Crypto World
How $VLAD farms its victims
When hackers hijacked Robinhood’s CEO’s X account, they did not run the usual smash-and-grab. They launched a token whose liquidity is locked forever, un-ruggable by design, and are collecting trading fees from it in perpetuity. The rug pull just evolved into a yield product, and the anti-scam infrastructure built the machine.
Summary
- Hackers compromised Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev’s X account on Thursday and promoted Vladhood ($VLAD) as the “official mascot” of Robinhood Chain, drawing 175,000 views in under 20 minutes and $22 million in trading volume.
- The operation was premeditated, not opportunistic: the token contract deployed 46 minutes before the hacked post, through the Pons launchpad, with Tenev’s own X profile listed as the token’s official website.
- The mechanism is the story: Pons locks a token’s liquidity permanently, making rug pulls impossible, but lets creators claim trading fees, so the attacker farms income from every trade, roughly $59,000 claimed in the first hours and still accruing, atop total proceeds estimated at $1.2-1.3 million.
- The design inverts a decade of scam economics: instead of one exit event, the scammer holds a perpetual annuity on victim activity, and the anti-rug protection that legitimizes the launchpad is precisely what guarantees the income.
- It is the second executive-account token scam on Robinhood Chain in eleven days, six days before the company’s earnings call, and it poses a question the industry has not answered: who is liable when scam-proofing infrastructure becomes the scam’s business model.
Crypto crime has a classical form, refined over a decade: create a token, manufacture credibility, collect the victims’ money, and vanish, the rug pull, a crime with a beginning, a middle, and above all an end. What happened on Thursday, when hackers seized the X account of Robinhood’s chief executive and pointed 15 million followers at a memecoin called Vladhood, had the beginning and the middle and then, deliberately, no end.
The attackers launched $VLAD through a launchpad whose signature safety feature locks a token’s liquidity forever, which means the token cannot be rugged, which means, and here is the inversion worth an entire article, the scam never has to stop. The locked pool collects trading fees on every swap, the launchpad pays those fees to the token’s creator, and the creator is the hacker, who called the fee-collection function six times in the first two hours and has no reason ever to stop calling it. The rug pull was a robbery. This is a toll booth, built on stolen credibility, operated in public, generating income for its architect with every trade, protected by the exact mechanism the industry built to protect traders. The Defiant’s on-chain forensics documented the machine within hours; what the machine means, for scam economics, for the launchpads, and for the brokerage whose chain now hosts its second executive-impersonation token in eleven days, is the subject here.
The operation, reconstructed
The timeline, assembled from on-chain records and the forensic work of The Defiant and Onchain Lens, settles the fact that reframes everything else: this was a single coordinated operation, planned around the account takeover, not a scammer riding a lucky hack.
At 12:38 pm ET on Thursday, a wallet with no prior history launched Vladhood through Pons, the busiest of the Pump.fun-style launchpads that colonized Robinhood Chain in its first month. The launch parameters included a detail that functions as a confession of premeditation: the token’s official website field listed Tenev’s X profile URL, meaning the creators configured the token around an account they did not yet publicly control. Forty-six minutes later, the post appeared on that account: Does Robinhood love memes? The answer is yes, introducing $VLAD as the official mascot of Robinhood Chain, falsely promising a Robinhood app listing, signed off, Welcome to the Hood, with the contract address attached. The credibility stack was complete: a verified account, a CEO’s voice, a chain the CEO actually launched three weeks earlier, and a claim, app listing, that sat exactly on the boundary of plausible.
The market did what engineered credibility makes it do. The post drew more than 175,000 views in under 20 minutes; the token ran up more than 90,000% from launch; volume reached $22 million across roughly 85,000 swaps in the main pool; the market cap touched somewhere between $4 million and $10 million depending on the snapshot; 5,266 holders and 137,000 transfers accumulated on a contract deployed that afternoon. Robinhood’s communications team confirmed the compromise roughly 41 minutes after the post and worked with X to delete it; the chain’s own explorer flagged the contract as a likely scam. On-chain monitors estimate wallets tied to the operation extracted around 650 to 690 ETH, between $1.2 million and $1.3 million, through the classic half of the play, early wallets, holding a reported 70% of supply, selling into the spike.
And then the part that makes this a new genre: the sale was not the payday’s end. It was the down payment.
The mechanism: anti-rug as annuity
To see the innovation, start with the protection it exploits, because the protection is real and the exploitation is parasitic on its virtue.
Launchpads in the Pump.fun lineage answered the rug pull structurally: when a token graduates to a trading pool, the platform locks the liquidity in a locker contract the creator cannot drain. The creator cannot pull the pool, so the classic exit, remove liquidity, collapse the price to zero, vanish, is mechanically impossible, which is the safety pitch that lets these platforms describe themselves as scam-resistant and lets traders ape into anonymous tokens with one category of fear removed. Pons implements the standard design with the standard incentive attached: locked liquidity still generates trading fees on every swap, and those fees are claimable by the token’s creator, a reasonable arrangement meant to reward legitimate builders whose tokens sustain volume.
Now run the $VLAD operation through that machinery. The attacker cannot rug, and does not need to. Every trade in the pool, the panic selling after the exposure, the bagholders averaging down, the day traders playing the volatility, the bots arbitraging the chaos, pays a fee, and the fee flows to the creator wallet on demand. Starting seven minutes after the fake post, the wallet called the locker’s fee-collection function six times over roughly two hours, netting about 31.6 ETH, roughly $59,000, and the meter is still running: the balance grows as long as anyone, for any reason, trades the token. The Defiant’s framing captures the inversion precisely: the wallet did not need to pull liquidity to cash out. The token never rugged. It just collects.
