MEV-focused extraction bot JaredFromSubway.eth front- and back-ran an Ethereum trade by Vitalik Buterin, getting away with about two-thousandths of an ether (ETH).

Ethereum founder Buterin was selling a token airdrop, DigitalBits, when he fell victim to the garden-variety sandwich attack.

The name “JaredFromSubway” refers to Jared Fogle who lost nearly 250 pounds while earning a TV sponsorship from Subway. After his weight loss fame faded, however, the world learned of Fogle’s sexual misconduct involving minors, including a criminal conviction.

He remains imprisoned with an expected release date of 2029.

Crypto, of course, has a dark sense of humor, and despite his legal troubles, someone decided to name a maximum extractable value (MEV)-focused extraction bot after him. Fogle, who has limited internet access in prison, doesn’t control the bot.

The trader bearing an ENS name with Fogle’s brand extracted value from Buterin’s transaction inside Ethereum block 24993038.

Read more: Your L2 transaction fees are higher because of MEV spam, report

Another sandwich attack by JaredFromSubway.eth

Buterin routed 26,544 DigitalBits (XDB) tokens through the Uniswap V2 router with his slippage parameter amountOutMin set to zero. That setting accepted any non-zero output.

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Buterin received 0.00197 ETH, worth a little under $5 at the time.

JaredFromSubway.eth, watching the public mempool, noticed Buterin’s unprotected swap and inserted itself onto both sides of his transaction.

In the position immediately before Buterin, the bot dumped a pile of XDB into the same Uniswap V2 pool. That depressed the exchange rate Buterin would receive.

In the position immediately after, it bought XDB back at the depressed price and rotated the inventory through a third liquidity pool to close the loop.

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After gas fees, Jared gained nothing except the satisfaction of making a priceless joke at Buterin’s expense.

The punchline is that a sandwich bot on Ethereum — named after the world’s most famous sandwich spokesperson — still tricked a careless Buterin out of fees on his own blockchain.

If Vitalik can get sandwiched, so can you.

Good excuse to learn a bit about MEV, mempools, and how to stop donating money to bots.

This is not just about one funny tx.

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Although, yes, it is funny.

It is about the fact that Ethereum trading happens inside an adversarial… https://t.co/GcWVXqsVKW

— zeugh.eth (@theZeugh) May 7, 2026

Read more: Vitalik Buterin’s $1B crypto donation to India will be worth just $400M

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Buterin suffered the sandwich attack because his swap order carelessly accepted any output. Setting amountOutMin to zero was Uniswap’s maximally permissive setting.

In essence, Buterin told his order router to fill his trade no matter how badly the price moved based on his supply.

MEV bots scanning Ethereum’s mempool salivate for exactly that type of laziness.

Buterin has a habit of dumping unsolicited airdrops and donating the proceeds.

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Because almost all of his personal net worth derives from his pre-mined allocation of ETH, he’s happy to donate extra coins that he receives. In this case, his donation went to an unintended recipient.

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.

MIAMI – Coinbax won the $20,000 grand prize at Consensus Miami’s PitchFest after pitching a system designed to help banks and financial firms manage compliance for stablecoin payments.

The company, founded by former Jack Henry executive Peter Glyman, builds programmable escrow infrastructure that adds controls to wallet-to-wallet crypto transactions. The software is meant to reduce the risks financial institutions face when moving funds onchain.

“Banks want to use stablecoins for payments, but they need to get their compliance people comfortable with the idea of moving money onchain,” Glyman said during his presentation.

He described a future where “wallet addresses [are] associated with every bank account,” with transactions moving between banks, fintech firms and self-custody wallets. In that environment, he argued, compliance checks need to happen directly onchain rather than only through traditional banking intermediaries.

Coinbax uses smart contracts to hold funds in escrow while third-party services verify identity, sanctions screening and transaction risk. Funds settle only after conditions are met.

“We provide a trust layer,” Glyman said. “We provide programmable escrow that adds the control layer to these payments.”

The startup launched in October, closed a seed round in December and is already live on Base mainnet, according to Glyman. He said the company is working with banks, custody firms and wallet providers on pilot programs.

Second place went to Tashi, a decentralized infrastructure project focused on coordinating and managing AI systems across distributed networks.

Crypto traders are keeping their fingers crossed for another global pandemic amid predictions that an outbreak of hantavirus from a cruise ship could spur on a so-called “memecoin supercycle.”

