Crypto World
The Search for Accountability in California’s Wildfires
What comes next in the Eaton Fire investigation?
SoCal Edison quickly acknowledged that its equipment most likely caused the Eaton Fire. In reports to the California Public Utility Commission in January 2025, SoCal Edison said it had detected a “fault” on one of its transmission lines.
Kathleen Dunleavy, a spokesperson for SoCal Edison, told TIME that the utility company is reviewing the report, and the findings are “generally consistent with what [the company has] been saying regarding the ignition of the Eaton Fire.”
“As we have said, Edison believes that it’s likely that its own equipment was associated with the start of the Eaton Fire,” she says. However, it is “definitely” not just the equipment to blame for how intense the fire became.
“A fire of the size and magnitude of Eaton is rarely the result of just one thing,” she explains.
With nearly 1,000 lawsuits against SoCal Edison from the families of the deceased, as well as those who lost their homes in the fire, the company filed its own countersuit in January 2026, accusing Los Angeles County, local water agencies, and the Southern California Gas Company of failing to warn residents about or prevent the spread of the fire.
Crypto World
Coldcard attacker holds 1,159 BTC as mixing starts
Most of the Bitcoin stolen through the COLDCARD wallet flaw remains unmoved, but on-chain investigators have detected a separate attacker beginning to route smaller amounts through a mixer.
Summary
- The largest known COLDCARD attacker controls 1,159 BTC across seven addresses.
- None of the 1,159 BTC has entered mixers or been transferred to an identifiable cash-out service.
- A separate attacker sent 64 BTC toward a mixer, initially mixing about 10 BTC.
- Investigators have distributed roughly 600 flagged addresses to law enforcement, exchanges, and analytics firms.
COLDCARD attacker leaves 1,159 BTC untouched
Galaxy Research said the largest known theft connected to the COLDCARD vulnerability involved 1,159 BTC. The funds remain spread across seven addresses associated with the attacker and have not moved since the initial sweep.
The Bitcoin was stolen within 41 minutes, according to the latest on-chain monitoring cited by Bitcoin News. Investigators have not detected transfers from the seven addresses to exchanges, mixers or other services commonly used to obscure stolen funds.
The assets are therefore better described as unmoved rather than technically frozen. Bitcoin transactions cannot be stopped at the protocol level merely because an address has been flagged.
However, the attacker could face difficulties converting the funds into fiat or other assets. Law enforcement agencies, cryptocurrency exchanges and blockchain analytics companies have reportedly flagged about 600 addresses connected with the wider theft.
Any transfer to a compliant exchange could trigger transaction monitoring controls and requests for information about the account receiving the Bitcoin.
Smaller attacker begins mixing stolen Bitcoin
Separate on-chain activity suggests another attacker has started attempting to obscure part of the stolen funds.
Analysts tracked 64 BTC entering a transaction flow linked to a mixer. Approximately 10 BTC was initially mixed, while about 54 BTC returned as change. The remaining funds were subsequently divided into outputs of roughly 7 BTC each for further mixing.
Mixers combine or restructure transactions to make it harder to connect the original source of cryptocurrency with its eventual destination. However, they do not guarantee that funds will become untraceable.
Analysts said the relatively large and consistently sized outputs make this laundering attempt easier to follow. Investigators can continue monitoring the transactions as the Bitcoin passes through additional addresses.
The activity also appears separate from the seven-address cluster holding 1,159 BTC. Previous reporting found that multiple attackers may have exploited the same wallet weakness, meaning movements from one cluster should not automatically be attributed to every COLDCARD theft.
Galaxy previously tracked 1,596 stolen BTC
As previously reported by crypto.news, Galaxy Research confirmed that attackers stole 1,596 BTC from approximately 7,300 addresses across three attack waves. It also identified 14 smaller incidents connected to the same seed-generation flaw.
A suspected fourth wave could raise the total to approximately 2,055 BTC, although Galaxy had not confirmed those additional losses through sufficient victim reports.
The vulnerability resulted from a firmware error that weakened the randomness used to generate wallet seed phrases. Attackers could reproduce possible seeds offline, derive their Bitcoin addresses, and compare them with addresses visible on the blockchain.
They did not need physical access to the devices, their PINs, or the Bitcoin network itself. The underlying Bitcoin protocol was not compromised.