The economics deserve to be stated as the design they are. A rug pull monetizes credibility once, in a single extractive event that ends the scam and starts the manhunt. The locked-liquidity structure converts the same stolen credibility into an income-producing asset: a perpetual claim on the trading activity of a token that cannot die by its creator’s hand, whose infamy itself sustains volume, and whose victims’ every attempt to trade out of their position pays the person who put them in it. The scam has acquired a business model, and the business model was donated by the anti-scam infrastructure. Eleven days earlier, crypto.news covered the predecessor eleven days earlier, the SCATMAN operation, run through SpaceX’s hijacked accounts onto this same chain, which took $135,000 in the classical style and ended. $VLAD’s operators took ten times that in the opening hours and, structurally, have not ended at all. That delta, between a robbery and a franchise, is the evolution this incident marks.
The venue, the timing, and the liability question
The setting compounds the story, because the chain hosting this evolution belongs to a licensed brokerage six days from its earnings call.
Robinhood Chain’s first month, as this publication has documented in the venue’s first-month composition problem, delivered $700 million in assets, 300,000 daily active addresses, top-tier DEX volume, third place in seven-day chain revenue, and a composition problem: memecoins driving the overwhelming majority of activity against roughly $13 million in the tokenized real-world assets the chain was built for. The scam wave is the composition problem’s sharpest edge, SCATMAN through hijacked SpaceX accounts on July 12, a launchpad going dark mid-boom with an estimated $12 million in fees, and now the chain’s own founder’s face on its most sophisticated fraud, a token the chain’s explorer flags as a scam while the chain’s fee mechanics, this is the uncomfortable part, collect revenue on every one of its trades, as does the sequencer’s operator. A brokerage whose regulatory identity is bringing compliant rails to digital assets is earning protocol revenue, however small, on a fraud impersonating its own CEO, and its earnings call, where management must frame the chain’s first month for analysts and its Say-platform retail questioners, now has its opening exhibit. That is the earnings call this incident now precedes.
The liability question is the one the industry has not answered, and $VLAD converts it from hypothetical to operational. The launchpad designed the locker; the locker guarantees the scammer’s income; the design choice that prevents one crime funds another. Is Pons, which profits from launch fees and whose factory contract the explorer flagged, a neutral tool provider, the Section 230 of token creation, or does operating a fee-annuity machine that any account thief can drive create obligations, to freeze creator-fee claims on flagged tokens, to require identity for fee withdrawal, to build the kill switch the anti-rug design deliberately omitted? Every answer has a cost: freezable fees reintroduce the trusted operator the architecture exists to remove, identity requirements gut the permissionless launch model that generates the volume, and doing nothing leaves the annuity running. The same trilemma applies one level up, to the chain, and one level higher, to X, whose verified-account security has now been the entry point for two nine-figure-audience token frauds in eleven days on the chain the scams chose alone, part of a lineage running from the 2024 celebrity-account wave through this month’s fake Armstrong coin. Executive social accounts have become, functionally, financial infrastructure, secured like consumer products.
The economics of borrowed trust, quantified
Step back from the mechanism and the incident yields something rarer than a forensic timeline: a clean measurement of what stolen credibility is worth per minute, and a market structure that prices it.
Run the numbers as a conversion funnel. The hijacked account held roughly 15 million followers; the post survived approximately 20 minutes in primary distribution and drew 175,000 views; the token processed $22 million in volume and accumulated 5,266 holders within hours; the operators extracted $1.2 to $1.3 million in direct proceeds plus the ongoing fee stream. That is roughly $65,000 of extraction per minute of post uptime, about $7.40 per view, and around $250 of eventual volume per view, numbers that explain, better than any security advisory, why executive account compromise has become a professionalized industry with its own supply chain: access brokers who source the credentials, operators who build the token infrastructure in advance, and distribution specialists who time the post. The 46-minute pre-deployment is the industrial tell, the attack was inventory waiting for its distribution moment, and the same funnel mathematics applied to the SCATMAN operation, a smaller account constellation and a cruder mechanism, yielded a tenth of the proceeds, which is exactly the relationship a maturing industry’s cohort analysis would predict: returns scale with audience quality and mechanism sophistication, and both are improving.
The funnel also identifies where defense actually binds, and it is not where the industry spends. Post-hoc measures, explorer flags, account restoration, post deletion, all activated within the hour here, and the operation was profitable within seven minutes; the deletion ended distribution after the extraction window had already closed. The binding constraint is upstream: the account security that gates the distribution moment, and the launch infrastructure that lets the monetization machine be assembled anonymously in advance. Which is why the two reforms with actual leverage are unfashionable ones, hardware-key mandates and session-hygiene requirements for accounts above an audience threshold, effectively treating large verified accounts as the financial infrastructure they now are, and creator-fee escrow periods on launchpads, a delay between fee accrual and fee claim long enough for flags to propagate, which would have converted $VLAD’s annuity into a frozen exhibit without touching the permissionless launch itself. Neither reform requires identifying anyone; both attack the funnel’s throughput rather than its aftermath. The industry’s current posture, in which a nine-figure-audience account is secured by whatever its owner chose and a flagged scam’s fees flow to its operator in real time, is not a policy. It is a bounty schedule, published daily, and Thursday’s operators simply read it.
What to watch
The fee meter. The creator wallet’s claims are public and ongoing. Whether the balance crosses six figures, and whether anyone, Pons, the chain, a court, ever interrupts it, is the cleanest measure of whether the industry treats this as an incident or a precedent. As of the first day, nothing in the architecture can stop it.
The launchpad’s response. Pons faces the trilemma first: freeze mechanics, identity gates, or explicit neutrality. Its choice, and whether Robinhood Chain pressures it, writes the first draft of the fee-annuity era’s rules, and every copycat is watching. The design is trivially replicable on any chain with a locked-liquidity launchpad, which is all of them.
The earnings call, July 29. Whether analysts or Say questioners force management to address the scam wave on the record, and whether the answer gestures at curation, moderation, or enforcement, would mark the first time a public brokerage defines its responsibility for frauds conducted on infrastructure it operates and profits from.
