An attacker exploited a Gnosis Safe wallet on Ethereum, removing about 2,900 rsETH, worth roughly $7.8 million, on Tuesday.

An automated bot known as “yoink” front-ran the attack transaction and extracted the tokens, security firms BlockSec, Blockaid and SlowMist said.

The victim’s wallet was set up to let a helper contract move money for it, an ordinary arrangement for people who automate their trading. The helper was meant to verify that the caller had permission, but SlowMist and BlockSec found the check approved anyone who named the helper itself as the target.

The attacker then dumped around 2,900 rsETH into a trading pool built minutes earlier around a worthless token called Permissionless Attacker Token, leaving the wallet with a receipt worth nothing. Yoink’s bot paid roughly $47,000 to jump the queue and took the tokens, sending 2,882 rsETH to a separate address.

The world’s largest stablecoin by market cap, Tether’s USDt, was reportedly used in a failed Venezuelan oil trade that cost Poland’s largest energy giant $230 million in late 2023, according to the Financial Times.

That was after the Caracas-based state oil company, PDVSA, began demanding partial payments in USDT as a workaround to US financial sanctions.

The $230 million was an advance payment paid largely in Tether USDt (USDT) in an oil trade orchestrated by Samer Awad, a former executive at Orlen Trading Switzerland (OTS), a trading subsidiary of Poland’s state-controlled energy giant, Orlen, to acquire 6 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil in November 2023 from state-owned PDVSA, the news outlet reported on Tuesday. 

Orlen sent the $230 million advance payment to Hannon International Middle East, the Dubai-based seller, on Dec. 4, 2023. Hannon approached various crypto brokers and intermediaries to obtain the USDT necessary to buy the crude oil, but most funds disappeared into a maze of crypto transfers, while Orlen only received about $29 million worth of oil before eventually terminating the contract. 

Cointelegraph has approached Tether and Orlen for comment on the matter.

“Hannon became involved in the transaction at Orlen’s request” and was not responsible for the “transaction’s failure,” David McCoy, managing partner at ADG Legal Abu Dhabi, the legal representative of Hannon, told Cointelegraph.

“Hannon has since taken significant steps, at its own expense, to recover the funds paid in connection with the transaction and remains open to a constructive dialogue with Orlen about resolving this matter amicably.”

Payment flows that led to the $230 million loss. Source: Financial Times

Tracing missing $230 million through crypto intermediaries

After Orlen wired the $230 million in December 2023, Hannon reportedly obtained $80 million USDT, paying a $400,000 commission, from a Dubai-based financial services company he previously dealt with.

Hannon later sent Dubai-based Horizon Global $135 million, but claimed it only received $85 million in USDT, leaving a $50 million shortfall. Horizon has contested these claims.

Hannon also said it sent Dubai-incorporated Gold Mar International Trading $30 million, expecting a USDT conversion and onward payment for the oil to PDVSA. Hannon said it later recovered $21 million of the USDT from Gold Mar in February 2024.

In January 2024, Hannon employees reportedly gave a Caracas broker two USB sticks, containing $60 million and $50 million USDT, respectively. The next month, it gave access to $11 million in USDT to another Caracas broker.

Related: Fragmented regulations limit stablecoin adoption in international finance: WTO head

On March 8, Orlen’s ship was finally loaded with about 500,000 barrels of fuel oil, worth only about $28.8 million. The same day, another $11 million in USDT was allegedly handed to the broker. Orlen Trading Services finally terminated the contract with Hannon on March 28, 2024, after only receiving a fraction of the crude oil.

In January 2025, the Warsaw Regional Prosecutor’s Office announced an investigation into the oil contracts related to Orlen Trading Services, for damages of 1.5 billion Polish zloty ($378 million). 

McCoy told Cointelegraph that Hannon “is not involved in the investigation in Poland and therefore cannot comment on it.”

