Crypto World
How AI is helping retail traders exploit prediction market ‘glitches’ to make easy money
A fully automated trading bot executed 8,894 trades on short-term crypto prediction contracts and reportedly generated nearly $150,000 without human intervention.
The strategy, described in a recent post circulating on X, exploited brief moments when the combined price of “Yes” and “No” contracts on five-minute bitcoin and ether markets dipped below $1. In theory, those two outcomes should always add up to $1. If they don’t, say they trade at a combined $0.97, a trader can buy both sides and lock in a three-cent profit when the market settles.
That works out to roughly $16.80 in profit per trade — thin enough to be invisible on any single execution, but meaningful at scale. If the bot was deploying around $1,000 per round-trip and clipping a 1.5-to-3% edge each time, it becomes the kind of return profile that looks boring on a per-trade basis but impressive in aggregate. Machines don’t need excitement. They need repeatability.
It sounds like free money. In practice, such gaps tend to be fleeting, often lasting milliseconds. But the episode highlights something bigger than a single glitch: crypto’s prediction markets are increasingly becoming arenas for automated, algorithmic trading strategies, and an emerging AI-driven arms race.
As such, typical five-minute bitcoin prediction contracts on Polymarket carry order-book depth of roughly $5,000 to $15,000 per side during active sessions, data shows. That’s several orders of magnitude thinner than a BTC perpetual swap book on major exchanges such as Binance or Bybit.
A desk trying to deploy even $100,000 per trade would blow through available liquidity and wipe out whatever edge existed in the spread. The game, for now, belongs to traders comfortable sizing in the low four figures.
When $1 isn’t $1
Prediction markets like Polymarket allow users to trade contracts tied to real-world outcomes, from election results to the price of bitcoin in the next five minutes. Each contract typically settles at either $1 (if the event happens) or $0 (if it doesn’t).
In a perfectly efficient market, the price of “Yes” plus the price of “No” should equal exactly $1 at all times. If “Yes” trades at 48 cents, “No” should trade at 52 cents.
But markets are rarely perfect. Thin liquidity, fast-moving prices in the underlying asset and order-book imbalances can create temporary dislocations. Market makers may pull quotes during volatility. Retail traders may aggressively hit one side of the book. For a split second, the combined price might fall below $1.
For a sufficiently fast system, that’s enough.
These kinds of micro-inefficiencies are not new. Similar short-duration “up/down” contracts were popular on derivatives exchange BitMEX in the late 2010s, before the venue eventually pulled some of them after traders found ways to systematically extract small edges. What’s changed is the tooling.
Early on, retail traders treated these BitMEX contracts as directional punts. But a small cohort of quantitative traders quickly realized the contracts were systematically mispriced relative to the options market — and began extracting edge with automated strategies that the venue’s infrastructure wasn’t built to defend against.
BitMEX eventually delisted several of the products. The official reasoning was low demand, but traders at the time widely attributed it to the contracts becoming uneconomical for the house once the arb crowd moved in.
Today, much of that activity can be automated and increasingly optimized by AI systems.
Beyond glitches: Extracting probability
The sub-$1 arbitrage is the simplest example. More sophisticated strategies go further, comparing pricing across different markets to identify inconsistencies.
Options markets, for instance, effectively encode traders’ collective expectations about where an asset might trade in the future. The prices of call and put options at various strike prices can be used to derive an implied probability distribution, a market-based estimate of the likelihood of different outcomes.
In simple terms, options markets act as giant probability machines.
If options pricing implies, say, a 62% probability that bitcoin will close above a certain level over a short time window, but a prediction market contract tied to the same outcome suggests only a 55% probability, a discrepancy emerges. One of the markets may be underpricing risk.
Automated traders can monitor both venues simultaneously, compare implied probabilities and buy whichever side appears mispriced.
Such gaps are rarely dramatic. They may amount to a few percentage points, sometimes less. But for algorithmic traders operating at high frequency, small edges can compound over thousands of trades.
