Elon Musk-owned social media platform X has sued the alleged operators of a network of Bitcoin-focused accounts, seeking to recover at least $278,000 in creator payouts it says they obtained by manipulating engagement.

X filed a lawsuit in the High Court of England and Wales on Thursday against Vivek Kumar Sen, Zamyang Sherpa and unidentified account operators, alleging they fraudulently obtained at least 207,384 British pounds ($278,000) from its creator revenue-sharing program. The court filing is available on X’s Transparency Center.

The company claims the defendants coordinated multiple accounts to boost engagement by reposting and liking one another’s content and publishing identical or substantially similar posts, creating what the company described as a “false appearance of genuine, human communication and interaction.”

X suspended the accounts on Aug. 18 over what it called creator revenue-sharing fraud and platform manipulation.

X links six accounts to two defendants

The lawsuit identifies six accounts enrolled in X’s revenue-sharing program: @Vivek4real_, @Bitcoin_Teddy, @saylordocs, @TrendingBitcoin, @Kalshibacktest and @PolyBackTest.

The filing links Stripe accounts associated with the first three profiles to Sen and those associated with the other three to Sherpa. The accounts joined the program between August 2023 and February 2026.

The network allegedly extended beyond those six accounts. X named @BTC_Vibes, @MrSuperBitcoin and @Laserlump, claiming they repeatedly liked, replied to and reposted content from the defendants’ accounts to manufacture engagement.

How the alleged scheme generated money

Under X’s former creator revenue-sharing program, eligible creators received a share of the platform’s revenue based on the engagement their posts generated from other users.

The filing cites an Aug. 5 example in which @Vivek4real_ and @TrendingBitcoin allegedly published substantially similar posts within 11 seconds of each other.

X retired the revenue-sharing program on Sept. 7 and began rolling out access to its replacement, Original Content Rewards, the following day.

Related: Cardano’s IOG warns users to avoid YouTube channel amid apparent hijack

In addition to the alleged fraudulent payouts, X says it expects at least 75,000 British pounds ($100,000) in investigation and remediation costs, bringing its claimed and projected losses to at least 282,384 pounds before interest and legal costs.

Cointelegraph sought comment through an email address linked to Sen in the filing but had not received a response by publication. Sherpa could not be reached for comment.

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Crypto markets are demonstrating robust resilience to start the week, with bitcoin approaching the $84,000 threshold, for the time being at least shrugging off the immediate hawkish sentiment from last week’s Federal Reserve rate hike, which pushed the benchmark target to 4.00%.

The macro calendar centers on midweek U.S. jobless claims and housing and durable goods figures. Meanwhile, cross-asset markets continue to digest the policy path following recent rate decisions from the Bank of Japan and Bank of England.

On the market structure front, attention centers on the SEC opening its tokenized securities pilot framework.

What to Watch

• Governance votes and calls
  • Lido DAO is voting on a proposal to authorize a contingent LDO centralized-exchange liquidity market-making mandate—budgeting up to $1.5 million in recallable LDO and 480,000 USDC, to maintain orderbook depth and prevent potential exchange delistings. Voting ends Sept. 21.
  • Uniswap Governance is holding a temperature check on extending its protocol fee collection and UNI burn infrastructure to Arc, an L1 network built by Circle. Voting ends Sept. 23.
  • CoW DAO is voting on a redesign of its solver quote competition, setting aside a dedicated quote reward budget equal to 10% of protocol revenue to improve price routing and order conversion. Voting ends Sept. 25.
• Unlocks
  • Sept. 21: Canton to unlock 0.38% of its circulating supply worth $17.17 million.
  • Sept. 22: TON (TON) to unlock 1.3% of its circulating supply worth $51.2 million.
  • Sept. 23: Humanity to unlock 14.7% of its circulating worth $20.8 million.
• Token launches
  • No confirmed major token launches.

What do we know about the people involved?

Paimon Finance’s pPOLY has become the first token selected for PancakeSwap’s Pre-Access program, opening a $4.8 million subscription campaign at $15.50 per token on Sept. 21 before trading starts Sept. 24.

Binance Wallet said the 72-hour campaign runs from Sept. 21 at 9:00 a.m. UTC until Sept. 24 at 9:00 a.m. UTC on BNB Smart Chain, with pPOLY claims, returns of unallocated funds and trading scheduled to begin when the subscription period ends.

The announcement identifies Paimon Finance as the token issuer and PancakeSwap as the provider of the Pre-Access campaign. Binance Wallet provides eligible users with a route to the event through its self-custodial Keyless Wallet interface but says it does not issue pPOLY or operate the sale.

Evernorth Holdings has agreed to issue $30 million of convertible debt that may fund additional XRP purchases and XRP ecosystem activity, subject to the completion of its proposed business combination with Armada Acquisition Corp. II.