X user “@jeetassassin,” who features a badge of the Solana-based crypto exchange Moonshot on their account, claimed that the hantavirus “will spark another memecoin supercycle.”

Hours later, Moonshot claimed that it had “verified” Pump Fun-created token hantavirus (HANTA), which features an AI-generated image of a virus and a rat, on its site. 

Read more: Your $1,200 COVID stimulus could be worth $14,700 in bitcoin

Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik claimed that during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020, it was the year of “DeFi summer.” Now he’s proposing that the hantavirus could herald an “agentic summer.”

Indeed, various other crypto users on X have noted that memecoin traders are praying for a potential pandemic so that their hantavirus-themed crypto holdings “go 100x.”

One user noted, “memecoin traders want the world to go into a full on global pandemic so there $500 in ‘handavirus’ coin goes up.”

Another memecoin trader brandishing a Pump Fun-affiliated badge asked, “What if the Hantavirus shuts down everything and we enter a memecoin supercycle.”

Read more: Paranoid anti-vaxxers are buying fake COVID passes for bitcoin

The display of apathy on show from a lot of memecoin traders shows their indifference to global issues as they participate in an addictive, online lifestyle of gambling with cryptocurrencies. 

As one trader put it, “If a pandemic is what it takes to bring traders & vol back then so be it.”

Another claimed that, despite not wanting a pandemic to push the world into lockdown again, “If it somehow does end up spreading and gets COVID-level exposure, crypto volume would probably go absolutely crazy.”

Sorry memecoin traders, hantavirus doesn’t spread like COVID-19

Hantavirus is the name given to a group of various viruses that are carried by rodents. In this case, the Andes hantavirus was detected on a cruise ship departing Argentina last month. 

The virus is reported to have infected five passengers, and is suspected to have spread to three more. Three passengers have died as a result, and those suspected of being infected are being treated and isolated.  

Despite memecoin traders’ eagerness for a global pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) has stressed that the Andes hantavirus is not as contagious as COVID-19, and that the risk to the public is low.  

WHO infectious disease epidemiologist Dr. Maria van Kerkhove said at a conference today that, “This is not Covid, this is not influenza, it spreads very, very differently.”

Hantavirus latest: The UN World Health Organization (WHO) says human-to-human transmission aboard cruise ship in Atlantic Ocean cannot be ruled out, although it is rare. Seven of 147 passengers and crew have fallen ill and three have died. https://t.co/mY3ZwGQGsW pic.twitter.com/VhCVHzAvk6

— UN News (@UN_News_Centre) May 5, 2026

The health body stressed that the virus requires intimate, prolonged contact with people in order to spread.

The Andes hantavirus has spread before, but never reached pandemic status. It’s also not a new strain of virus like COVID-19 that required an international effort to produce a vaccine. 

However, the hantavirus itself is still quite deadly and can cause the respiratory disease hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome which has a mortality rate of up to 50%. 

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.

Bitcoin (BTC) price dropped to $79,800 on Thursday after being rejected at a key dynamic resistance level. The pullback occurred despite the weekly spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) inflows surging past $1 billion for the first time since January, but technical data suggests the correction may be short-lived. 

Bearish divergences point to where BTC price may go

Bitcoin’s dip below $80,000 came amid a bearish divergence in the relative strength index (RSI) on the one-hour and four-hour charts. A bearish divergence occurs when BTC forms higher highs while the RSI weakens across lower timeframes, signaling fading buying momentum during a rally.

BTC/USDT, four-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

A hold above the weekly open at $78,500 could stabilize the short-term price action. The key technical support range remains between $76,000 and $78,000, where the daily fair value gap (FVG) aligns with Bitcoin’s 200-day exponential moving average (EMA). If the correction continues, BTC could retest the FVG zone before attempting another rebound above its recent high at $82,800.

A fair value gap marks an area where a sharp price movement previously occurred with limited trading activity, leaving an imbalance that often becomes a liquidity zone during retracements.

Crypto trader Jelle said the “200-day MA/EMA cluster” was acting as resistance, while also identifying $78,000 as the first major support area. According to Jelle, a 200-day moving average retest could allow Bitcoin to retest higher price targets.

Meanwhile, crypto trader Killa XBT identified the $76,300 to $74,700 range as a deeper support zone if selling pressure continues. The trader pointed to the weekly open near $78,500 as the main short-term level that bulls are attempting to defend. 

BTC one-day chart analysis by Killa. Source: X

Related: Bitcoin analysts say this level must break for BTC price to confirm bottom

Can spot ETF inflows offset price weakness?