The security postmortem. How the attackers took the account, SIM swap, session theft, insider access, matters for every executive in the industry, because the $VLAD operation’s real innovation was pairing patient token engineering with account compromise as a single planned instrument. The 46-minute gap between deployment and post is the tell: this was manufactured, and manufacturing scales.
The rug pull is dying the way all crimes die, by evolving into something the law has not named yet. $VLAD’s architects understood what the industry’s own safety engineering had built: a machine that converts stolen credibility into permanent income, legally ambiguous, mechanically unstoppable, and hosted on the most scrutinized new chain in crypto. The $59,000 in claimed fees is a small number. The design it proves out is not, because every locked pool on every launchpad on every chain is now, visibly, a potential annuity for whoever can manufacture one hour of borrowed trust, and the industry that built the locks has not built the thing that comes after: a way to stop paying the thief.
A closing note on the naming problem, because it will shape the response. The legal system has vocabulary for the rug pull: theft, wire fraud, market manipulation, each with elements prosecutors know how to plead against an exit event. The fee annuity fits none of them cleanly. The initial impersonation is straightforwardly criminal, identity theft and securities-adjacent fraud in the account takeover and the false listing claim, and any eventual defendant will face those counts. But the ongoing income stream is stranger: after the exposure, every subsequent trader in $VLAD acts with full knowledge that the token is flagged, the fees are disclosed by the mechanism itself, and the operator extracts value not by deceiving anyone still present but by having once deceived people no longer trading. Whether collecting contractually-defined fees from a pool of informed speculators constitutes ongoing fraud, unjust enrichment, or merely distasteful legality is a question no court has answered, and the answer determines whether the annuity can be seized, whether launchpads face aiding liability for paying it out, and whether the design spreads with impunity. It is another case of when mechanism design meets adversaries. The industry’s enforcement history suggests the question gets answered slowly and by the worst possible case: some future iteration of this design, at ten times the scale, attached to a fraud egregious enough to force the doctrine. Until then, the $VLAD wallet keeps calling its function, the locker keeps paying, and the gap between what the mechanism permits and what the law has named sits open, collecting fees.
Frequently asked questions
What happened to Vlad Tenev’s X account?
Hackers took control of the Robinhood CEO’s verified X account on Thursday, July 23, and posted a promotion for a fake memecoin called Vladhood ($VLAD), presenting it as the official mascot of Robinhood Chain and falsely claiming it would be listed on the Robinhood app. The post drew over 175,000 views in under 20 minutes before removal. Robinhood confirmed the compromise about 41 minutes after the post and said it was working with X to restore access.
Was this an opportunistic hack?
No, it was premeditated and coordinated. On-chain records show the token contract was deployed through the Pons launchpad 46 minutes before the fraudulent post appeared, and the launch configuration listed Tenev’s own X profile as the token’s official website, meaning the operation was built around an account takeover that had not yet happened publicly. The account compromise and token launch were parts of a single planned instrument.
How much did the attackers make?
Two figures describe it. On-chain monitors estimate total proceeds of roughly 650 to 690 ETH, about $1.2 to $1.3 million, largely from early wallets, holding a reported 70% of supply, selling into the spike. Separately, the locked liquidity pool has paid the creator wallet approximately $59,000 in trading fees in the first hours, claimed across six withdrawals, and that stream continues to accrue with every trade.
Why is the token impossible to rug pull, and why does that matter?
The Pons launchpad locks a token’s liquidity in a locker contract the creator cannot drain, a standard anti-rug protection. That makes the classic exit scam impossible, but the locked pool still generates trading fees that the creator can claim. The attacker therefore holds a perpetual income stream from all trading in the token, converting a one-time scam into an ongoing annuity that the protection itself guarantees.
How does this compare to the SCATMAN incident?
SCATMAN, eleven days earlier, used hijacked SpaceX and Starlink accounts to promote a token on the same chain and extracted roughly $135,000 in the traditional pump-and-dump style, an operation with an end. $VLAD extracted roughly ten times more in its opening hours and structurally has no end, because the fee stream persists. The two incidents mark an evolution in method on the same venue within two weeks.
Does Robinhood bear responsibility for scams on its chain?
That is the unresolved question the incident sharpens. The chain is permissionless, and Robinhood did not authorize the token, but the network and its sequencer earn revenue on all activity, including fraud, and the chain’s explorer flagging cannot stop trading or fee claims. The launchpad faces the same trilemma: freezing fees or requiring identity would compromise the permissionless model, while inaction leaves the annuity running. No platform has yet defined its obligations.
What should users take from this?
That verified executive accounts are now a primary fraud vector: two major incidents in eleven days used hijacked official accounts, and posts announcing surprise tokens should be treated as compromises by default, checked against official company channels, which stayed silent in both cases. Locked liquidity means a token cannot be rugged; it does not mean the token is legitimate, and in this design, trading a flagged token pays its creator.
Could this scam model spread?
Easily, which is its significance. Any launchpad that combines locked liquidity with creator-claimable fees, the dominant design across chains, can host the same structure, and the required ingredient, an hour of borrowed credibility, can come from any compromised account with reach. Until platforms build mechanisms to interrupt fee claims on flagged tokens, each such pool is a potential perpetual payout for whoever manufactures the trust. This is educational analysis, not financial or legal advice.
Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. It describes an ongoing security incident based on on-chain data and reporting available at the time of writing, and figures may change as investigations continue. Never interact with tokens promoted through unverified or compromised channels. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 24, 2026.
Bitcoin mining’s annualized electricity demand rose to about 190 terawatt-hours in December 2025, up 38% from 138 the in June 2024, according to preliminary research reported by theEnergyMag.
Summary
- Bitcoin mining electricity use rose 38% to 190 TWh between June 2024 and December 2025.
- Hydropower became mining’s largest energy source as low-carbon power reached 59.4% of the reported mix.
- Only 10% of surveyed miners had already allocated power to AI or accelerated computing services.
Alexander Neumueller of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance presented the figures at the Energy Investors Forum in Dallas. Cambridge expects to publish the second edition of its Digital Mining Industry Report later in 2026.