The process doesn’t require human intuition once it’s built. Systems can continuously ingest price feeds, recalculate implied probabilities and adjust positions in real time.
Enter the AI agents
What distinguishes today’s trading environment from prior crypto cycles is the growing accessibility of AI tools.
Traders no longer need to hand-code every rule or manually refine parameters. Machine learning systems can be tasked with testing variations of strategies, optimizing thresholds and adjusting to changing volatility regimes. Some setups involve multiple agents that monitor different markets, rebalance exposure and shut down automatically if performance deteriorates.
In theory, a trader might allocate $10,000 to an automated strategy, allowing AI-driven systems to scan exchanges, compare prediction market prices with derivatives data, and execute trades when statistical discrepancies exceed a predefined threshold.
In practice, profitability depends heavily on market conditions and on speed.
Once an inefficiency becomes widely known, competition intensifies. More bots chase the same edge. Spreads tighten. Latency becomes decisive. Eventually, the opportunity shrinks or disappears.
The larger question isn’t whether bots can make money on prediction markets. They clearly can, at least until competition erodes the edge. But what happens to the markets themselves is the point.
If a growing share of volume comes from systems that don’t hold a view on the outcome — that are simply arbitraging one venue against another — prediction markets risk becoming mirrors of the derivatives market rather than independent signals.
Why big firms aren’t swarming
If prediction markets contain exploitable inefficiencies, why aren’t major trading firms dominating them?
Liquidity is one constraint. Many short-duration prediction contracts remain relatively shallow compared with large crypto derivatives venues. Attempting to deploy significant capital can move prices against the trader, eroding theoretical profits through slippage.
There is also operational complexity. Prediction markets often run on blockchain infrastructure, introducing transaction costs and settlement mechanisms that differ from those of centralized exchanges. For high-frequency strategies, even small frictions matter.
As a result, some of the activity appears concentrated among smaller, nimble traders who can deploy modest size, perhaps $10,000 per trade, without materially moving the market.
That dynamic may not last. If liquidity deepens and venues mature, larger firms could become more active. For now, prediction markets occupy an in-between state: sophisticated enough to attract quant-style strategies, but thin enough to prevent large-scale deployment.
A structural shift
At their core, prediction markets are designed to aggregate beliefs to produce crowd-sourced probabilities about future events.
But as automation increases, a growing share of trading volume may be driven less by human conviction and more by cross-market arbitrage and statistical models.
That doesn’t necessarily undermine their usefulness. Arbitrageurs can improve pricing efficiency by closing gaps and aligning odds across venues. Yet it does change the market’s character.
What begins as a venue for expressing views on an election or a price move can evolve into a battleground for latency and microstructure advantages.
In crypto, such evolution tends to be rapid. Inefficiencies are discovered, exploited and competed away. Edges that once yielded consistent returns fade as faster systems emerge.
The reported $150,000 bot haul may represent a clever exploitation of a temporary pricing flaw. It may also signal something broader: prediction markets are no longer just digital betting parlors. They are becoming another frontier for algorithmic finance.
And in an environment where milliseconds matter, the fastest machine usually wins.
Bitcoin’s violent selloff earlier this month may be giving way to a late-stage bear market phase, but investors shouldn’t expect a quick recovery, according to Vetle Lunde, head of research at K33.
“Current conditions closely resemble late September and mid November 2022, periods near the bear market bottom that were followed by extended consolidation,” he wrote.
At that time, bitcoin languished between $15,000 and $20,000, some 70% below its 2021 peak.
Now, bitcoin has settled into a quieter range between $65,000 and $70,000, and K33 Research’s regime model — which combines derivatives data, ETF flows, technical signals and macro signals — suggests the market is approaching a cyclical trough.
The quiet grind
One of the signs of the quiet consolidation period is that trading activity has dropped markedly, with speculative excess thoroughly flushed out.
Spot volumes fell 59% week-over-week, the K33 report noted. Meanwhile, perpetual futures open interest slid to a four-month low, and funding rates remained negative across the board.
