallet in the App Store
• Fraudulent Rabby Wallet App

Update (2026-07-28): Sarah Perez:

The complaint targets one of Apple’s longtime competitive arguments: that its tight control over its App Store makes its platform safer than those offered by its rivals. The company has used this claim to push back against deregulation of the app ecosystem, including third-party app stores and sideloading.

“As part of a sustained marketing campaign, Apple has positioned itself, its products and services, as offering a level of security and trustworthiness superior to any competing technology company,” the new filing states. “This includes assurances about the safety of applications distributed through its App Store. By retaining exclusive control over which apps are permitted on Apple devices, Apple has structured its platform to ensure that consumers depend entirely on its promise of safety and reliability,” it reads.

With third-party app stores, there would be an incentive to do better vetting than Apple, and with sideloading it would be clear that the app was not being downloaded from sparrowwallet.com.

Update (2026-07-29): Jeff Johnson:

What struck me about Apple’s response is that it places the burden of curating the App Store on developers and users rather than taking responsibility for it. After all, Apple reviews every version of every app before it can be published to the App Store. If Apple is curating the App Store, then why do scams have to be reported and removed? One wonders how the scams get past Apple review in the first place, and even if Apple review “is not perfect” (a gross euphemism), how the second line of defense, Apple employees patrolling the App Store for scams that the review team missed, also fails. The burden of App Store curation should not fall to me, a lone indie developer.

Apple’s response also ignores that the indie developer did report the scams, multiple times.

Previously:

• Hidden Gambling Apps in Brazilian App Store

Prosecutors accused 21-year-old student Zyaire Wilkins of publishing on Steam several fake video games that contained malware, infecting thousands of victims, and stealing crypto from some of them.

U.S. prosecutors on Thursday charged a New York man and woman for their roles in a large-scale crime ring that laundered money stolen in cyber investment fraud scams. [...]

President Donald Trump’s son, Eric Trump, cofounded a crypto mining venture called American Bitcoin Corp last year — and it’s already in deep trouble.

As the Bitcoin community reels from a major downturn — the digital currency has plummeted by over 40 percent year to date — the company’s shares have plummeted right along with it, crashing over a whopping 95 percent compared to their peak.

On Wednesday, its stock price hit an all-time low of well under $6, down from a high of $140 last autumn.

That means Eric Trump’s six percent stake in the company has lost more than $600 million in market value, per Bloomberg‘s calculations, a bruising crypto play that perfectly illustrates the enormous risks of going all-in on extremely volatile digital assets.

After merging with an existing mining company, the company made the questionable decision last year to pivot from building data centers — an extremely lucrative industry that has seen massive interest as of late — to crypto mining, a gambling-like practice that’s far from guaranteed to make a profit.

Since then, the crypto world has had a rude awakening. As prices plunged, the industry made a sharp turn towards leasing all of that hardware to AI companies instead of mining Bitcoin.

However, American Bitcoin stuck to its guns, ultimately going down with the ship. Most of its assets are tied up in crypto-mining hardware and Bitcoin holdings, meaning it didn’t really have anywhere to run.

Eric Trump, meanwhile, is doubling down.

“Thrilled to announce American Bitcoin crossing the 8,000 BTC mark!” he gloated in a July 7 tweet. “The stacking continues.”

He also argued that it would be “beyond catastrophic” to sell its holdings during a recent podcast episode.

Despite Trump’s enthusiasm, American Bitcoin lost well over $100 million in the first quarter of this year. Whether the tide will turn and crypto will see another rise in value is ultimately a question of belief.

“Just hold on guys, just hold,” Eric Trump warned during this year’s Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas.

The elder Trump appears to have fared far better, reporting last week that he had made more than $1.4 billion in income from his family’s crypto ventures in 2025 — an astronomical conflict of interest, considering we’re talking about the president of the United States.

More on Trump and crypto: Trump Fans Confused by How Their Investments in His Crypto and Stock Are Now Worth a Tiny Fraction While He’s Getting Richer

The post Eric Trump Has Lost $600 Million of Daddy’s Money Betting on Crypto appeared first on Futurism.

The JaredFromSubway Ethereum MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) bot suffered a $15 million loss after an attacker manipulated the opportunity-detection logic by creating fake cryptocurrency trading opportunities. [...]

Cryptocurrency entered public discussion with a reputation for anonymity. Wallet addresses appeared disconnected from real world identities, and

Microsoft says it has detected new self-propagating malware that spreads through USB drives in search of cryptocurrency credentials, which it then sends to attacker-controlled servers.

The company named the worm Crypto Clipper because it monitors the contents of device clipboards for patterns consistent with wallet addresses or seed phrases. When found, the malware also takes five screenshots over a 10-second period. Both the credentials and the screenshots are then sent to the attacker through Tor, a network protocol that provides anonymous routing by sending traffic through redundant nodes so logs can’t capture both the sending and receiving IP addresses. Crypto Clipper establishes the Tor connection by using a SOCKS5 proxy, a network protocol that sends traffic through a proxy server, which then forwards it to its final destination.

A lightweight backdoor

“The execution of this clipper is notable because it does not depend on a traditional installer or exposed IP-based C2 infrastructure,” Microsoft said Thursday. “Instead, it deploys a portable Tor client, routes traffic through a local SOCKS5 proxy, and blends data theft with remote code execution, turning a financially motivated stealer into a lightweight backdoor.”

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Microsoft says it has detected new self-propagating malware that spreads through USB drives in search of cryptocurrency credentials, which it then sends to attacker-controlled servers.

The company named the worm Crypto Clipper because it monitors the contents of device clipboards for patterns consistent with wallet addresses or seed phrases. When found, the malware also takes five screenshots over a 10-second period. Both the credentials and the screenshots are then sent to the attacker through Tor, a network protocol that provides anonymous routing by sending traffic through redundant nodes so logs can’t capture both the sending and receiving IP addresses. Crypto Clipper establishes the Tor connection by using a SOCKS5 proxy, a network protocol that sends traffic through a proxy server, which then forwards it to its final destination.

A lightweight backdoor

“The execution of this clipper is notable because it does not depend on a traditional installer or exposed IP-based C2 infrastructure,” Microsoft said Thursday. “Instead, it deploys a portable Tor client, routes traffic through a local SOCKS5 proxy, and blends data theft with remote code execution, turning a financially motivated stealer into a lightweight backdoor.”

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Threat actors targeting cryptocurrency wallets have been distributing clipboard-stealing malware with self-spreading capabilities and using the Tor network to conceal communication. [...]

Binance Braces for EU Exit Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, is about to lose the right to

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned that criminals are using couriers to collect money from victims of cryptocurrency investment scams, also known as pig butchering or romance baiting. [...]

The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has announced sanctions against Nobitex, Iran's largest cryptocurrency exchange, for facilitating payments related to terrorist activities. [...]