Coinkite has released corrected firmware, but an update cannot secure a seed phrase generated using a vulnerable version. Affected users must create an entirely new seed and transfer their Bitcoin to addresses derived from it.
US investigators monitor flagged addresses
Galaxy previously said it shared confirmed attacker and victim addresses with US law enforcement agencies, exchanges and cyber-investigation groups. The expanding address list could help authorities identify stolen funds when attackers attempt to use regulated services.
Still, recovering the Bitcoin remains uncertain. An attacker may move funds through several addresses, mixers, decentralized platforms or services outside US jurisdiction before attempting to convert them.
The latest mixer activity gives investigators a new transaction trail to follow, while the 1,159 BTC held by the largest known attacker remains exposed to continuous public monitoring.
Crypto World
Mastercard Extends Crypto Credential to Cross-Border Stablecoin Payments in Borderless.xyz Pilot
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Mastercard and Borderless.xyz are piloting the use of Mastercard Crypto Credential, the card network's verification system for digital asset transactions, in cross-border stablecoin payments, the companies said Wednesday. The pilot targets a bottleneck in stablecoin payment networks: every new… Read the full story at The Defiant
Crypto World
Zuckerberg’s Muse Code Loses to Anthropic on Meta’s Own Benchmark Charts
Mark Zuckerberg launched Muse Code in beta on Wednesday, Meta’s first artificial intelligence (AI) coding agent. Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5 beats it in all four comparisons Meta published at launch.
Meta released those charts anyway. The company is selling a cheaper tool rather than a better one. Independent test data suggests the gap is wider than Meta showed.
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Meta’s Own Charts Hand Anthropic Every Round
Muse Spark 1.2 is the model inside Muse Code. It scored 82.9% on Terminal-Bench 2.1.
Claude Opus 5 scored 86.7% on the same test. Terminal-Bench comes from the Laude Institute and Stanford researchers. It sets 89 real jobs spanning system repair, data work, and security.
Second place is respectable. Muse Code beat OpenAI’s Codex at 81.8% and Grok Build at 81.6%.
The next chart was harsher. DeepSWE 1.1 sets 113 coding tasks with internet access switched off during grading. Muse Spark 1.2 dropped to third at 59.3%.
Meta then published a test it built itself, drawn from 440 real pull requests by its own engineers. Muse Spark 1.2 scored 70.6% there, roughly nine points behind Opus 5.
That score sits only 2.3 points above Muse Spark 1.1, the model Meta shipped in July.
The Model Meta Left Off Its Coding Charts
Meta measured itself against GPT-5.6 Terra. OpenAI sells a stronger model called Sol, and Meta left it out of all three coding charts.
Sol tops the independent Terminal-Bench 2.1 leaderboard at 89.5%. Opus 5 follows at 89.1%.
Both figures beat the 86.7% Meta reported for Opus 5. Meta picked a weaker setting of its strongest rival and still finished behind it.
Against Sol, the true leader, Muse Spark 1.2 trails by 6.6 points rather than 3.8.
Meta did include Sol in one place. On a graphics processing unit (GPU) kernel task running past 1,000 tool calls, Sol improved on the baseline by 71.2%. Muse Spark 1.2 managed 68.7% and placed fourth of six.
One caveat cuts the other way. Muse Spark 1.2 does not appear on that public leaderboard yet, where only 26 of 183 tracked models have been tested. Its 82.9% remains a Meta figure.
“Muse Spark 1.2 is our next step as we push toward frontier, with larger, more capable models on the way,” Zuckerberg said in a post.
Zuckerberg May Soon Host the Model Beating His Own
Meta is reportedly in talks to lease compute to Anthropic. The deal could reach $10 billion over two years. Meta data centers would then help run the Claude models Muse Code was built to unseat.
The leadership behind Muse Code was expensive. Zuckerberg paid $14.3 billion in June 2025 for Scale AI and its founder Alexandr Wang, who now heads Meta Superintelligence Labs.
Price is the lever Wang has left. Rates match the July launch of Meta’s first paid API at $1.25 per million input tokens and $4.25 per million output tokens.
A contributor tier costs more than 10 times less. Developers qualify by letting Meta train on their work. Wang declined to give adoption numbers for the Muse Spark line.
Meta’s accounts explain the discount. Revenue climbed 28% to $60.8 billion last quarter, yet operating profit fell 8% to $18.8 billion.