That kind of cool-off period is typical after heavy liquidation cascades as market participants digest losses and reset positioning, Lunde said.
Meanwhile, U.S.-listed bitcoin ETFs have seen a record peak-to-trough decline in exposure of 103,113 BTC since early October. Even so, Lunde noted that, given BTC has retraced nearly 50%, more than 90% of the peak exposure in bitcoin terms remains.
Sentiment gauges also paint a bleak picture, with the “Crypto Fear and Greed” Index plunging to an all-time low of 5 last week and languishing below 10 for most of this past week.
Long-term value area
What does this all mean? Bitcoin is “likely near, or at, a global bottom but set for a prolonged consolidation between $60,000 and $75,000,” according to Lunde. Similar historical regimes have delivered muted returns
Still, for investors with a long-term view, the current levels are attractive for accumulation, though patience may be required, he argued.
James Check, an onchain analyst and co-founder of Checkonchain, also noted that bitcoin’s sideways periods are an opportunity for positioning.
He said that bitcoin, most of the time, “does nothing,” and then tends to move in sharp repricing bursts rather than steady trends. Those explosive phases are often concentrated in a handful of trading days, frequently early in a bull cycle and again toward the later stages.
“It does nothing most of the time, and then sometimes it goes up 100% in a quarter, and if you’re not there for that quarter, you kind of miss the whole run.”
He cautioned investors against trying to perfectly time tops and bottoms as they often miss the initial surge.
In other words, prolonged consolidation may feel frustrating, but historically the market has rewarded patient positioning rather than nailing the timing.
Google searches in the U.S. for “bitcoin zero” surged to a record 100 on the company’s relative interest scale in February, coinciding with bitcoin’s slide toward $60,000 after a 50%-plus drawdown from its October all-time high.
The spike could be read as a signal of widespread capitulation and, potentially, a contrarian buy signal. Similar peaks in 2021 and 2022 occurred near local lows in the bitcoin price.
The global data, however, tells a different story. Worldwide, the same term peaked at 100 back in August, falling to as low as 38 this month. Rather than setting record highs, global fear searches have been declining for months.
The divergence suggests any panic is more localized than universal. That fits the backdrop. U.S.-specific catalysts — such as tariff escalation, tensions with Iran and broader risk-off rotation in domestic equities — have dominated the macro narrative in recent weeks.
Retail investors in the U.S. may be reacting to those headlines more acutely than holders in Asia or Europe, where bitcoin’s drawdown is landing in a different news cycle.
There’s also a methodological wrinkle worth flagging. Google Trends doesn’t report raw search volume, but scores interest on a relative 0-to-100 scale, where 100 simply marks a term’s own peak within the selected time window.
A score of 100 in February 2026, when bitcoin’s U.S. retail audience is meaningfully larger than it was during the 2022 bear market, doesn’t necessarily mean more people are searching in absolute terms. It means the term spiked relative to a higher baseline.
Bitcoin’s user base and mainstream visibility have themselves grown dramatically since 2021. The takeaway is that retail fear is clearly elevated in the U.S., but the “searches hit a bottom” framework may not carry the same weight when the global trend is cooling. It may still be contrarian fuel, just not the kind that guarantees a clean trend reversal.
Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin proposed a technical overhaul of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), calling for the use of personal artificial intelligence agents to privately cast votes on behalf of users and help scale digital governance.
The plan, published on social media platform X one month after Buterin criticized DAOs for drifting into low participation and power centralization, aims to shift users away from delegating votes to large token holders.
Instead, individuals would deploy their own AI model, trained on their past messages and stated values, to vote on the thousands of decisions DAOs face.
“There are many thousands of decisions to make, involving many domains of expertise, and most people don’t have the time or skill to be experts in even one, let alone all of them.” Buterin wrote. “So what can we do? We use personal LLMs to solve the attention problem.”
First is privacy of content, ensuring sensitive data remains confidential. AI agents would operate within secure environments such as multi-party computation (MPC) or trusted execution environments (TEEs), enabling them to process private data without leaking it to the public blockchain.