Spot Bitcoin ETF demand strengthened sharply this week. Net inflows reached $1.05 billion, marking the strongest weekly intake since the third week of January. A positive close on Friday would confirm the largest weekly ETF inflow return in nearly four months.

Spot BTC ETF net inflows. Source: SoSoValue

Meanwhile, Swissblock data shows that the Bitcoin Risk Index has reset to near zero, while ETF net flows turned positive again at roughly 3,000 BTC. Historically, elevated risk readings aligned with the ETF outflows and heavier selling pressure across the market. 

Risk index and BTC ETF net flows. Source: Swissblock/X

The resets into the low-risk zone often coincided with renewed accumulation near the major support clusters. The analysis added, 

“That synchronization is still in place. Even when the Risk Index ticked slightly higher last week, ETF selling appeared briefly, but accumulation quickly resumed. That tells us ETF demand is absorbing selling pressure. This remains a flow-driven breakout.”

Related: Bitcoin market dominance moves above 61%: Will altcoins follow?

This article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or recommendations. All investments and trades carry risk; readers are encouraged to conduct independent research.

Public blockchains make transactions transparent enough to trace, audit and police, but that visibility can come at the expense of user privacy. Traditional compliance systems often address accountability by identifying people, but that can undermine one of crypto’s original promises: the ability to transact without exposing personal identity by default.

According to panelists at CoinDesk’s Consensus Miami conference earlier this week, those tensions are increasingly solvable through an onchain “intelligence layer” that combines hybrid blockchain architecture with wallet-address-level monitoring.The idea is to split the work across different parts of the system. Private permissioned networks can give institutions the accountability and credibility they need, while public permissionless chains can provide liquidity, and blockchain-forensics tools can help platforms screen transactions at the wallet-address level without automatically tying every user to a real-world identity.

Rajeev Bamra, global head of strategy for digital economy at Moody’s Ratings, said the conventional intelligence layer answers three questions: “Who is it? What are they doing? And can I trust the record?” Those have been addressed in traditional finance by banks, custodians, clearinghouses and credit-rating agencies, he said.

Bamra estimated the institutional digital-finance market at roughly $35 billion today, against more than $200 trillion in annual clearing-house flows in conventional finance, with growth of “over 100 or 150%” in the past 18 months. Blockchain architecture, he predicted, will not be uniformly public or private but a hybrid. “Private permission networks are going to offer the accountability, the credibility aspect,” he said, while “the public permissionless brings the liquidity which the private permissions don’t.”

Pauline Shangett, chief strategy officer at the non-custodial exchange ChangeNOW, firmly sided with the user-side argument. “Bitcoin at its core, at its origin was a semi-anonymous digital cash,” she said.

ChangeNOW, which does not enforce KYC by default, works with AML providers and blockchain forensics firms to monitor flows at the wallet-address level. “All of this blockchain forensics infrastructure allows us to not map people who are passing funds through our system, but instead map their addresses,” Shangett said.

When law-enforcement agencies come to ChangeNOW, Shangett said, the company provides transaction data without doxing the person behind the transaction. She said that compromise allows the platform to provide registration-free swaps while still maintaining internal accounting systems and working with authorities when illegitimate funds move through the service.

On regulation, Bamra said cross-border frameworks like the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation and the U.S. GENIUS Act ask the same fundamental questions about asset quality, segregation and liability, but diverge sharply at the specifications layer. “We think there is regulatory convergence in intention, but there’s fragmentation in reality or in execution,” he said.

Shangett ended with a regulatory-liability framing, which she suggested cuts to the heart of where responsibility should actually sit.

“The agents who should be held liable for the regulatory frameworks and the adoption thereof are agents who are dealing with emission and not transmission,” she said.

Fund managers are warming back up to digital assets, with Bitcoin continuing to dominate allocation preferences even as broader crypto sentiment improves, according to a new survey by CoinShares.

The April survey gathered responses from 26 institutional investors overseeing a combined $1.3 trillion in assets under management. Allocations to digital assets remain relatively modest, at around 1%, reflecting what CoinShares described as “typical entry sizing” in the current de-risking environment.

“Bitcoin remains the digital asset with the most compelling growth outlook,” CoinShares head of research James Butterfill wrote in the report. Sentiment toward Ether (ETH) and Solana (SOL) also improved modestly compared with previous quarters.

According to the survey, around 32% of respondents have already invested in Bitcoin (BTC) and 25% have already allocated to Ether.