The research also found that hydropower had overtaken natural gas as Bitcoin mining’s largest single energy source. Low-carbon power supplied 59.4% of the reported mining mix, up from 52.4% in the previous study. However, total estimated greenhouse-gas emissions still increased by 20%, from about 40 million to 48 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent.
Hydropower takes the largest share of mining power
The 2025 Cambridge Digital Mining Industry Report found that natural gas supplied 38.2% of surveyed miners’ electricity, making it the largest single source at the time. Renewables provided 42.6% in total, while nuclear power added 9.8%. Coal’s share had fallen to 8.9%, down from 36.6% in the earlier 2022 estimate.
The preliminary update changes that order. Hydropower now ranks ahead of natural gas, although Cambridge has not released the full breakdown for each source. Neumueller linked part of the change to stronger survey coverage in hydro-rich markets such as Ethiopia.Ethiopia expanded Bitcoin mining around low-cost electricity from the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
Electricity demand rises faster than emissions
The network’s annualized power use increased by about 52 TWh between the two reference points. Annualized demand measures the electricity Bitcoin mining would use over a year if the December 2025 rate continued. It does not mean miners consumed exactly 190 TWh during the 2025 calendar year.
Emissions rose more slowly than electricity demand because miners reported using a lower-carbon power mix. Even so, Cambridge’s estimate still increased from roughly 40 million to 48 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent. The cleaner mix slowed the rate of emissions growth, but it did not offset higher overall electricity consumption.
More mining machines joined the network during the measured period, raising total computing power. Newer hardware can perform more calculations for each unit of electricity, but efficiency gains did not fully counter the increase in hashrate. Cambridge’s Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index tracks how prices, transaction fees, mining equipment and network difficulty can change estimated electricity demand over time.
Preliminary figures carry survey limits
Cambridge based the new estimates mainly on responses from mining companies representing slightly more than half of global Bitcoin hashrate. The wider coverage gives researchers a larger sample than the first report. However, the final publication may revise some figures after Cambridge completes further checks.
The 2025 report also warned that survey participation can distort geographic estimates. U.S. companies supplied a large share of responses, which likely overstated the country’s portion of global mining activity. The latest rise in reported hydropower may partly reflect better coverage of miners in Ethiopia and other markets that rely more heavily on hydroelectric generation.
Cambridge’s earlier study estimated 39.8 million tonnes of emissions using its survey-based method. A separate location-based model produced a much higher estimate of 69.6 million tonnes. The gap shows that results depend on assumptions about mining locations, electricity contracts, grid mixes and the use of stranded or flared energy.
Miners explore AI, but deployments remain limited
The new survey also examined whether Bitcoin miners are shifting power capacity into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. About 10% of respondents said they had already allocated some power to AI or accelerated computing. More than 40% of the remaining miners said they were actively exploring the option.
Neumueller cautioned that “intent to look into it is not commitment to deploy.” AI data centers need costly networking, cooling and reliability systems that basic Bitcoin mining sites may not have. Miners can quickly reduce Bitcoin loads when electricity prices rise, while AI customers usually require steady power and stronger service guarantees.
Still, almost nine in ten respondents expected AI and HPC diversification to gain ground over the next several years. As crypto.news reported, listed miners have already announced more than $70 billion in AI and HPC contracts as they seek steadier revenue outside Bitcoin production.
The change is already visible in some company results. TeraWulf generated more revenue from HPC hosting than Bitcoin mining during the first quarter of 2026. It reported $21 million from HPC services, compared with less than $13 million from digital asset mining.
The Cambridge findings show two changes taking place together. Bitcoin mining uses more electricity, while hydropower and other low-carbon sources account for a larger share. At the same time, mining companies are assessing whether their power connections and sites can support AI services. Cambridge’s full report will provide a detailed energy breakdown and final methodology later in 2026.
The XRP Ledger added about $2.6 billion in tokenized real-world asset value during the past six months, excluding stablecoins, according to data from RWA.xyz.
Summary
- XRP Ledger added $2.6 billion in RWA value, ranking second among blockchains over six months.
- JMWH alone represents $2.23 billion, making tokenized energy XRPL’s largest real-world asset category by value.
- Most XRPL RWA value is represented, while distributed assets total only about $323 million currently.
That placed XRPL second among tracked blockchain networks for net RWA inflows during the period. BNB Chain ranked first with about $3 billion, while Stellar followed XRPL with roughly $2.1 billion.
The increase lifted XRPL’s combined distributed and represented RWA value to about $4.38 billion on July 26. The RWA.xyz dashboard listed $323.21 million in distributed assets and $4.06 billion in represented assets. The network also held $995.12 million in stablecoins, taking its broader total above $5.37 billion when those tokens are included.
XRP Ledger moves higher in RWA rankings
The six-month figures placed XRPL ahead of several larger smart-contract networks for new tokenized asset value. Solana added about $1.6 billion, while Avalanche attracted roughly $972 million. Ethereum remained the largest home for distributed tokenized assets, but its net addition during the measured period was lower at about $424 million.
The latest rise continues a trend visible earlier in 2026.XRPL moved into sixth place in the tokenized RWA rankings in February after adding $354 million in one month. A crypto.news report in July found that tokenized assets on the ledger had passed $3 billion as developers added compliance tools, permissioned trading and proposed lending features.
Tokenized energy drives most of XRPL’s total
Justoken’s JMWH product accounts for the largest share of XRPL’s RWA value. RWA.xyz valued the represented commodity asset at $2.229 billion on July 26. Each JMWH token represents one megawatt-hour of contracted energy output. The issuer mints tokens against energy agreements and burns them after the electricity is delivered and consumed.
The asset also shows why represented value and active onchain liquidity are not the same measure. RWA.xyz recorded only 19 JMWH holders, one active address over 30 days, no monthly transfers and no monthly transfer volume. The token therefore works mainly as a blockchain record for energy contracts rather than a widely traded asset. JMWH alone accounts for about 51% of XRPL’s total RWA value.