The SEC filing dated Sept. 17 shows that Evernorth signed the note purchase agreement on Sept. 11 with NH Investment & Securities Co., acting as trustee of Kyobo AIM Corporate Finance General Private Investment Trust No. 3, as the purchaser. The notes carry a 4% payment-in-kind interest rate and mature in 2031.

The filing therefore differs slightly from reports describing the transaction as an already completed $30 million raise. Payment for the notes and their issuance are scheduled to occur concurrently with Evernorth’s business combination closing. Evernorth says the transaction is “expected to close during the fourth quarter of 2026,” making the financing conditional at this stage.

MultiversX has come under formal trading review at Upbit after the South Korean exchange flagged EGLD on Sept. 21 following a mainnet security incident that forced the network to stop progressing.

Upbit’s official notice designated EGLD/KRW, EGLD/BTC and EGLD/USDT as trading caution markets after the exchange said an unresolved security incident involving the blockchain could have caused, or could potentially cause, user losses.

Upbit had already suspended EGLD deposits and withdrawals at 5:47 p.m. KST on Sept. 19. When transfers eventually resume, the exchange said withdrawals will return first. Deposit support will require a separate announcement after the trading caution review begins.

MultiversX exploit triggered the Upbit warning

The warning follows a confirmed attempt to exploit a virtual-machine-level atomicity issue on the MultiversX mainnet.

MultiversX initially disclosed on Sept. 19 that it was investigating a potential mainnet issue and prioritizing user safety and stable network operation. As crypto.news previously reported, the project’s first statement did not classify the event as an exploit or disclose any confirmed financial loss.

A later project update said an actor had “attempted to exploit a VM-level atomicity issue.” The attempt produced invalid state changes, prompting developers to stop network progression while engineers worked on a repair.

The team prepared a software fix for testing through a shadow fork, allowing developers to reproduce mainnet conditions without immediately applying changes to the live network.

MultiversX said deployment would proceed “subject to successful testing” and would require coordination with validators, exchanges and infrastructure providers. No firm restart deadline appeared in the public updates reviewed.

Security tracker SlowMist separately recorded the incident as an attempted VM-level atomicity exploit involving invalid on-chain state changes. Its public database did not list a confirmed loss amount.

EGLD withdrawals remain blocked across exchanges

Upbit’s action came as several exchanges restricted MultiversX transfers following the network disruption.

Bithumb suspended EGLD deposits and withdrawals on Sept. 19 after MultiversX block production stopped. The exchange said transfer services would remain unavailable until it confirmed network stability.

Bithumb had restored EGLD deposits and withdrawals only three days earlier following a scheduled network upgrade, according to its Sept. 16 service notice.

Kraken took a different approach. Its public status page placed EGLD trading pairs into cancel-only mode, allowing users to cancel existing orders while preventing new trades. Deposits and withdrawals remained unavailable.

Coinbase separately reported delayed EGLD sends and receives beginning Sept. 19 because of a MultiversX network issue. Buying, selling and fiat services were not affected by the transfer disruption.

MultiversX told users not to submit or rebroadcast transactions and advised against moving EGLD or ESDT tokens through exchange deposit and withdrawal routes or cross-chain bridges until the project issues an all-clear.

Upbit can extend the warning or end EGLD trading

The Upbit designation does not immediately remove EGLD from the exchange.

Under its digital asset trading-support termination policy, Upbit will review whether the reasons behind the caution notice have been fully resolved before deciding whether to lift the warning, extend the review or end trading support.

The current review period runs from Sept. 21 through the fourth week of October, with Upbit identifying Oct. 19-23 as the expected decision window.

The exchange said the review can be extended if further investigation is required. A failure to fully resolve the underlying security concerns could lead to termination of EGLD trading support.

Deposits made after publication of the caution notice cannot be credited normally and fall under Upbit’s return process. Since transfer services were already suspended, users remain unable to use standard EGLD deposits or withdrawals.

Upbit cited Article 17(1)(e) of South Korea’s Virtual Asset User Protection Act Enforcement Decree when explaining the designation.

The exchange said its decision considered whether a security incident affecting a wallet, distributed ledger or other infrastructure used to issue, transfer or store virtual assets remained unexplained or unresolved.

EGLD weakened as network restrictions spread

EGLD declined while the network issue and exchange restrictions developed.

CoinGecko historical data show EGLD closing at $4.14 on Sept. 18, before falling to $3.87 on Sept. 19 and $3.78 on Sept. 20. The move represented a decline of roughly 8.7% from the Sept. 18 close.

Trading activity increased during the disruption. CoinGecko recorded approximately $10.18 million in EGLD volume on Sept. 20, compared with roughly $3.35 million on Sept. 18.