Operating margin slid to 31% from 43% a year earlier. Meta spent $31.08 billion on capital projects in the quarter alone, and guides to as much as $145 billion for the year.
Muse Code does offer engineering Claude Code lacks. Background agents hold context across a session. Sub-agents work in isolated copies of a repository.
Meta has built a solid second-best coder and priced it like a budget option. The beta will show whether developers trade a few points of accuracy for a bill roughly a tenth the size.
The post Zuckerberg’s Muse Code Loses to Anthropic on Meta’s Own Benchmark Charts appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Crypto World
Ethereum Price Analysis: ETH Clears $1.9K, but a Bigger Test Awaits
Ethereum is attempting to stabilize after recovering from its June lows, but the broader trend has yet to shift decisively in favor of the bulls. While the daily chart still reflects a bearish market structure beneath key moving averages, the 4-hour timeframe shows improving short-term momentum as price presses against key resistance levels.
Meanwhile, on-chain data continues to provide a constructive backdrop, with exchange balances falling to fresh cycle lows.
Ethereum Price Analysis: The Daily Chart
ETH is trading around $1.92K after rebounding from the $1.6K demand zone, where buyers stepped in aggressively following the sharp June selloff. The recovery has carried price back above a major confluence resistance formed by the long-term descending trendline and the 100-day moving average near $1.9K.
Despite the bounce, Ethereum remains below both the 100-day and 200-day moving averages, with the 200-day MA still trending lower near the $2.1K region. As long as the asset remains beneath these dynamic resistance levels, the broader market structure continues to favor sellers.
The first key resistance lies at $2.1K, where the mentioned 200-day moving average intersects with a major supply zone. A successful breakout above this cluster could expose the next resistance zone around $2.4K, which previously acted as a major distribution area.
On the downside, the immediate support is located around $1.85K, followed by the stronger demand zone at $1.6K. Losing the $1.85K area and dropping back inside the descending channel would invalidate the recent recovery attempt and likely reopen the path toward the $1.6K demand zone and potentially lower.
ETH/USDT 4-Hour Chart
The lower timeframe presents a more constructive picture. ETH has spent the past several sessions consolidating above the $1.85K support zone while gradually compressing beneath a descending trendline that has capped the price since the late-July high.
This structure resembles a short-term falling wedge or descending channel breakout attempt, with buyers repeatedly defending higher lows despite continued selling pressure from trendline resistance.
A decisive breakout above the descending trendline could trigger a move toward the psychological $2K level and the larger ascending channel’s upper boundary. Clearing those levels would strengthen the case for a continuation toward the daily resistance cluster near $2.2K and even $2.4K.
However, failure to break the trendline could lead to a breakdown of the $1.85K support, and if that zone gives way, ETH may revisit the broader demand area around $1.75K before buyers attempt another recovery.
On-Chain Analysis
The Exchange Supply Ratio continues to trend lower, reaching approximately 0.127, the lowest reading shown on the chart. This persistent decline indicates that a smaller proportion of Ethereum’s circulating supply is being held on centralized exchanges.
Historically, falling exchange balances suggest investors are moving coins into self-custody or long-term storage rather than preparing them for immediate sale. While this metric does not guarantee higher prices in the short term, it generally reflects declining spot sell-side pressure and improves the medium-term supply dynamics.
The combination of shrinking exchange reserves and ETH holding above a key support zone creates a constructive backdrop. Nevertheless, price confirmation remains essential. A sustained move above the descending trendline and the $2.2K resistance cluster would be needed to align the improving on-chain picture with a confirmed bullish technical reversal.
The post Ethereum Price Analysis: ETH Clears $1.9K, but a Bigger Test Awaits appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Crypto World
Circle Names BlackRock, Visa, ICE and DTCC Among 11 Founding Arc Validators

Circle on Aug. 5 named the founding validator cohort for Arc, its Layer 1 blockchain, listing BlackRock, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, Galaxy, Global Payments, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation and Visa alongside Circle itself, ahead of a… Read the full story at The Defiant
Crypto World
Top Solana (SOL) Price Predictions as of Late
Solana’s native token has been bleeding heavily over the past few months, mirroring the broader cryptocurrency market’s weakness.
Some analysts believe a resurgence remains a plausible option as long as the price stays above certain critical levels.
