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Cybersecurity firm Rapid7 unveiled a new cryptocurrency phishing campaign known as Operation Asterix, targeting roughly 885,000 phone numbers from several countries to steal cryptocurrency investors’ assets.

The phishing campaign led to 5,576 accounts matched to users on crypto exchange Binance, which were queued for attack, while the recovered logs also showed fake emails impersonating Crypto.com, according to a Monday report by Rapid7.

Of the 885,000 phone numbers, the largest file included 316,002 German mobile numbers, with additional directories covering Hong Kong, Bulgaria, the UK, the US, Canadian fintech companies and additional Ledger-related lists. 

Phishing attacks and social engineering scams drove the majority of the crypto industry’s losses in the first quarter of the year, accounting for $306 million out of the total $482 million lost, according to blockchain security company Hacken.

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As part of the Asterix phishing campaign detailed by Rapid7 analysts Anna Sirokova and Jan Recinsky, attackers drove victims to fake apps impersonating Ledger, Trezor, and Exodus, seeking to steal their seed phrases. Attackers reached out to victims through fake support emails and phone inquiries.

Operation Aseterix kill chain from acquisition to exfiltration. Source: Rapid7.

Cointelegraph has contacted the analysts for further comment on what they found regarding target filtering, hardware wallet spoofing and self-custody vulnerabilities. We will update this article when they reply.

Earlier in August, wallet provider Trezor reported a breach of personal data affecting about 14,000 users through its shipping provider, ShipMonk.  

In July, a crypto investor lost nearly $1 million after signing a malicious phishing token approval transaction on Ethereum. 

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In November 2023, a fake Ledger Live app on the Microsoft Store resulted in the theft of $588,000 across 38 transactions. 

Related: DefiLlama delayed mobile launch over phishing apps on Apple Store, founder says

Asterix phishing campaign boasts 13% “hit rate” 

Attackers matched 43,066 accounts to cryptocurrency users with exchange accounts, validated from the larger German dataset of over 316,000 phone numbers, meaning that the campaign has a “hit rate” of approximately 13.6%, according to Rapid7. 

The report also identified a checker for Kraken, which sought to bulk-validate phone numbers against accounts from the cryptocurrency exchange. The cybersecurity company said that the recovered artifacts showed that artificial intelligence tools were used as a significant part of the phishing campaign.

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Phishing attacks are a long-standing headwind for the crypto industry, as they enable attackers to exploit human behavior rather than the code of a protocol. 

On May 25, onchain analyst “b-block” warned that scammers used Google to deploy malicious phishing ads impersonating decentralized exchange Uniswap, reportedly stealing more than $400,000 from victims. 

Leading crypto industry figures, including Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, have previously called for better wallet security measures to avoid phishing scams, after an investor lost $50 million in an address poisoning scam in December 2025.  

Magazine: How a ‘Wrong Number’ message turned into a $3.4M crypto scam 

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Millions of EU citizens already send messages through systems that scan them. Vyara Savova, senior policy lead at the European Ethereum Institute, warns that end-to-end encryption sits next in line.

The current rules come from a derogation to the ePrivacy directive. Lawmakers extended that derogation in July 2026, and it now runs until April 2028.

EU Chat Control Already Reads Whole Messages

In an interview with BeInCrypto, Savova separated two files that critics often merge into one. The first lets providers scan voluntarily. The second would turn scanning into a legal duty.

Most large platforms already use the voluntary route. Therefore, EU message scanning is not a future risk for most users. It is a current default.

Savova explained how the mechanism works in practice.

“Basically what is happening is you have this possibility to scan voluntarily… messages for a specific type of content. But then in order for you to scan for a specific type of content, you still check the whole message.”

That distinction matters. A narrow legal purpose still requires broad technical access. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin made a similar point in July, when he called the revival a cybersecurity risk for everyone.

Why Encryption Sits Next in Line

Apps that use end-to-end encryption cannot comply with the same logic. Providers would first have to decrypt the traffic. As a result, the debate no longer stops at content moderation.

Savova framed the direction of travel bluntly.

“I would say people should already be worried, but it… has the potential to get much worse.”

Meanwhile, Brussels keeps widening its digital enforcement toolkit. Officials have also flagged VPNs as a loophole in age verification rules. Each file targets a different problem. Together, however, they point one way.

Crypto users face a specific exposure here. Wallet recovery flows, seed phrase backups, and trading group chats all travel over the same consumer apps. Savova noted that file storage falls inside the same scope, not just live chat.

Scale makes the difference. Voluntary scanning covers a narrow category of known material today. A mandate would apply the same machinery to every conversation, on every platform, without suspicion.

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The Legal Line Nobody Has Drawn Yet

Marina Markezic, co-founder and executive director of the European Ethereum Institute, argues that the constitutional test has not changed. Digital access simply feels lighter than a physical search.

“But the legal principles and the principles that we have adopted over the years in… our constitutions are still standing. So no matter if it’s the access to our apartments, if it’s access to our communications…”

Supporters of the rules make the opposite case. Child protection groups argue that platforms already hold the data, so targeted scanning adds little new intrusion. European Commission officials have repeatedly said the goal stays limited to abuse material.