The timing places the price decline alongside the security incident and exchange restrictions, though the market data alone do not establish that the exploit attempt caused every part of the move.

The episode came shortly after MultiversX activated its Supernova mainnet upgrade, which reduced targeted block time from six seconds to 600 milliseconds and shortened cross-shard settlement.

No MultiversX statement reviewed has connected the VM-level atomicity exploit attempt to Supernova, so the upgrade and security incident should not be treated as causally linked without further technical evidence.

MultiversX plans recovery before releasing full report

MultiversX said engineers were evaluating a targeted recovery procedure designed to preserve finalized legitimate transaction history while correcting invalid state changes linked to the incident.

The project has not yet published the exact recovery method or identified which transactions, smart contracts or account states require correction.

Its official status page has shown several services, including the Public API, xPortal, Explorer, Wallet, Bridge and xExchange, as experiencing degraded performance during the incident response.

Gateway and Index services were listed as operational in the same status update. MultiversX said a full technical incident report would be published after investigators finish the response and finalize their findings. Upbit, Kraken and other exchanges are meanwhile keeping EGLD transfer restrictions in place pending further network recovery updates.

Hana Bank issued a $100 million digital bond through Euroclear’s blockchain settlement platform, completing the transaction the same day, the Yohnap Agency reported Monday.

This was the first time a Korean financial institution directly used the international depository’s distributed ledger infrastructure, the bank said, ranked second in South Korea with nearly $500 billion in client assets under management. Euroclear is a Brussels-based financial services company and one of the world’s largest central securities depositories (CSDs).

It shows how tokenization could make capital markets faster and more efficient. In this case, a traditional multi-day bond settlement process was replaced with same-day settlement on a distributed ledger.

“The $100 million digital bond issuance and implementation of T+0 settlement represent a significant step beyond simply diversifying our funding channels, as they bring blockchain technology into the capital market,” a Hana Bank official said, according to the Korea Herald. “We will continue to adopt advanced infrastructure and explore innovative funding solutions that meet the needs of global investors.”

Hana Bank and Euroclear did not immediately respond to a CoinDesk request for information.

Bitcoin traded just under $84,000 on Monday, up nearly 2% over 24 hours and extending the climb it began late last week, CoinDesk data show.

Monero’s XMR was the standout among larger tokens, up 13% to nearly $588, though it gave back 4% of that in the past hour. DOGE added 5% and XRP 4% to just above $1.45. Ether, SOL and HYPE each rose about 3%, while BNB and ZEC picked up 2%. TRX was the laggard at under 1%.

Risk assets rose broadly. S&P 500 futures were up more than half a percent and Nasdaq 100 contracts nearly 1%, with technology shares leading across regions. Treasuries climbed across the curve and European bonds outperformed. The dollar was flat.

Oil did most of the work. Brent fell for a fourth straight session, its longest losing run in three months, as traders tracked diplomatic efforts to ease tensions between Washington and Tehran and restore Middle East crude shipments. President Donald Trump told Fox News he would “probably” be open to meeting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at the U.N. General Assembly this week.

Cheaper energy eases the inflation picture that has kept the Federal Reserve hawkish, and traders are also positioning ahead of a Trump-Xi summit later this week.

Hyperliquid has generated $429.04 million in revenue from Jan. 1 through Sept. 15, placing the perpetual futures platform first in CoinGecko’s adjusted ranking of crypto revenue generators for 2026.

CoinGecko’s Sept. 17 study calculated Hyperliquid’s share at 12.62% of the $3.40 billion comparison pool. Pump.fun followed with $322.21 million, while Axiom Pro ranked third among the projects included in the final table.

The ranking uses data through Sept. 15 and should be read as a fixed year-to-date snapshot. CoinGecko excluded Tether and Circle because their scale would overwhelm the comparison, while Grayscale was removed because its $154.14 million came from asset-management sponsor fees instead of a usage-based crypto protocol model.

Hyperliquid leads 2026 crypto revenue ranking

Hyperliquid finished more than $106 million ahead of Pump.fun at the Sept. 15 cutoff. CoinGecko said the two projects together generated $751.25 million, equal to 22.10% of the revenue pool used in the study.

Pump.fun’s $322.21 million came mainly from token creation and trading fees tied to its Solana memecoin launchpad. Axiom Pro followed at $132.09 million, Sky posted $129.87 million and GMGN generated $126.03 million.

Polymarket ranked sixth with $115.48 million. World Liberty Financial followed at $95.37 million, while Paxos recorded $87.93 million. edgeX generated $84.37 million and Titan Builder completed the top 10 at $83.47 million.

CoinGecko classified the projects across several business models, including perpetual futures, trading terminals, prediction markets, stablecoins, real-world assets and MEV infrastructure. The researcher described its sector labels as a best-effort classification instead of a formal industry taxonomy.