Second is the anonymity of the participant. Buterin called for the use of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), a cryptographic tool that allows users to prove they’re eligible to vote without revealing their wallet address or how they voted.
This guards against coercion, bribery, and whale watching, where smaller voters mimic the decisions of large token holders.
These AI stewards would automate routine governance participation and flag only key issues for human review.
To filter out low-quality or spammy proposals, an emerging problem as generative AI floods open forums, Buterin suggests launching prediction markets. In these, agents could bet on the likelihood that proposals would be accepted.
Good bets would earn payouts, incentivizing valuable contributions while penalizing noise.
Buterin also called for privacy-preserving tools such as multi-party computation and trusted execution environments, enabling AI agents to assess sensitive data, such as job applications or legal disputes, without exposing it on a public blockchain.
Read more: From 2016 hack to $150M Endowment: the DAO’s second act focuses on Ethereum security
Data from Arkham shows the majority of Buterin’s wealth remains tied directly to token price swings rather than diversified holdings.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin holds more than 240,000 ETH, currently valued at approximately $467 million, according to blockchain intelligence platform Arkham’s investigation into his on-chain holdings.
The analysis established Buterin as the largest accessible individual holder of Ethereum, though institutional players and exchange wallets dominate the top rankings of ETH ownership.
Buterin’s Portfolio Composition and Recent Transactions
The Arkham investigation, published on February 17, provided a detailed breakdown of Buterin’s known crypto assets. His Ethereum holdings have gradually declined over the years, from 662,810 ETH in December 2015, which represented 0.91% of the total supply, to the current 240,010 ETH, which now accounts for about 0.20% of all ETH in circulation.
This reduction stems from both periodic sales and the network’s inflationary supply increases over time. Beyond ETH, Buterin holds smaller positions in several tokens, including 10 billion WHITE worth about $1.16 million, 30 billion MOODENG tokens valued at about $442,000, and 869,509 KNC tokens.
His portfolio also includes roughly $11,000 in Tornado Cash’s TORN token, reflecting past usage of the privacy mixer for donations, including funds sent to Ukraine. Recent on-chain activity shows Buterin moving significant sums in alignment with his public commitments, including a 16,384 ETH withdrawal in late January 2026, worth around $43 million at current prices, to support open-source infrastructure development.
This followed his announcement that the Ethereum Foundation is entering a period of “mild austerity,” with Buterin personally assuming funding responsibilities for certain projects to ensure the Foundation’s long-term sustainability. Subsequent sales of around 2,961 ETH over three days in early February, valued at about $6.6 million, were routed through CoW Protocol using small swaps to minimize market impact.
Arkham’s assessment of the broader Ethereum holder landscape revealed that institutions and exchanges occupy the top positions. For instance, the ETH2 beacon deposit contract holds over 60% of the total supply, with Binance, BlackRock, and Coinbase ranking among the largest entities.
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Notably, the single largest individual holder is Rain Lohmus, who possesses 250,000 ETH worth $786 million. However, these funds are inaccessible due to lost private keys, a situation Lohmus acknowledged publicly in 2023.
Wealth Trajectory and Philanthropic Focus
Buterin’s net worth has followed Ethereum’s volatile price history closely, given that ETH constitutes over 99% of his known portfolio. He briefly achieved billionaire status in 2021 when the token crossed $3,000, with his holdings peaking at $2.09 billion in November of that year.
Nonetheless, the subsequent bear market reduced his wealth by close to 75% by December 2022. In 2025, rising ETH prices again pushed his net worth above $1 billion during August’s all-time high near $5,000, though recent market corrections, which pushed ETH below $2,000, have brought valuations back to current levels.
His wealth originated primarily from the 2014 Ethereum pre-sale, where 16.53% of the initial 72 million ETH supply was allocated to founders. A $100,000 Thiel Fellowship grant that same year allowed Buterin to leave the University of Waterloo and dedicate himself fully to Ethereum development.