Are Bulls Ready to Return?
SOL currently trades at approximately $73.70 (per CoinGecko) after slipping by 8% over the last 30 days. This is more or less exactly the level Ali Martinez recently described as a “make-or-break” moment. He argued that more than 50 million tokens were purchased around that zone, making it the most critical support on the map. The analyst claimed that a sustained close below could open the door to a plunge to $60 and even $50.
Most of the latest predictions, though, have been much more optimistic. Michael van de Poppe said “it would be great” to see a breakthrough of $76, saying such an uptrend could trigger a stronger rally to $120.
X user BATMAN also gave their two cents, suggesting that SOL’s valuation has neared a bullish trendline that has supported past major bottoms.
For their part, Pepesso claimed that the asset has one of “the cleanest setups in crypto right now.” They noted the brutal correction over the past months, adding that $45-$60 is the zone that “matters.”
“We are still well above it, but that’s the zone I’m watching if we retrace back in there. As long as $45 holds on any retest, this stays a clean accumulation setup,” the analyst said.
The X user opined that a reclaim of $100 could act as the first real confirmation, and from there, $150-$200 becomes the next range worth attention. On the other hand, a breakout under $45 would invalidate the bullish scenario.
The Concerning Factor
There are some signals that can serve as a bearish counterpoint to the aforementioned optimists. According to Ali Martinez, the number of addresses holding at least 0.1 SOL has declined by 5% over the past two weeks.
Specifically, addresses meeting that threshold have fallen from 11.84 million to 11.26 million, with the analyst outlining that this indicates a slowdown in participation among holders that could add further pressure to the price during the already fragile market conditions.
Small players reducing exposure to SOL is not necessarily a bearish factor and, in fact, combined with whale accumulation, is usually interpreted as a bullish signal. However, recent data does not show any meaningful interest from large holders at this stage.
The post Top Solana (SOL) Price Predictions as of Late appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Crypto World
Mark Zuckerberg Meta AI Predicts an XRP Surge Few Saw Coming
Meta AI predicts a supply driven repricing for XRP, and this price prediction calls the current setup the cleanest since 2017. At $1.07, the case is built around four catalysts rather than a single trigger.
The first is what Meta AI labels an ETF super cycle. After the SEC settled with Ripple in August 2025 and reclassified XRP as a commodity, 11 spot ETF filings followed, with Bloomberg now placing approval odds between 87 and 95%.
Five ETFs already sit on the DTCC list, $1.3 billion in inflows have arrived since November 2025 with zero outflows recorded, and $5 to $8 billion more is projected for 2026, the exact flow level Standard Chartered ties directly to its $8 bull case.
The second pillar is Ripple’s banking push. The company secured initial approval for a federal trust bank charter from the OCC, making RLUSD the first stablecoin under both state and federal oversight at once.

RLUSD is now live on more than 40 chains through Wormhole and the XRPL EVM Sidechain, with BNY Mellon, a custodian managing $53 trillion in assets, serving as primary custodian.
Institutional adoption on XRPL itself is the third leg. Ripple is targeting 2026 as the pivotal year for banks and asset managers actually using on chain liquidity pools, with the XRPL EVM Sidechain already holding more than $105 million in TVL, an SBI blockchain bond worth $64.6 million, and an Archax equity and debt tokenization push expected to drive real settlement demand by mid 2026.
Regulatory tailwinds round out the case, with the CLARITY Act or an equivalent market structure bill unlocking RWA tokenization while 1.35 billion XRP has already been withdrawn from exchanges, tightening available supply.
The base case price target sits at $2.45 to $2.80, drawing on 21Shares and a revised Standard Chartered figure. The bull case runs to $4.94 to $8.00 if ETF flows clear $5 billion and XRPL captures 1 to 2% of the $10.9 trillion tokenization market, a range Meta AI notes would mean a 330 to 650% move from $1.07.
The bear case is not dismissed. If CLARITY stalls and monthly ETF inflows stay under $132 million, 21Shares own bear scenario points to $1.60, a 16% decline, with downside risk extending to $0.86 to $1.00, though Meta AI argues the ongoing supply contraction limits how deep any flush could realistically go.
XRP Has Spent A Year Grinding Lower With No Real Bounce To Show For It
XRP peaked near $3.65 in August 2025, and the decline since has been remarkably steady rather than sharp, a long staircase of lower highs stretching from that summer peak all the way through the following winter.