Perpetual trading feeds Hyperliquid’s revenue engine

Hyperliquid earns fees from perpetual futures and spot activity on its exchange infrastructure. Its official fee documentation uses volume-based maker and taker tiers, with separate schedules for perpetual and spot markets.

Higher-volume traders receive lower fees, while users staking HYPE can qualify for further discounts. Hyperliquid says its fee structure does not reserve the proceeds primarily for a company or insider group, with funds instead directed toward HLP, the Assistance Fund and eligible market deployers.

The Assistance Fund automatically converts eligible trading fees into HYPE through Hyperliquid’s L1 execution. Hyperliquid’s current documentation says HYPE acquired by the fund is burned, permanently removing those tokens from total and circulating supply.

Hyperliquid separately states that its platform is processing billions of dollars in daily trading volume and that more than $1 billion in annualized fees are being directed toward programmatic HYPE purchases. Fees and CoinGecko’s revenue figure are not identical accounting measures, so the two numbers should not be treated interchangeably.

As crypto.news previously reported, Hyperliquid’s Assistance Fund has become a central part of HYPE’s token structure because trading activity creates recurring purchases of the token. Earlier reporting placed cumulative fund spending above $1.3 billion, though that figure covers buybacks since launch and is separate from CoinGecko’s 2026 revenue ranking.

Pump.fun and trading terminals fill the next positions

CoinGecko’s ranking shows that revenue has not been concentrated in a single crypto sector. Pump.fun represents token launchpads, while Axiom Pro and GMGN are trading terminals that make on-chain markets easier to access.

Axiom integrates Hyperliquid for perpetual futures trading, creating some overlap between the activity surrounding the two projects even though CoinGecko records them as separate revenue-generating businesses. GMGN centers more heavily on Solana memecoin trading, linking its activity to the same trading segment that supports Pump.fun.

Shorter reporting periods can produce different leaders. In August, Pump.fun briefly moved ahead of Hyperliquid on a 30-day revenue measure after generating more than $10 million of protocol fees during the week of Aug. 3-9.

CoinGecko’s longer Jan. 1-Sept. 15 measurement produced a different result, with Hyperliquid retaining the full-year lead despite shorter periods in which competitors generated more revenue.

The top 15 projects accounted for 56.02% of the $3.40 billion pool used for the ranking. Beyond the top 10, Collector Crypt recorded $72.82 million, Phantom $60.05 million, Aave $56.81 million, fomo $54.66 million and Aerodrome $54.31 million.

CoinGecko exclusions change how the table should be read

CoinGecko deliberately excluded Tether and Circle from the top-project ranking because both stablecoin issuers generate revenue at a scale the researcher said would obscure differences between the remaining businesses. Their omission does not mean CoinGecko regarded their revenue as invalid.

Grayscale would have ranked third at $154.14 million, ahead of Axiom Pro, but CoinGecko excluded the asset manager because its revenue is derived from AUM-based sponsor fees. Aerodrome, which would otherwise have ranked 16th, consequently entered the displayed top 15.

CoinGecko uses on-chain revenue as its main inclusion criterion but acknowledged that not every project in the list earns money directly from blockchain transaction fees. Paxos and World Liberty Financial, for example, derive substantial revenue from interest earned on reserves, according to the study.

Monthly crypto revenue has remained below last year’s average. Across all projects tracked in CoinGecko’s second dataset, which does include Tether and Circle, monthly revenue averaged $1.08 billion from January through August 2026. The figure was 11.68% below the $1.22 billion monthly average recorded during 2025.

September was left out of the monthly-average comparison because CoinGecko had only 15 days of data when the study was compiled. Its revenue rankings still include activity through Sept. 15, meaning later September revenue will not appear in the published $429.04 million Hyperliquid figure.

HYPE trades near record levels after revenue growth

HYPE has remained close to record territory while Hyperliquid’s fee activity stays elevated. CoinGecko data on Sept. 21 placed HYPE around $94.02, up approximately 2.7% over 24 hours and 18.1% during the previous seven days, with a market capitalization close to $20.9 billion.

Historical CoinGecko data show HYPE closed at $76.92 on Sept. 15 before rising to $85.06 on Sept. 17 and $92.54 on Sept. 18. The token closed Sept. 20 at $93.64, while daily trading volume stood above $1 billion.

Crypto.news reported that Hyperliquid and Pump.fun accounted for nearly 90% of tracked crypto token buybacks during 2026. The report distinguished annual buybacks from Hyperliquid’s cumulative Assistance Fund purchases, which span multiple years.

Hyperliquid’s own documentation now lists maker rebates reaching negative 0.003% for qualifying high-volume market makers, while its highest published staking tier provides a 40% trading-fee discount to accounts linked with more than 500,000 HYPE staked.