Unlike many crypto founders who have accumulated substantial stakes in centralized companies, Buterin’s wealth remains almost entirely liquid and tied directly to the network he helped create.
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The tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump and the 10% global tariff announced by Trump on Friday have drawn critical reactions from US lawmakers, Washington, DC-based think tanks and attorneys.
US Senator Rand Paul said that the Trump tariffs are a tax increase on “working families and small businesses,” characterizing them as a net negative on the economy.
“Those tariffs weren’t about security — they were a tax on families and small businesses to bankroll a reckless trade war,” US Congressperson Ro Khanna said.
On Friday, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) struck down Trump’s authority to levy tariffs under the IEEPA, which Trump responded to by announcing new 10% global tariffs.
Scott Lincicome, Vice President of Cato’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, a Washington DC-based think tank, was also critical of the tariffs. In comments shared with Cointelegraph, he said:
“Even without IEEPA, other US laws and the Trump administration’s repeated promises all but ensure that much higher tariffs will remain the norm, damaging the economy and foreign relations in the process.”
Trump’s tariffs typically had a negative impact on crypto markets and other risk-on assets. However, crypto prices stayed relatively stable amid the most recent round of tariffs, with Bitcoin’s (BTC) price rising by about 3% after the announcement.
Related: Bitcoin ignores US Supreme Court Trump tariff strike amid talk of $150B refund
Trump announces an additional 10% tariff, but pro-crypto attorney says legal scope is limited
“Effective immediately, all national security tariffs, Section 232, and existing Section 301 tariffs, remain in place, and in full force and effect. Today, I will sign an order to impose a 10% global tariff,” Trump announced on Friday.
The new 10% global tariff will be imposed on top of already existing tariff rates, Trump added. However, the legal statutes Trump cited are limited in scope, according to pro-crypto attorney Adam Cochran.
“The law he is using only allows this to be on countries we have a deficit with, for a set period of 150 days, and at a capped percent,” he said.
Magazine: Harris’ unrealized gains tax could ‘tank markets’: Nansen’s Alex Svanevik, X Hall of Flame
SBI Holdings, one of Japan’s largest financial conglomerates, is launching its first blockchain-based bond aimed at individual investors, a 10 billion yen (~$64.5 million) issuance that combines traditional fixed-income features with blockchain settlement and crypto perks.
Called the SBI START Bonds, the securities are fully managed onchain using the “ibet for Fin” platform from BOOSTRY, a specialized enterprise blockchain platform for security token issuance.
These three-year bonds offer an indicative annual interest rate of 1.85% to 2.45%, paid semiannually.
XRP Rewards
The investors in these bonds can also receive rewards in XRP tokens, according to SBI.
Resident retail investors and companies that purchase more than 100,000 yen (around $650) worth and hold an account with SBI VC Trade are eligible to receive rewards in XRP in “an amount corresponding to their subscription amount.”
These bonuses, which the product page details as 200 yen in XRP per 100,000 invested yen, are to be distributed at issuance and again on each interest payment date through 2029.
The bonds are expected to begin secondary trading on March 25 via the Osaka Digital Exchange’s “START” proprietary trading system.
SBI Holdings notably formed a partnership with Ripple back in 2016, and has since then been a supporter of XRP. A subsidiary of the company has even distributed XRP directly to shareholders and supported XRP-powered remittances between Japan and the Philippines.
The company, according to its Chairman and CEO Yoshitaka Kitao, owns roughly 9% of Ripple Labs.
Kitao launched SBI Holdings in 1999 as a SoftBank subsidiary (which later separated into an independent firm in 2006) and has since seen it grow into a financial giant, generating over $8 billion in annual revenue. It first started dealing with blockchain technology through its partnership with Ripple, leading to the creation of SBI Ripple Asia.
The company has since adopted stablecoins. It has partnered with Circle to launch USDC in Japan, and signed a memorandum of understanding with Ripple to distribute its RLUSD stablecoin.