February brought the sharpest single break, a gap down from above $2.30 to under $1.60 in a matter of days, and price has spent every month since compressing into an increasingly narrow range.
Price closed today at $1.07531, up 0.04%, in a session ranging between $1.06900 and $1.08182. Support sits at $1.00, the psychological floor that lines up closely with the bear case’s own downside target, then $0.86 below that if the supply contraction argument fails to hold.
Resistance stacks first at $1.20, then $1.40, then the far heavier ceiling near $1.60 that has capped every recovery attempt since February. The signal line reads 45.68 against 45.82, a gap so narrow it is effectively flat, and both lines have been drifting in that same tight band for months without any real separation.
That is not a chart building toward a breakout in either direction. For Meta AI’s base case near $2.45 to become plausible, XRP first needs to clear $1.60, a level this chart has not touched since before the February breakdown, regardless of how tight exchange supply has become in the background.
You Were Right About XRP. It Just Didn’t Pay.
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That’s what Kalshi is. A CFTC-regulated exchange where the prices are set by traders taking real positions, which is why the odds tend to move before the headlines do.
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The post Mark Zuckerberg Meta AI Predicts an XRP Surge Few Saw Coming appeared first on Cryptonews.
Crypto World
Senator Warren Questions US AI Chip Policy After Trump Crypto Investment: Report
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All news, reviews, and analyses are produced with full journalistic independence and integrity. For more details on our standards and processes, please read our Editorial Policy.
Crypto World
NFT firm founder indicted for using treasury to support ‘DJ hobby’
Taj Tarsha, the founder of Few and Far, which claimed to be building an NFT exchange, has been indicted in the Southern District of New York for securities fraud and wire fraud.
The allegations in the indictment detail how Tarsha, along with the Few and Far team, raised over $10 million from investors by selling the rights to their future FAR token.
Subsequently, Tarsha allegedly “misappropriated millions of dollars raised by the company, using investor funds to gamble at an online casino, speculatively trade cryptocurrency, fund unrelated business ventures, and serve as collateral to finance his purchase of a luxury condominium in Miami.”
Additionally, he used some of the funds to support his “DJ hobby.”
Read more: Justin Sun’s NFT marketplace managed just four sales last month
According to the indictment, Tarsha was cynical about the NFT ecosystem, describing it as:
- a “bubble”
- “the last [company] I have in me”
- “the last juice I have to squeeze”
- a “magic ticket to a 10-30M exit.”
Similarly, he also apparently told his then-fiancée that he’d taken assets from Few and Far, something he knew was “unethical.”
Eventually, the Few and Far team apparently realized that assets had been misappropriated, leading to Tarsha being removed from the firm’s multisignature wallet.
Tarsha then allegedly “paid Co-Founder-1 and the operations director a significant amount of company funds to induce them to hand over control of the company’s multi-signature wallet.”
Tarsha also allegedly reached directly out to investors as part of his ploy to regain control.
Eventually, Tarsha and the rest of the team did launch the token, which subsequently lost more than 99% of its value.
Few and Far never launched the promised NFT exchange.
Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news and investigations, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Crypto World
Crypto firm RedotPay says it will defend itself ‘vigorously’ against Binance lawsuit
RedotPay, which describes itself as the world’s largest stablecoin payment card issuer, told CoinDesk Wednesday it will defend itself “vigorously” against a $470 million Binance lawsuit alleging it poached 470,000 users.
“RedotPay is aware of legal proceedings initiated by Binance and will vigorously defend all claims,” the firm said in an emailed statement. “The Company rejects the unfounded allegations made against it and its co-founders.”
Binance affiliates filed a lawsuit against the founders of the Hong Kong-based stablecoin payments company, alleging they diverted nearly half a million Binance customers to the competing platform in a scheme that caused nearly $473 million in losses, according to a Bloomberg report.
“Since March 2026, the Binance Group has discovered that RedotPay Group had been allowing and encouraging Binance Pay funds to be used, without segregation, for the prohibited use within RedotPay, including card top-ups for RedotPay Card,” Binance said in the filing, according to Bloomberg.
“While Binance does not comment on ongoing litigation, where necessary we will use courts and other forums to pursue what is right,” a spokesperson told CoinDesk via email.
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