Justoken said it had tokenized more than $2.84 billion in total value across its products. In March, the company announced an energy tokenization project with Argentina-based power producer YPF Luz using the XRP Ledger. The wider product links blockchain records with contracts for electricity generation and consumption.
Distributed assets and stablecoins expand
XRPL’s distributed asset segment remains much smaller than its represented segment, but several financial products now operate on the network. RWA.xyz listed about $323 million in distributed assets. Ondo Finance, Braza Crypto, OpenEden Digital, Société Générale-FORGE and other issuers contribute to this category through tokenized Treasuries, credit products and regulated digital money.
Ripple’s RLUSD remains the largest stablecoin platform on XRPL. RWA.xyz showed about $894.7 million in RLUSD on the network, while all XRPL stablecoins totalled about $995.12 million. Braza Crypto ranked behind RLUSD with products worth about $83.4 million. Stablecoin transfer volume reached $4 billion over 30 days.
A May pilot also tested how tokenized funds can connect XRPL with bank payment rails. As crypto.news reported, Ripple redeemed part of its holdings in Ondo Finance’s OUSG Treasury product on XRPL. Mastercard sent settlement instructions to Kinexys by J.P. Morgan, which moved U.S. dollars to Ripple’s Singapore bank account.
Ondo said the asset leg settled in under five seconds. Ondo Finance President Ian De Bode called it the “first time tokenized U.S. Treasuries have settled across borders and banks in near real time.” The transaction combined a public blockchain asset transfer with traditional bank settlement.
RWA growth does not equal direct XRP demand
RWA growth measures asset value recorded or issued on the ledger. It does not show how much XRP investors purchased or how often they used the native token. Most institutional products can use XRPL for issuance and settlement while paying only small network fees in XRP. Stablecoins such as RLUSD can also handle the cash side of transactions without using XRP as a bridge asset.
The asset mix also matters when comparing networks. Represented assets refer to offchain holdings or contracts recorded on a blockchain, while distributed assets are issued and held more directly onchain. XRPL’s represented value accounts for more than 92% of its non-stablecoin RWA total. JMWH alone drives more than half of that figure.
Even so, XRPL has added more issuers and asset types during 2026. Its RWA count reached 373, while the number of tracked holders rose 14.29% over 30 days to 176. The ledger’s stablecoin holders reached about 60,080. These figures show a broader tokenization base, although ownership remains concentrated in several products.
Ripple and XRPL developers are also building infrastructure for regulated markets. Crypto.news reported that permissioned domains, credentials and a permissioned exchange layer now support identity-based access rules on the public ledger. Proposed lending standards could add fixed-term credit products if validators approve them. The next stage will depend on whether issuers turn the growing asset base into regular transfers, trading and settlement activity.
Shiba Inu rose 36% to about $0.0000057 on Sunday, adding roughly a billion dollars to its market value in a day, with no announcement or development to account for it.
The token now carries a market cap near $3.4 billion on almost $380 million of daily volume, its highest turnover ranking in months.
Nothing has emerged from Shibarium, the network’s layer-2, and the wider dog-token complex has lagged. Dogecoin gained 6% over the same stretch, and smaller-cap tokens moved as much as 10%, which pointed to something specific to SHIB rather than a rotation into memecoins.
South Korean buying stands out. Upbit’s SHIB/KRW pair is the single largest market at about $62 million, over a tenth of global volume, and it prints a slight premium to Binance and the other dollar venues.
The country’s traders are known to drive exuberant rallies in high-volatility tokens, and the token’s climb fits that pattern, with a first push late Saturday, nine flat hours, then a second move through the Asian morning.
Bitcoin’s price climbed slightly on Saturday evening after US President Donald Trump halted the planned attacks on Iran, and jumped to $64,500 before it retreated slightly.
Shiba Inu has stolen the show from the larger-cap alts, rocketing by over 35%. Most larger-cap alts are also in the green but in a more modest manner.
BTC Defends $64K
Last Monday began with a somewhat expected leg down that drove bitcoin south from $65,000 to $63,750. However, the asset reacted well, defended that support level, and jumped by two grand by the end of the day. Tuesday was even better in terms of gains, as the cryptocurrency jumped to roughly $67,000 on some exchanges to mark a monthly high.
After gaining over $3,000 in just over 24 hours, BTC was primed for a correction given the overall market landscape. It started to lose value gradually and dropped below $65,000 on Thursday. It initiated another breakout attempt on Friday, but it was stopped at $65,750. The subsequent rejection drove it south by $2,000.
The bulls finally intervened and didn’t allow another leg down. Instead, BTC showed some resilience around that level and remained at around $64,000 on Saturday and climbed to $64,500 later that day after Trump ordered the US military to stand down while waiting for the resumed talks between Iran and Oman.
For now, BTC stands above $64,000, with its market cap returning to $1.290 trillion on CG. Its dominance over the alts has risen to almost 57%.
SHIB Pumps Hard
In a rare reminder of the meme coin mania from a few years ago, Shiba Inu’s largest native token has rocketed by over 35% today to mark a two-month peak. PEPE is the other big gainer from the meme coin niche, surging by 9.6% daily and 26% in the past month. Dogecoin has risen by 5.8% to $0.073. VVV sits among the meme coin gainers, surging by 12% to $14.5. AVAX has pumped by 9% as well.
The rest of the larger-cap alts have posted significantly more modest increases. ETH is close to $1,900 after a 1.5% jump, XRP is back at $1.10, while HYPE is up by 2.5%, but it still trades below $60. ZEC and CC are also in the green.
The total crypto market cap has increased slightly since yesterday, but it’s still below $2.3 trillion on CG.
The post These Meme Coins Steal the Show as Bitcoin Defends $64K Support: Weekend Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.
BitMart will wind down its cryptocurrency exchange, ending all trading services on Aug. 26 before ceasing operations entirely on Jan. 31, 2027.