Uniswap founder Hayden Adams has warned users about fraudulent ads impersonating the decentralized exchange, recounting a case in which a victim reportedly lost everything. The alert arrives as January posted the largest crypto-scam losses in 11 months, underscoring persistent brand-abuse and consumer risk in the space. Adams noted that scam Uniswap apps appeared while App Store approvals were pending, a pattern that has persisted even after years of reporting. In parallel, scammers have begun buying ads on major search engines to capture users who search for “Uniswap,” presenting paid results that resemble official links. When users click through and connect wallets, attackers can drain funds with alarming ease.
Key takeaways
- Scam ads targeting Uniswap have resurfaced, leveraging paid search results to imitate the official site and misleading users who seek the platform.
- A crypto holder reporting a mid-six-figure wallet loss illustrates the real-world cost of these impersonations and social-engineering tricks.
- Uniswap previously flagged clone sites in October 2024, when scammers created lookalikes with altered UI elements to steer users toward unsafe actions.
- January’s scam and exploit losses reached about $370.3 million, marking the period as the worst month in nearly a year for fraud in crypto, according to CertiK data.
- A single social-engineering incident accounted for the majority of losses within January, underscoring how a single method can have outsized impact on users.
Sentiment: Neutral
Market context: The rise in scam-ad fraud comes as brand impersonation, social engineering, and search-ad manipulation continue to erode trust in crypto services. The broader market has seen steady attention on security hygiene, user education, and platform-level safeguards as regulators and industry groups seek better guardrails for digital-asset promotions and onboarding.
Why it matters
The incident underscores a systemic risk facing everyday users: the barrier between legitimate and counterfeit promotion is collapsing in the online search realm. When a top result for a trusted platform resembles the real site, even cautious participants can be led into granting permissions that unlock total access to their wallets. Hayden Adams’ warning highlights that fraud. Ads and clone sites are becoming more sophisticated, and the friction for fraudsters to mimic reputable brands has diminished as digital advertising costs remain accessible and search algorithms fail to fully discriminate intent in some cases.
Historically, Uniswap has faced persistent spoofing attempts. In October 2024, Cointelegraph reported on a fake Uniswap clone that exploited the platform’s branding, altering the navigation and promoting unsafe actions such as a misleading “connect” button instead of “get started,” and a “bridge” option in place of “read the docs.” That episode demonstrated the dual threat of brand impersonation and misdirection—where the user’s trust, not just their funds, is at stake. The ongoing risk reflects broader challenges in brand security for decentralized protocols that rely on open-source credibility rather than centralized verification channels.
From a security metrics perspective, January’s figures paint a stark picture. CertiK noted that crypto exploits and scams totaled $370.3 million for the month, the highest monthly tally in 11 months and roughly four times the level seen in January 2025. Of the 40 incidents recorded that month, the majority of losses stemmed from a single social-engineering attack that drained about $284 million from a solitary victim. The concentration of losses in one event amplifies the message: attackers continue to refine social-engineering playbooks, aiming for high-value targets while exploiting trust in familiar brands.
For users and builders, the implication is straightforward: brand risk in crypto remains a material threat, and defensive measures—such as stricter validation of landing pages, better authentication signals, and more robust user education—are essential. The crypto community and platform operators must balance rapid access and openness with verifiable assurances that the user is engaging with legitimate interfaces. While regulators debate standards for disclosures and promotion, practical risk-reduction steps—such as explicit warnings on search results, quick-path checks for domain legitimacy, and safer wallet-approval flows—could help reduce the odds of a successful impersonation.
As scams evolve, so too must user vigilance. The Uniswap case adds to the growing chorus of incidents that illustrate how a combination of deceptive search results, cloned UI, and social-engineering can inflict meaningful losses even on users who attempt to act prudently. The path forward is not only about better enforcement but also about empowering users with clearer signals, safer defaults, and rapid corrective action when fraud is detected.