Still, the technical answer decides the outcome. Encryption either holds for everyone or breaks for everyone. Consequently, the next negotiation rounds in autumn will matter more than the language on paper.

Users can act now. Choosing apps that publish their encryption model, and moving sensitive files off consumer chat, both reduce exposure well before any final vote. Savova and Markezic plan to keep tracking the negotiations through the autumn rounds.

The post EU Message Scanning Is Live and End-to-End Encryption Could Be Next appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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OrdinalsBot, the first inscription service in the Bitcoin (BTC) Ordinals ecosystem, has announced its shutdown. The project will sell its brand, intellectual property, and full technology stack.

It opened about a month after the Ordinals protocol went live in early 2023. The project said that sustaining the business is not viable.

OrdinalsBot Puts Brand, IP, and 90 Code Repositories Up for Sale

The team announced the decision in a post on X. OrdinalsBot said it had explored measures, including restructuring and a business pivot, but ultimately determined that continuing operations was no longer viable.

“Unfortunately, the Ordinals market has contracted sharply over the past year…In these 3 years, we have achieved many great things and met amazing, like-minded people looking to bring new use cases to the mother chain and create a robust fee market,” the post read.

Rather than allow the business and its technology to gradually lose value, the company has opted to sell its entire asset portfolio through an open, competitive bidding process. The package includes the OrdinalsBot brand, intellectual property, domains, social media accounts, Discord community, and GitHub presence.

It also includes more than three years of research and development spread across more than 90 code repositories. According to the company, the assets could give a prospective buyer an established foundation for building on Bitcoin without having to develop the underlying infrastructure from scratch.

OrdinalsBot said it has already informed investors about the wind-down and has begun receiving acquisition bids. 

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Shutdowns Pile Up Across Crypto in 2026

OrdinalsBot joins a long queue. More than 120 crypto projects shut down, filed for bankruptcy, or went dark so far this year, according to RootData.

The closures span wallets, exchanges, NFT platforms, and DeFi tools, pointing to a broader shakeout across the industry. Crypto exchanges BitMEX and BitMart both announced shutdowns last month.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) portfolio tracker Zapper closed in August. OrdinalsBot differs in one respect. Its founders are trying to sell the pieces rather than switch off the servers.

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The post OrdinalsBot, Bitcoin’s First Inscription Service, Is Shutting Down After 3 Years appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Ethereum jumped roughly 20% in the past 24 hours, a move large enough to rank as the 8th-biggest single day for the token since January 2018.

Historical data compiled by analyst Jamie Coutts suggests such moves have been unreliable over 30 days but have produced better results over three to six months.

Where This Move Ranks, and What Tends to Happen Next

Coutts published a table of every ETH day that gained 15% or more since 2018, sixteen of them completed and now trackable against what came after. Ethereum’s August 19 print landed at plus 18.5%, just behind an 18.8% day in November 2022 and ahead of a 17.5% day in December 2018.

The biggest on record is still May 2021’s 24.5% single-day gain, which was followed by a rough month (down 25.3% in 30 days) before turning positive by 180 days (up 68%). That pattern repeats across the dataset.

Of the sixteen completed cases, only 8 were higher 30 days later, but 10 were higher after 90 days, and 12 were higher after 180 days. Average returns climbed the same way: plus 20.6% at 90 days, plus 59.3% at 180 days.

Coutts summed it up on X, saying the numbers show odds that “skew meaningfully higher over the next 3 to 6 months.”

At the time of writing, ETH was trading near $2,280 after going past $2,300 during the last 24-hour period. CoinGecko data shows a nearly 18% daily gain, an almost 19% rise over seven days, and a just about 17% increase over 30 days. Its 24-hour trading volume has climbed to about $32 billion, up 439% from the previous day.

That move also puts ETH well ahead of Bitcoin over the same period. BTC gained about 9% in 24 hours and slightly more than that in seven days, with Ethereum’s stronger performance lifting the ETH/BTC ratio by about 9% over the latest 24-hour period.

Meanwhile, the buying pressure was unusually large, as noted by CryptoQuant contributor MorenoDV_, who reported that ETH taker-buy volume reached $2.55 billion in one hour on August 19, the third-highest reading since February 7. However, the figure does not distinguish between new long positions and short positions being closed.

Technical Recovery Meets a Broader Crypto Policy Rally

Sykodelic wrote on August 20 that ETH had moved back above its 200-day simple moving average before Bitcoin. The trader had also earlier identified the $2,400 area as the next major range level.

The wider rally came after the August 19 White House crypto meeting, where President Donald Trump pushed Congress to advance the CLARITY Act, leading to Bitcoin spiking toward $70,000.

The SEC’s August 18 crypto fundraising proposal added another policy catalyst. It includes exemptions for offerings of up to $5 million over four years or $75 million over 12 months, alongside a conditional safe harbor for certain tokens.