The findings suggest institutional investors are gradually increasing exposure to crypto amid improving market sentiment, growing adoption of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and a more favorable regulatory backdrop.

At the same time, respondents identified internal restrictions and regulatory uncertainty as the main barriers preventing broader adoption. The survey also pointed to a shift away from “legacy altcoins” and toward newer decentralized finance protocols and emerging blockchain sectors.

Fund managers identified Bitcoin as having the strongest growth outlook among digital assets, followed by Ether and Solana. Source: CoinShares

Related: Bernstein cites $4T tokenized credit opportunity for Figure Technology stock

Institutional inflows continue to build as sentiment improves

The survey’s upbeat tone aligns with broader institutional flow trends. CoinShares data recently showed digital asset investment products recording several consecutive weeks of inflows, led primarily by Bitcoin demand.

Crypto exchange-traded products attracted $1.2 billion in inflows through April 27, marking the fourth straight week of gains and bringing total inflows during that stretch to $3.9 billion.

The momentum has extended into early May. US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded nearly $1 billion in net inflows this week as BTC climbed back above $80,000, according to SoSoValue data.

Bitcoin ETF inflows have risen since last Friday. Source: SoSoValue

The inflow trend also aligns with a recent survey by Coinbase and EY-Parthenon, which found that 73% of institutional investors plan to increase their digital asset exposure this year, with most expecting crypto prices to rise over the next 12 months.

The launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States in January 2024 has been widely viewed as a turning point for institutional adoption. The ETF structure has also helped reduce operational friction for institutions by offering regulated exposure to Bitcoin without requiring direct custody of digital assets.

Related: Crypto Biz: Capital has no consensus

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

TLDR

• Nvidia stock rose about 3% to $213.53 in early trading after gaining 5.8% in the previous session.
• Goldman Sachs reaffirmed a Buy rating on Nvidia and maintained a $250 price target.
• The bank expects a beat-and-raise quarter based on current supply and demand trends.
• Major technology companies increased their 2026 capital expenditure forecasts to support AI infrastructure.
• Combined spending by Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft could reach $725 billion in 2026.

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Nvidia shares (NVDA) extended their advance on Thursday as semiconductor stocks moved higher. Nvidia stock gained about 3% to $213.53 in early trading after a 5.8% rise on Wednesday. The move pushed the shares back above $200 ahead of the company’s earnings report later this month.

NVIDIA Corporation, NVDA

Nvidia Stock Rises as Goldman Backs $250 target

Goldman Sachs reaffirmed its Buy rating on Nvidia and kept a $250 price target on the shares. The bank said demand for data center products continues to support upside potential. It also stated that investors may focus on the possible upside to Nvidia’s $1 trillion data center guidance.

The firm expects a “beat-and-raise” quarter based on current supply and demand trends. However, it said expectations remain high, setting a strong bar for further gains. Goldman added that valuation could improve if hyperscalers show stronger profitability and broader enterprise adoption increases.

The bank also cited opportunities linked to agentic systems and server central processing units. It said these trends could expand Nvidia’s reach beyond traditional large-scale buyers. The company will release its quarterly earnings results later this month.

AI Spending Plans Support Nvidia Stock Outlook

Large technology companies recently increased capital expenditure forecasts for 2026. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft raised combined spending projections to about $725 billion. Analysts at Bank of America and Evercore estimate total capital expenditure could exceed $1 trillion by 2027.

This level of spending supports continued demand for Nvidia’s graphics processing units. These chips remain central to artificial intelligence workloads in cloud data centers. As a result, sustained infrastructure investment provides a steady revenue backdrop for Nvidia.

Despite this support, Nvidia stock has trailed several semiconductor peers in recent weeks. Over the past month, Advanced Micro Devices rose about 90%, and Micron Technology gained roughly 76%. In comparison, Nvidia stock increased about 19% during the same period.

Since late April, Nvidia shares have traded mostly flat while Intel and Micron have climbed more than 30%. Advanced Micro Devices also advanced about 20% during that stretch. Market updates highlighted supply constraints in memory chips and progress in internal chip development.

Alphabet continues to develop its tensor processing units for internal use. Amazon advances its Trainium chips to support its cloud operations. These in-house solutions improve efficiency for hyperscalers while introducing competition for external suppliers.

Some analysts now describe Nvidia as a broader proxy for the artificial intelligence sector. They say the market treats the company less as a single chipmaker and more as a sector benchmark. Nvidia will report earnings later this month, providing updated financial details.