What to watch next
- Actions by search engines and app stores to curb crypto-brand impersonation and remove counterfeit Uniswap pages promptly.
- Uniswap and other DeFi projects enhancing in-product warnings and safer onboarding flows to prevent wallet approvals on dubious sites.
- CertiK and other security firms continuing to publish monthly incident tallies and spotlightting high-impact social-engineering scams.
- Regulatory developments around crypto advertising, brand protection, and platform accountability that could shape how promotions are vetted online.
- Public awareness campaigns and educational initiatives aimed at strengthening user discernment when interacting with crypto interfaces online.
Sources & verification
- Hayden Adams’ X post warning about scam ads impersonating Uniswap and noting prior delays for App Store approvals.
- X user “Ika” describing a six-figure wallet drain and a statement: “I believe that getting drained isn’t bad luck. It’s the final consequence of a long chain of bad decisions.”
- Cointelegraph’s October 2024 report on a fake Uniswap site designed to look authentic, with altered navigation prompts.
- CertiK’s reporting on January’s $370.3 million in crypto theft and the detail that 40 incidents occurred that month, led by a single $284 million social-engineering loss.
Uniswap scam ads and the battle for trust
Hayden Adams’ warning crystallizes a broader truth about crypto security: brand integrity is a line of defense as much as cryptographic safeguards. The attacker’s toolbox increasingly blends paid search manipulation with convincing UI masquerades, creating a high-risk surface for users who may not spot the differences between legitimate pages and lookalikes. The historical episodes—from the October 2024 clone to the current wave of deceptive search results—highlight a recurring vulnerability: when a project’s name is associated with a trusted platform, the first impression can determine whether a user stays safe or exposes themselves to irrecoverable losses.
For participants building in this space, the takeaway is practical and actionable. Clear brand verification signals, domain controls, and user education should be integral to product design and incident response. The goal is to make legitimate interactions opt-in by default, with explicit confirmations before sensitive actions—especially wallet approvals—are executed. While the market contends with liquidity and macro headwinds, the quality of user onboarding and the reliability of promotional channels will increasingly influence the pace of adoption and trust in DeFi platforms.
As regulators, platform operators, and security researchers map the path forward, the industry will likely rely on a combination of technical safeguards, stronger verification ecosystems, and more transparent communication about known fraud campaigns. The losses in January serve as a reminder that even established brands in crypto must continuously adapt to a threat landscape that is evolving in real time. The resilience of the ecosystem depends on proactive risk management, rapid remediation when breaches occur, and ongoing education that helps users distinguish genuine opportunities from well-crafted scams.
The rial, Iran’s official currency, has failed in 2026. Hyperinflation chews through savings every single day. Sanctions stack on top of bad decisions and endless geopolitical pressure. Every day, folks wake up to less money. Families scramble to buy basics while everything they saved disappears. This feels too familiar. Lebanon went through the exact same crisis starting in late 2019. The same kind of banking freeze, the same worthless currency slide, the same desperate search for anything that holds value. Bitcoin turned out to be that financial safe haven then. Signs point to it doing the same in Iran now.
Beirut and Tehran are trapped in the same mess
Lebanon hit the wall when banks locked accounts tight. Dollar savings got stuck, then devalued hard into a pound that kept crashing. Over 90 percent are gone. Lines at ATMs turned into fights. Protests broke out everywhere. Money sent from family abroad became the only lifeline, but even those funds struggled to come through and cost a lot in fees.
Iran deals with the same chokehold. Sanctions cut off normal trade. Inflation runs wild. Reports put crypto activity close to $8 billion in 2025. People yank Bitcoin straight to personal wallets fast. They worry about freezes or bigger drops. Even the central bank grabs stablecoins like Tether to dodge restrictions.
In Lebanon, attitudes flipped quickly. People who once ignored Bitcoin started running to it because nothing else worked. Peer-to-peer trades exploded everywhere, esp. in Telegram groups. No banks needed. Remittances landed clean. Corner stores took it for bread or gas. A whole underground economy kept running while the official one died.