In August 2026, three former managers at Orlen and Orlen Trading Services were reportedly indicted over crude oil contracts that caused $378 million in damages, according to Reuters. The managers, identified under Polish privacy laws by last initial, have all denied wrongdoing. The trio, Michal R., a former member of Orlen’s management board, Marcin O., a former member of OTS’ board, ​and Filip ​W, a ⁠former executive at Orlen and OTS, face up to 25 years in prison.

Magazine: Inside the ‘fake police raid’ that forced a $1M Bitcoin transfer

A rally that carried bitcoin to $79,427 on Monday unwound on Tuesday, leaving the largest cryptocurrency at $76,862, down 1.7% since midnight UTC and 6.6% below the month’s $82,284 high set on Sept. 4. Ether fell 1.6% to $2,474.76 and solana (SOL) lost 2% at $100.43.

Polymarket odds on the U.S. Clarity Act being signed into law this year followed a similar trajectory, reaching 34% on Monday before sliding back to 17%. The drop was caused by news that Democrats had crafted a counterproposal after rejecting a revised draft Republican negotiators circulated on Sunday. The sticking point is the ethics language governing officials’ crypto holdings rather than the market structure provisions themselves.

The Senate votes at 2:15 p.m. ET on whether to invoke cloture, or force a vote, on the bill. If the bill passes, that would move the industry closer to its first clear set of U.S. rules on who regulates what. A failure would likely shelve market structure legislation until after the midterm elections in November.

Selling pressure was near universal on Tuesday, with 92 of the CoinDesk 100 constituents lower on the day and the index itself down 1.6%.

When the legislative talks picked up pace again, it was already late in the congressional session, with lobbyists and lawmakers well aware that the election was looming that would make it harder to secure bipartisan legislative work. All along, the ethics question stood as the center of debate and the aspect that needed to be ironed out if the rest were to proceed.

In that process, President Trump agreed to concessions twice, including a second batch of changes over the weekend. But judging from the sentiments from Gallego, one of the chief Democratic negotiators on this point, it wasn’t nearly enough.

“All President Trump wants is for the Senate to give him time to crime, and I won’t support any piece of legislation that enables him,” the Arizona senator said.

During the negotiations, Gallego and other Democrats had to turn their backs on Senator Elizabeth Warren, the senior Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, who favored strong opposition to Clarity. She kept up that view, continually underlining the crypto ties between Trump and the crypto industry from which he earned more than a billion dollars during the first year of his second term.

“I believe we can get crypto legislation that both Republicans and Democrats can agree on. But not this bill,” she said on the Senate floor on Tuesday. “This bill will turbocharge Donald Trump’s unprecedented corruption.”

Researchers at the Bank for International Settlements found that estimates of Bitcoin onchain transfer values can vary by as much as sixfold depending on how transactions are measured.

The finding concerns onchain Bitcoin transfer values, rather than trading volume on crypto exchanges. The sixfold gap reflects differences between measurement methods, including how change outputs and other transfers back to the sender are treated.

The discrepancy stems largely from Bitcoin’s transaction structure. When users spend Bitcoin, unspent funds are often returned to the sender as change, which can be counted as another output even though it does not represent funds being transferred to another party.

Breakdown of blockchain records analyzed in the BIS study. Source: BIS

“Metrics such as transaction volumes, market capitalisation and total value locked often suggest a degree of accuracy that is not supported by the nature of the underlying data,” the researchers wrote.

The measurement problem also extends to Bitcoin’s market capitalization. The researchers found that the conventional measure has at times been as much as four times higher than realized capitalization, which values each coin at the price when it last moved.

The study, based on 100 billion blockchain records across Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tron, found that similar measurement challenges extend across the broader crypto ecosystem.

Related: Stablecoins not credible for payments at scale, BIS chief says

Ethereum and stablecoins present additional challenges

Ethereum presented a separate measurement challenge because of the proliferation of smart contracts. Of roughly 67.5 million active contracts examined, about 54 million could not be categorized using the classifications in the study.