The post ETH’s Rare Double-Digit Surge Could Be Just the Beginning appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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The approved plan reallocates 546.9 million OP from user airdrops to a Foundation-controlled Strategic Ecosystem Fund.

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AI agents may not converge on public blockchains, Fidelity Digital Assets said, naming that outcome as one of the largest potential risks to the sector’s AI thesis.

The warning came days after Grayscale named 4 blockchain networks that could benefit from the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI).  

Fidelity Flags Risks in Crypto’s AI Agent Thesis

Senior Research Analyst Max Wadington published the Fidelity report on August 19. He listed the scenario among six structural risks to the AI and digital assets thesis.

Wadington explained that closed systems run by large technology firms and fintech platforms could absorb the same activity. He cited advantages in performance, cost, user experience, and regulatory clarity.

“Even if AI drives a substantial increase in overall digital economic activity, there is no guarantee that public blockchains will capture a meaningful share of it,” he wrote.

This follows comments from Grayscale Head of Research Zach Pandl, who said the growing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) will generate demand that public blockchains are well-positioned to meet.

He named Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), Worldcoin (WLD), and Bittensor (TAO) against three demand areas. Pandl grouped that demand into agentic finance, verifiable record-keeping, and decentralized AI. He argued that traditional systems were not built for what AI will generate.

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The Other Risks Fidelity Outlined

A second risk concerns payments. The report noted that payments can drive significant transaction volumes, but they generally generate relatively low fees and compete with established financial institutions and technology platforms. 

As a result, higher payment activity could boost adoption and usage, particularly among stablecoin issuers, without necessarily translating into comparable value accrual for native tokens, especially at the base blockchain layer.

“The primary economic beneficiaries of payment-driven growth may be stablecoin issuers and adjacent service providers rather than the underlying blockchain networks themselves,” the report read.

The remaining risks cut across the same thesis. Wadington wrote that more software output does not guarantee more economic value.

He also stated that technical differentiation could weaken as AI commoditizes development. Liquidity, distribution, security, and trust become the durable advantages instead.

Security itself turns into a competitive differentiator. AI lowers the cost of finding vulnerabilities while also lowering the cost of writing code.

Compliance rounds out the list. Systems offering clearer identity and permissioning frameworks may suit institutional adoption.

Fidelity did not forecast any of these outcomes. The firm framed each as a risk that could reshape how much value public chains capture.

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The post Fidelity Digital Assets Names 6 Risks to Crypto’s AI Agent Thesis appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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A federal appeals court has ruled that crypto theft victims can sue Binance in US courts, rejecting the exchange’s attempt to push their claims into arbitration under terms they never signed.

The Eleventh Circuit granted a writ of mandamus on Wednesday, a rare remedy that forces a lower court to correct a clear error. The panel directed a Florida district court to vacate its arbitration order.

Court Says Victims Can Sue Binance Without Signing Its Terms

Eight theft victims filed proposed class actions against Binance Holdings, BAM Trading Services, which operates Binance.US, and founder Changpeng Zhao. None of them ever held a Binance account or accepted its Terms of Use.

They allege criminals drained their wallets, then laundered the proceeds through the exchange. The complaints cite the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, conversion, and consumer protection laws in California and Massachusetts.

The plaintiffs say Binance ran an unlicensed money transfer business and disregarded the Bank Secrecy Act. That US law requires financial firms to detect and report suspicious transactions.

A judge in the Southern District of Florida sent the dispute to arbitration anyway, relying on equitable estoppel. The doctrine can force non-signers into a contract’s arbitration clause when they benefit from the agreement.

The three-judge appeals panel called that a misreading of the complaints. According to the order, the claims rest on a “duty otherwise imposed by law” rather than on Binance’s terms.

The procedural route matters. Federal law bars appeals of orders compelling arbitration, so mandamus was the victims’ only exit after two years of fighting over the forum. The panel also credited evidence they would forfeit claims and face unreasonable costs arbitrating abroad.

What the Ruling Means for Binance and Other Exchanges

David Silver founded Silver Miller, the firm representing the victims. He said Binance told his clients to arbitrate in Hong Kong, one case at a time.

“A contract you never signed shouldn’t keep you out of court,” Silver noted.

The compliance allegations track a record Binance has already admitted. The exchange pleaded guilty in November 2023 to Bank Secrecy Act violations and running an unlicensed money transmitting business.

It paid a $4.3 billion resolution, and prosecutors said it never filed a single suspicious activity report with FinCEN. Zhao admitted failing to maintain an anti-money laundering program and served a four-month prison sentence in 2024.

Laundering speed explains why victims target exchanges rather than thieves. Global Ledger’s review of 255 hacks worth $4.04 billion found stolen funds can move within two seconds of an attack.

Binance’s courtroom record remains mixed. It won dismissal of terror financing claims in March, yet investors filed a $200 million UK lawsuit in June over leveraged trading losses.

The case now returns to the Southern District of Florida, where the civil RICO count allows triple damages if the victims prevail. Other circuits may soon face the same question about non-customers and exchange arbitration clauses.

The post Court Opens Door for Crypto Users to Sue Binance Over Stolen Funds appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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