“After a careful evaluation of the Company’s operating conditions, market environment, and future strategic direction, BitMart has made the difficult decision to commence an orderly wind-down of its trading platform operations,” it said in a Sunday notice.
Under the shutdown plan, BitMart has stopped accepting new user registrations and deposits, while futures trading has entered reduce-only mode and spot markets no longer accept new orders.
BitMart joins a growing list of crypto trading platforms that have announced plans to close shop in recent months. Among them are BitMEX and Dango, which both said this week they would shut down their respective trading platforms.
Related: As BitMEX exits, analysts warn crypto consolidation is accelerating
BMX sinks amid withdrawal complaints
BitMart’s native token, BMX, lost nearly 70% of its value while users reported delayed withdrawals from the exchange.
BMX traded at about $0.09464 at the time of writing, down nearly 70% from about $0.31 late Friday. The token fell as low as $0.1058 early Saturday before extending its losses.
BMX resumes losses after Saturday’s brief recovery, falling below $0.10. Source: CoinGecko
Several users on X reported that withdrawals were taking longer than usual, with some claiming that Tether USDt (USDT) withdrawal requests remained pending for hours.
Arkham data showed wallets attributed to BitMart held about $71 million in crypto assets on Sunday, down from roughly $102 million on July 6. About $41.5 million was in stablecoin banking platform WeFi’s WFI tokens, while the tracked wallets held about $91,000 in USDT.
BitMart’s USDT balance over the past month. Source: Arkham
In its wind-down announcement, BitMart said some withdrawal requests could be subject to additional compliance and security reviews, potentially extending processing times.
BitMart did not respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment before publication.
Related: BitMEX hit with 623 BTC lawsuit on day it announces shutdown
BMX? BMEX? BitMEX?
Some users on X also appeared to confuse BitMart and its BMX token with BitMEX.
On Saturday, an X user in the Mandarin-speaking crypto community who goes by “Brother Lu” drew attention to BMX’s price drop while speculating about its cause.
“The whole internet was posting yesterday that it was shutting down on Sept. 30. Did you just wake up?” another X user replied, according to a machine translation.
The reference to Sept. 30 did not match BitMEX’s Sept. 23 shutdown date announced Thursday. BitMEX’s own token, BMEX, fell 90% shortly after the notice.
Several other users in the Mandarin-speaking community also mixed up BMX with BitMEX.
It was not immediately clear whether the confusion had any impact on BMX trading.
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The Bitcoin Policy Institute has joined the U.S. State Department’s Freedom Tech Excellence Program as a founding partner.
Summary
- Bitcoin Policy Institute staff will support temporary State Department assignments focused on digital freedom worldwide.
- Palantir, Anduril, and a human-rights foundation joined BPI as founding partners in the new programme.
- FTEP covers online expression, privacy tools, digital surveillance, scams, and responsible artificial intelligence governance standards.
The programme will place private-sector specialists inside the department for limited assignments tied to digital freedom and freedom of expression. Palantir Technologies, Anduril Industries and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation are the other founding partners.
BPI announced its role in a July 24 post on X. It said participating employees would work with State Department experts on online speech, privacy tools, digital surveillance and responsible artificial intelligence governance. The announcement did not state how many BPI employees will take part, when placements will begin or which offices will receive them.
State Department opens roles to outside specialists
The State Department describes FTEP as a talent partnership that brings private-sector workers into government for fixed periods. Participants remain linked to their organisations while supporting diplomatic projects in areas where the department wants more technical knowledge. They will also gain direct experience in foreign policy and international development.
The department lists several possible work areas. They include protecting online freedom of expression, countering unlawful surveillance and scams, expanding access to encryption and virtual private networks, supporting responsible AI governance and improving online safety for children. The programme is not a Bitcoin reserve, payment system or crypto licensing project.
BPI said the programme would allow its employees to “work alongside State Department experts and defend digital freedoms around the world.” However, neither party has released individual assignments. The scope may vary according to each participant’s skills and the needs of diplomatic teams.
BPI brings Bitcoin and privacy research into diplomacy
Founded in 2021, the Bitcoin Policy Institute describes itself as a non-partisan, non-profit research organisation. Its work covers Bitcoin policy, national security, financial inclusion, energy and human rights. The group has argued that encryption and open monetary networks can help journalists, dissidents and users in countries where governments restrict speech or financial access.
BPI’s inclusion does not mean the State Department will promote Bitcoin in every FTEP project. The official description focuses on broad digital-policy questions. BPI staff may advise on privacy technology, censorship-resistant systems or financial access, but the government has not named a Bitcoin deployment linked to the programme.
The group will continue its wider policy work outside FTEP. Its Freedom Tech DC summit is scheduled for September 22 and 23 in Washington. The event will bring together policymakers, researchers, investors and technology builders to discuss money, speech and computing systems. The summit is separate from the State Department partnership.
Palantir, Anduril and rights group join as partners
Palantir and Anduril bring experience in data software, defence technology and government contracts. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation works on human rights, political repression and authoritarian governments. Together, the four organisations provide policy, engineering, national-security and civil-society backgrounds.
The department has not explained how it will divide projects among the partners. It has also not listed the countries, embassies or bureaus involved. Those details will determine whether placements focus on policy research, technical tools, staff training or overseas programmes.
FTEP uses limited-term assignments rather than permanent appointments. That structure can bring specialised staff into government without creating full-time roles. Partner employees may later return to their organisations with direct knowledge of diplomatic processes and government needs.
Bitcoin reserve advocacy remains a separate policy track
BPI has supported efforts to turn President Donald Trump’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve order into federal law. Trump signed the executive order establishing the reserve on March 6, 2025. It created a reserve based on Bitcoin forfeited through criminal or civil proceedings and directed officials to study budget-neutral ways to acquire more BTC.
Senator Cynthia Lummis reintroduced the Bitcoin Act in March 2025 at a BPI-organised event. The bill proposed that the U.S. government acquire one million BTC, but it had not completed passage when FTEP was announced. The State Department programme does not advance that bill or give BPI authority over federal Bitcoin.