Interpreting stablecoin activity presents another challenge, as the same asset can serve different purposes across blockchains. USDT on Ethereum was more closely linked to DeFi activity, while USDT on Tron was associated more with payment-like and store-of-value purposes.

The differences were particularly stark in smart contract holdings. The share of USDT held by smart contracts on Ethereum exceeded 20% in 2022, compared with around 1% on Tron. Because of the different use cases, the researchers said aggregating USDT activity across blockchains can conflate different types of economic activity and obscure how stablecoins are actually being used.

The BIS researchers concluded that onchain indicators should be treated as “noisy approximations rather than direct measures of economic activity.”

Visa filters stablecoin data to reflect economic activity

Some analytics providers already distinguish between raw blockchain activity and adjusted measures intended to better represent economic activity.

Visa’s Onchain Analytics dashboard, powered by data from Allium Labs, displays both total and adjusted stablecoin transaction volumes. Visa says its adjusted methodology aims to remove potential distortions from activity including high-frequency trading, bots, bridge routing and internal exchange operations.

The dashboard currently shows $6.4 trillion in total stablecoin transaction volume across the networks it tracks over the past 30 days, compared with $313.1 billion in adjusted volume.

Stablecoin transaction volumes. Source: Visa Onchain Analytics

Dollar stablecoins have grown to about $300 billion in circulation, prompting a Bank of England policymaker to warn that their expansion could increase demand for US Treasurys while creating new risks during periods of heavy redemptions.

Stablecoins could extend the dollar into new markets

The Bank of England said in a Sep. 15 speech that stablecoins could reinforce the US dollar’s international role by making dollar-linked assets and settlement systems easier to access outside the United States.

Carolyn Wilkins, an external member of the central bank’s Financial Policy Committee, told an audience at Queen’s University Belfast that dollar stablecoins already have a “considerable first-mover advantage.” About 98% of stablecoin value is denominated in dollars, according to figures cited in her speech.

Stablecoins in circulation reached roughly $300 billion by mid-2026, compared with less than $5 billion at the beginning of 2020. Although most activity still involves crypto trading, lending, collateral, and market liquidity, Wilkins said the tokens could move deeper into payments and international finance.

Cross-border settlement forms one channel for that expansion. Stablecoin transfers can operate around the clock and move between countries without passing through every institution in a traditional correspondent banking network.

Research cited by Wilkins found that such systems could lower costs in payment corridors where banking services remain slow or expensive. Sending a $200 remittance cost an average of 6.4% worldwide in 2024, while the average charge in Sub-Saharan Africa reached about 8.5%.

Dollar stablecoins can also give people in countries with unstable currencies access to a dollar-linked asset through a mobile phone, without requiring a US bank account. Wilkins said such use could extend dollarization into digital markets, although thin liquidity still limits some payment corridors.

Other currencies have yet to build comparable scale. Circle’s euro-backed token passed €400 million in circulation in August, while the entire euro stablecoin market stood at about €650 million in June, according to a previous EURC supply report. Dollar tokens remain far ahead despite efforts to build alternatives tied to the euro and pound.

Stablecoin reserves add demand for US Treasurys

Issuers generally invest the money received from token buyers in liquid reserve assets, including cash, short-term government debt and Treasury-backed repurchase agreements. Growth in stablecoin supply can therefore send additional funds into the market for US government securities.

USDT issuer Tether and USDC issuer Circle held almost $150 billion in Treasury bills at the end of 2025, according to Bank for International Settlements research cited by Wilkins. Their net purchases reached about $33 billion during the year.

Although the combined position remains small compared with the full Treasury market, Wilkins described the largest stablecoin issuers as meaningful participants in short-term US government debt. Research referenced in her speech found that stablecoin inflows can place modest downward pressure on short-term Treasury yields as issuers buy more safe assets.

The net effect depends on where users obtained the money placed into stablecoins. Moving capital from a Treasury money market fund into a token whose issuer buys the same bills may add little new demand. Funds transferred from another currency or asset class would have a stronger effect, while withdrawals from bank deposits could affect lenders’ funding costs and capacity to provide credit.