The raw reality of Lebanon’s breakdown
Banks did not just slow withdrawals. They took chunks out of deposits. Promised dollars became local currency worth almost nothing. Trust vanished overnight. People who planned carefully lost retirement money, business cash and everything built over decades.
Bitcoin cut through that. It allowed holders to keep something no policy could touch or inflate away. Holding private keys on hardware wallets meant real control. Verify transactions yourself. Remittances crossed borders in minutes, no middlemen skimming. Price ups and downs happened, but long term it held up way better than the pound ever could.
Problems stayed real. Power went out constantly. The Internet dropped. Outside Beirut, liquidity stayed thin. Early on, plenty got burned by shady services because they did not know better. Groups popped up fast, though. Online chats, meetups in cafes. People taught each other: back up seeds right, run your own node, skip custodians. The crisis forced learning quickly. The clearest lesson stuck: leave Bitcoin with someone else and risk losing it to hacks, freezes, or sudden changes in the rules. True ownership means keys in your control.
What Iran can learn from Lebanon’s experience
Iran tracks a similar path. Protests show the anger boiling over. The rial keeps dropping. Onchain data makes clear that people move to self-custody to block seizures or worse inflation.
Government signals mix up. Limits on mining clash with tests using crypto for imports. For regular people, though, Bitcoin stays simple: no one stops transfers, no borders block it, value holds outside state control. Stablecoins cover day-to-day. Bitcoin is the savings.
Practices that worked in Lebanon transfer straight over. Find a reliable non-custodial wallet and back up your seed phrase. Create a network of peer-to-peer contacts for when fiat comes in or out. Those basics let the Lebanese people ride out the worst. They offer the same shot in Iran.
Sure, obstacles persist: rules flip, the internet fails in spots, prices swing. Still beats staying fully tied to a currency that keeps failing. Lebanon proved that waiting for the government to fix things rarely works. Early action saved what could be saved.
Getting control back when systems fail
Lebanon and Iran lay bare how quickly centralized finance crumbles. Overprinting, account locks and economic isolation cause innocent citizens to take the hit every time. Bitcoin switches the game: no approval required, no one else bears the risk if the keys stay yours.
The collapse in Lebanon forever changed its economy. Money moved from the into a survival tool, forcing people to learn about custody and real ownership. Iran is faced with the same lesson now: depend on failing banks or take the tool that hands power back.
The rial’s hard drop signals more than just trouble. It pushes change. Lebanon produced tougher people who learned what ownership actually means. Iran has the opening for that, too. Move before more vanishes. Check everything yourself. Build stacks. Hold the keys tight. Create real freedom. No one hands it over. You claim it back, one satoshi at a time.
Crypto World
Inside France’s strict conditions for selling $168 million stake of its state-owned energy cloud to U.S. bitcoin miner
France has approved the sale of a majority stake in a key data center unit of state-owned Electricité de France (EDF) to U.S.-based bitcoin miner MARA Holdings Inc., after months of national security review.
MARA, headquartered in Florida, is acquiring a 64% stake in Exaion, a subsidiary that operates high-performance computing infrastructure for digital workloads. The deal, first announced in August 2025, is valued at $168 million.
The transaction raised concerns in Paris about potential foreign control over digital infrastructure. In response, the French government imposed conditions before signing off.
NJJ Capital, an investment firm controlled by telecom billionaire Xavier Niel, will take a 10% stake in Mara France, the local entity handling the acquisition, in exchange for a requirement that a French investor step in. EDF will keep a minority stake and continue as a client of Exaion.
Finance Minister Roland Lescure called the outcome a sign that France remains open to international investment while still defending its strategic interests.
“In this operation, the State is advancing on two fronts: we are confirming France’s attractiveness for international investment, while ensuring uncompromising protection of our strategic interests and our technological sovereignty,” the Minister said. A government statement added that no sensitive EDF data will remain with Exaion following the sale.
Exaion’s board of directors will now include representatives from MARA, EDF, and NJJ.
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