The reserve also remains under development. As crypto.news reported in July 2026, federal officials were still reviewing which agency could legally control the assets and how custody should work. The White House order named the Treasury, while later discussions also involved the Commerce and Justice departments.
FTEP therefore gives BPI a role in a foreign-policy talent programme, not control over U.S. crypto policy. Its work will centre on assigned digital-freedom projects. Further updates should show how many experts take part, where they serve and which technologies the programme uses.
BMX, the platform’s token, fell to about 8 cents, down 58% over 24 hours, cutting its market value to roughly $27 million. The token was already down about 70% over the past year, so Sunday’s drop extended a long decline rather than starting one.
The exchange’s trading figures are significant, despite the closure. BitMart reported about $1.6 billion in 24-hour volume, up 51% from the previous period, with bitcoin accounting for nearly half of it. That jump more plausibly reflects users unwinding positions and moving funds out than any fresh demand, but it leaves open why a platform still clearing that kind of flow is closing.
Meanwhile, the withdrawal terms carry more friction than a routine exit. BitMart said requests may face additional review covering identity verification, device and IP checks, withdrawal-address screening, source-of-funds questions and sanctions checks, and warned that processing could stretch if request volumes spike.
BitMart lost about $196 million to a hot-wallet breach in December 2021, one of the larger exchange hacks of that cycle, and covered customer losses at the time.
In another relatively boring and uneventful trading day during the weekend, in which most cryptocurrencies have remained sideways, the second-largest meme coin by market cap exploded in a rare reminder of what the niche used to do a few years ago.
Some of the potential reasons behind this massive surge seem to be related to a returning whale and other on-chain factors.
SHIB’s Big Pump
The popular meme coin, once touted as the Dogecoin killer, actually began its ascent yesterday evening. It stood below $0.0000042 before it shot up to $0.0000052 and to $0.0000058 earlier today, posting a massive double-digit surge. The latter became its highest price tag in just over two months.
Recall that the token was rejected at $0.0000067 in May, and the subsequent painful correction drove it south toward $0.000004, which translated into a multi-year low. As such, SHIB has now returned to the top 30 alts by market cap as its own has jumped to over $3.3 billion on CoinGecko.
Moreover, it has solidified its spot as the second-largest meme coin by that metric, even though a few others have posted impressive gains as well. PEPE is up by 9%, M has added 4%, while DOGE has jumped by 5.5%.
Why Is That?
Surging by double digits on a random Sunday used to be the norm in the meme coin space years ago. However, the niche has fallen out of investors’ grace lately, with interest dwindling over time. As such, it’s intriguing to see what the latest developments in the Shiba Inu ecosystem are that might have propelled this rally.
The one thing that stands out on X is the behavior of a certain SHIB whale who has resumed accumulating after over half a year of inactivity. According to reports, the unknown market participant has splashed $125,000 to accumulate over 30 billion tokens. Although one standalone purchase cannot guarantee a 35% jump, it can be regarded as the market signal other investors are waiting for to join.
The SHIB token burn mechanism also shows a massive surge in the past day of over 3,200% (and 500% weekly). This means that the actual number of coins in circulation has declined violently, which is typically a bullish signal.
SHIB coins stored on crypto exchanges have also fallen in the past few weeks, according to data from CryptoQuant. Lastly, some analysts argued that the asset has broken out of key resistance levels and trendlines, while the community rejoices in the move, indicating that it’s finally paying off after “years of accumulation.”
The post Shiba Inu Price Soars 35% on a Dull Day as Whale Returns With Massive SHIB Purchase appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Robinhood is reportedly holding talks with Crypto.com about adding the exchange’s event contracts to its prediction markets hub.
Summary
- Robinhood reportedly wants Crypto.com contracts to broaden its prediction market exchange network and product range.
- Any agreement could deepen Robinhood’s competition with Kalshi while reducing reliance on a single provider.
- Federal and state regulators remain divided over who controls sports-linked event contracts across the U.S.
The proposed arrangement would let Robinhood users trade yes-or-no contracts supplied by Crypto.com, according to people familiar with the discussions cited by The Wall Street Journal. Neither company has announced an agreement, and the report said the talks may not result in a completed deal.
https://x.com/WSJmarkets/status/2080785057954902434?s=20
The discussions come as Robinhood builds a wider network of exchanges rather than relying on one source of event contracts. A company spokesperson said Robinhood “will continue to partner with multiple exchanges” to give customers a broad and reliable market. The strategy could add Crypto.com alongside Kalshi, ForecastEx and Rothera, the exchange created through Robinhood’s venture with Susquehanna International Group.
Robinhood seeks more prediction market suppliers
Robinhood launched its prediction markets hub in March 2025 with contracts routed through Kalshi, a Commodity Futures Trading Commission-regulated exchange. Its products cover outcomes tied to sports, politics, economics and other public events. Robinhood later added ForecastEx and began routing contracts through Rothera in June 2026.
Rothera gives Robinhood a closer link to the exchange layer because Robinhood owns the venture with Susquehanna. The company said in June that the new route lowered customer trading costs. Adding Crypto.com would create another source of contracts and could help Robinhood maintain product availability when one exchange lacks a market or faces a service issue.
Crypto.com expands event contract distribution
Crypto.com already offers prediction trading through Crypto.com Derivatives North America, a CFTC-regulated exchange and clearinghouse. Its contracts use a simple yes-or-no format based on future events. The company also launched OG Prediction Markets as a separate platform in February 2026 and has expanded distribution through partners.
In June, FanDuel Predicts expanded its offering with sports, entertainment and combination contracts supplied through Crypto.com and OG Prediction Markets. Crypto.com has also announced a planned prediction-market integration with Truth Social, although The Wall Street Journal reported that the product had not launched by July 24. A Robinhood deal would place its contracts before another large retail trading audience.