Tether’s own accounts show how closely issuer earnings have become linked to US debt. The company generated about $1.5 billion in operating profit during the second quarter of 2026, supported by returns from its Treasury and repo holdings, crypto.news reported in July.

Circle also earns much of its income from the assets backing USDC. Average USDC circulation doubled from $38.1 billion to $76.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, while its reserve portfolio returned 3.8%, according to the company’s results covered in a February earnings report.

Redemptions could reverse Treasury buying

The same reserve structure that sends money into Treasury bills during stablecoin growth can create selling pressure when users redeem tokens.

Stablecoins are claims that holders expect to exchange for cash at face value. Since tokens trade continuously, issuers may have to raise cash quickly when redemptions accelerate, even outside conventional market hours.

Wilkins warned that several large issuers selling Treasury bills at the same time could worsen changes in yields and liquidity if the government-debt market were already under strain. Pressure would not have to begin inside the stablecoin industry, as concerns about US inflation, public debt or institutional credibility could weaken demand for dollar assets before token redemptions add to the selling.

The stablecoin sector is not yet large enough to pose a major threat to the Treasury market or create a material financial-stability risk in the UK, according to Wilkins. A large depegging event could still damage confidence in regulated tokens.

USDC provided an earlier example of how reserve concerns can reach a stablecoin. Circle held about $3.3 billion at Silicon Valley Bank when the lender failed in March 2023, causing USDC to lose its dollar peg as redemptions rose. The token was recovered after US authorities guaranteed the bank’s deposits.

Wilkins compared the possible Treasury feedback loop with the UK liability-driven investment crisis in 2022, when forced gilt sales added to falling bond prices and prompted intervention by the Bank of England.

US rules deepen the stablecoin-Treasury link

The GENIUS Act, enacted in July 2025, created a federal framework for US payment stablecoins and requires issuers to hold at least one dollar of eligible reserves for each dollar of tokens outstanding.

Permitted assets include cash, insured deposits, short-dated Treasury bills, Treasury-backed repo agreements and qualifying money market funds. The law also establishes disclosure requirements and gives stablecoin holders priority in an issuer’s insolvency.

Implementation remains unfinished. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency expects to finalize its stablecoin rules by November 2026, which could push their effective date to around March 2027, according to an August implementation update. Issuers worth more than $50 billion must undergo annual audits, while all regulated issuers will have to report weekly to their main regulator and publish monthly disclosures.

Wilkins said reserve rules address whether issuers have enough assets but do not fully answer how quickly those assets can be converted into cash during a run. Even Treasurys faced severe liquidity pressure during the March 2020 dash for cash, when the Federal Reserve intervened in the market.

A limited Federal Reserve account proposed for eligible payment firms could improve routine settlement, according to the speech. The account would not provide access to Fed borrowing, leaving stablecoin issuers without a prearranged source of emergency liquidity during a redemption crisis.

UK stablecoin rules place more weight on liquidity

The Bank of England’s framework for systemic sterling stablecoins applies stricter reserve and liquidity requirements than the US regime, although Wilkins noted that the two systems cover different groups of issuers.

The UK framework applies once a sterling stablecoin is classified as systemic, while the GENIUS Act governs US payment stablecoins more generally. Britain’s model includes payment-system access, liquidity contingency plans and procedures for issuer failure, with conditional access to central bank liquidity also possible.

For cross-border issuers, the Bank of England would require a UK legal entity and place key safeguarding arrangements inside the country. Its final framework for systemic sterling stablecoins is scheduled for completion at the end of 2026.

Separately, the Financial Conduct Authority finalized its rules for UK stablecoin issuance in June after reducing some proposed capital requirements. The regulator has also allowed prospective issuers to test their products through a dedicated sandbox, while the Bank of England continues experiments involving stablecoins and a simulated digital pound.