Kalshi rivalry grows as revenue forecasts rise
Robinhood and Kalshi started as distribution partners, but their businesses now overlap more directly. Kalshi has expanded beyond standard event contracts, while Robinhood has built Rothera and added more exchange partners. Kalshi chief executive Tarek Mansour described Robinhood as both a partner and a competitor, adding, “We’ll see who ends up with a better product.”
The reported Crypto.com talks arrived after Bernstein raised its Robinhood share-price target to $160 from $130. The firm estimated that Robinhood’s prediction-market revenue could reach about $1.7 billion by 2028. As crypto.news previously reported, Bernstein also forecast $586 million in Robinhood prediction-market revenue for 2026, supported by higher World Cup activity and Rothera volumes.
Bernstein expects total prediction-market trading volume to grow from about $51 billion in 2025 to $1 trillion by 2030. The projection assumes wider distribution, more institutional use and clearer rules. Sports contracts currently generate much of the activity, but analysts expect economic, political and business contracts to form a larger share over time.
State and federal regulators remain divided
Robinhood’s possible expansion comes during a legal fight over who can regulate event contracts. The CFTC says federal law gives it exclusive authority over commodity derivatives traded on registered exchanges. In 2026, the agency sued several states after officials moved against prediction-market operators.
States argue that some sports-related contracts function like gambling and should follow local licensing, age and consumer-protection rules. Wisconsin’s actions included complaints against Crypto.com and Robinhood, along with Kalshi, Polymarket and Coinbase.the CFTC responded by seeking to block the state’s enforcement and preserve federal oversight.
The conflict has produced different rulings and restrictions across the country. New York sued Coinbase and Gemini over claims that their event-contract products violated state gambling rules. The CFTC later filed its own case against New York and maintained that federal law takes priority.
Any Robinhood-Crypto.com arrangement would still depend on contract availability, regulatory status and the final terms between the companies. Robinhood has not confirmed that Crypto.com contracts will appear in its app. For now, the talks show that the company is considering another supplier as competition grows among exchanges, brokers and crypto platforms seeking a larger share of event trading.
Binance runs simulated phishing attacks against its employees every month to reduce social engineering risks.
Summary
- Binance runs monthly phishing simulations to measure employee awareness and identify weak security habits early.
- Workers who fail receive training, while repeated severe failures can lower ratings and risk dismissal.
- Recruiter lures and fake conference invitations mirror scams already causing large losses across cryptocurrency firms.
Chief security officer Jimmy Su said the exchange’s red team creates fake attacks to test whether staff recognise suspicious messages, links and requests. Employees who fail must complete follow-up training. Repeated failures can also affect performance ratings and may lead to dismissal.
The programme targets human errors that attackers use to enter crypto companies. Binance has operated the drills for three to four years, according to Su. He said the company’s security habits had improved during that period. Binance reports 323 million registered users, while DefiLlama tracks about $137.5 billion in assets linked to the exchange.
Binance ties phishing tests to staff reviews
The red team uses methods that resemble real attacks. One test may present a fake recruiter offering a job. Another may promise free access to a conference and request personal details. The team records whether employees open the message, follow a link or share information that could expose company systems.
Su said workers who fail receive remedial training. Repeated failure “will negatively impact their rating,” he said. Severe cases may push a worker’s rating to the lowest level and result in dismissal. The policy gives employees a direct work-related reason to verify unexpected messages before responding.
Binance has described its red team as an internal group of ethical hackers that tests systems from an attacker’s point of view. The exchange also works with external researchers through bug bounty programmes. Its security model covers technical weaknesses and employee behaviour because attackers may enter through trusted accounts or devices.
Social engineering drives crypto security cases
The drills come as social engineering causes a large share of reported crypto losses. AMLBot reviewed more than 2,500 investigations and found that 65% of the cases it handled in 2025 began with social engineering rather than direct software exploits. Phishing represented 18% of its cases, while device compromise accounted for 13%.
Attackers often spend days or months building trust before asking a target to open a file, approve a wallet request or run a command. This method can defeat technical controls when a worker has access to private keys, administrator accounts or internal systems. Stolen credentials can lead directly to liquid assets that move across blockchains within minutes.
As crypto.news reported, the April 2026 attack on Drift Protocol drained about $285 million after attackers compromised an administrator key. Researchers linked the breach to social engineering and operational security failures rather than faulty smart contracts. The attacker changed market settings and withdrawal limits before removing assets across dozens of transactions.
Fake meetings and job offers remain common lures
Su identified fake job interviews as one scenario used in Binance’s tests. Real attackers use the same approach against developers, executives and investment teams. They may move a conversation from LinkedIn, Telegram or email into a video meeting, then claim that the victim’s camera or microphone needs an update.
North Korea-linked hackers have used compromised Telegram accounts and deepfake Zoom calls to contact crypto professionals. The attackers impersonated known contacts and asked victims to install files that claimed to fix audio problems. Those files instead delivered malware capable of accessing devices, browser data and crypto wallets.
A Venus Protocol user lost about $13.5 million in September 2025 after approving a malicious transaction. Venus paused its lending platform and recovered the assets through an emergency governance process. The case showed how a user-level compromise can place assets at risk even when a protocol’s contracts remain intact.
Frequent drills aim to reduce predictable errors
Monthly simulations let Binance compare failure rates and update training when attackers change their methods. A single annual course may not prepare staff for new lures built around current events, trusted contacts or job offers. Frequent tests also show whether workers report suspicious messages instead of only deleting them.
However, simulations cannot remove every risk. Attackers can hijack genuine accounts, copy earlier conversations and use artificial intelligence to create convincing audio, video and written messages. Firms still need access controls, transaction limits, device monitoring and fast incident response alongside employee training.
Su said Binance’s early security habits “left a lot to be desired,” but repeated testing brought improvement. The exchange treats staff awareness as part of its wider defence system rather than a one-time compliance task. Employees still need to verify unusual requests through a separate channel before opening files, sharing information or approving transactions.
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