Cointelegraph

The UK House of Lords backed an amendment requiring the government to develop a digital asset strategy, in a 194–138 vote on Wednesday, despite the Labour government’s opposition to the measure.
The amendment was added to the Financial Services and Markets Bill during its Report Stage on Wednesday. The bill is progressing through Parliament and would make broader changes to the UK’s financial services regulatory framework.
Amendment 88, introduced by Conservative peer Baroness Neville-Rolfe, would require the Treasury to prepare, publish and consult on a digital asset strategy within 12 months of the Financial Services and Markets Bill becoming law.
The strategy would cover cryptoassets, stablecoins and tokenized securities, while addressing issues including innovation, consumer protection and firms’ access to banking, payment and settlement services.
The vote follows months of debate over the UK’s approach to digital assets. During a July debate, Treasury’s Minister for Investment, Lord Stockwood, pushed back on calls for a statutory framework, saying the government believed it already had a digital asset strategy and was executing it.
The ruling Labour party opposed the amendment because they believed it did not adequately address the rapid development of digital assets and the need for a cohesive regulatory framework.
The UK Cryptoasset Business Council, which said it worked with lawmakers on the amendment, welcomed the vote on Thursday, highlighting Lord Chris Holmes’ question of whether the UK is “simply regulating digital assets” or “building a digital assets economy.”
The bill must still return to the House of Commons, where lawmakers can accept, amend or reject the Lords’ changes.
Magazine: 10 of the greatest unsolved crypto mysteries

The Liquid Network has resumed block production following a $320 million Bitcoin withdrawal, although transactions and peg operations remain suspended as recovery efforts continue.
In a Thursday post on X, Liquid said block production had resumed “without transactions” as a precaution while the network is monitored to “confirm full stabilization.” Required updates to its functionary and bridge nodes have been deployed, with functionary nodes now signing and validating blocks as intended.
Peg operations, including PAK-authorized peg-outs, remain suspended while the network works to restore its BTC/L-BTC reserve.
A day earlier, Liquid released an emergency update to Elements, the software underlying the network, to address the proof-verification cache vulnerability linked to the incident. The update, Elements v23.3.4, hardened cache keys used for range proofs as part of the network’s recovery plan.
Source: Liquid Network
$270 million in Bitcoin returned after exploit
Liquid paused operations on Sept. 6 after actors claiming to be white-hat hackers withdrew about 4,000 Bitcoin (BTC), worth roughly $320 million, from the network’s federation wallet.
The withdrawal represented about 95% of the wallet’s roughly 4,200 BTC balance and involved L-BTC originating from a bug in Elements, the open-source software underpinning Liquid.
The actors subsequently returned 3,400 BTC, worth about $270 million at the time, after Blockstream confirmed that affected bridge nodes had been patched. About 598 BTC, worth roughly $46 million at current prices, remained outstanding as of Sept. 7.
Magazine: Token buybacks are booming. But are they good for crypto projects?

MoneyGram is expanding its stablecoin activities, introducing a Visa-branded stablecoin debit card just weeks after a similar move by global remittance rival Western Union.
The MoneyGram Card will initially debut as a virtual card in Colombia that can be used with Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, the company said in an announcement. It plans to introduce a physical card option as it expands to additional markets later this year.
It is working with infrastructure provider Rain on the new card. Western Union is also working with the provider in the roll-out of its Stablecard, announced last month.
In June, MoneyGram launched its MGUSD stablecoin on Stellar, as it deepened its push into blockchain-based cross-border payments, integrating MGUSD with its proprietary app through a self-custodial wallet.
Last month, it announced a link with Solana wallet as it expanded its crypto ramps.
The World Bank has identified stablecoins as a key tool in reducing the cost of global remittances. Its September 2025 analysis of trends in the cost of remittance services found that debit cards are the lowest cost instrument to receive remittances, at 3.61% of the transmitted amount.
Related: US Bank tests proprietary stablecoin in cross-border Stellar transaction

A coalition of European financial and tokenization groups has urged EU lawmakers to remove a proposed 100 billion euro cap ($116.3 billion) on tokenized financial instruments or raise it to at least 500 billion euro.
The draft letter, dated Sept. 7 and addressed to EU Council members and the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, said the 500 billion euro threshold should serve as a baseline if lawmakers decide to retain a cap.
Among the groups signing the letter were Nasdaq, Boerse Stuttgart Group, Securitize, the European Ethereum Institute and Axiology.
The letter said some existing European projects already reach 350 billion euro in scale and plan further growth, arguing that the proposed 100 billion euro ceiling would be insufficient.
The groups contrasted the proposed EU limits with the US, where “a dominant settlement platform is enabled to tokenise US equities and other assets without volume caps,” which they said could cover as much as 150 trillion euro in assets.
European finance groups call for removal of DLT regime cap.
Source: Industry draft letter
The European Commission has proposed raising the current 6 billion euro limit to as much as 100 billion euro as part of its Market Integration and Supervision Package, which includes revisions to the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Pilot Regime.
The DLT Pilot Regime, which took effect in 2023, allows financial firms to test blockchain-based trading and settlement of assets such as stocks and bonds under exemptions from certain EU financial rules.
The letter said the thresholds apply to the market value of financial instruments admitted to DLT infrastructure rather than their trading volume, making the proposed 100 billion euro cap relatively small compared with global equity markets.
European firms ramp up pressure on DLT rules
The letter follows months of pressure from financial and tokenization firms seeking changes to the EU’s DLT Pilot Regime.
In April, 39 financial firms and industry groups, including Nasdaq and Boerse Stuttgart, urged EU policymakers to fast-track changes to the DLT Pilot Regime and raise its overall limit to between 100 billion euro and 150 billion euro. The April letter also called for broader asset eligibility and the removal of time limits on licenses issued under the regime.
The April push followed a similar call in February from tokenization and market infrastructure firms including Securitize, 21X and Boerse Stuttgart, which warned that existing asset limits, volume caps and time-limited licenses were preventing regulated onchain markets from scaling in Europe.
The February warning contended that without faster changes, liquidity could migrate to US markets as regulators there moved toward larger-scale tokenization and onchain settlement.
The total value of distributed real-world assets (RWA) stands at about $39.15 billion, with US Treasury debt the largest category at roughly $15.8 billion.
Distributed RWA value has reached $39.15 billion, excluding stablecoins. Source: RWA.xyz

Bitcoin (BTC) dipped below $77,000 around Thursday’s Wall Street open as risk assets faced resurgent macro headwinds.
Key points:
Bitcoin saw downside on the back of higher-than-expected US PPI inflation data, which hit 5.4% in August.
Middle East strikes sent WTI crude oil over $100 per barrel for the first time since May.
The US 30-year bond yield shrugged off a $6 billion buyback operation to hit its highest level since June 2007.
US bond yields surge despite $6 billion intervention
Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD on track for 2% losses on the day, following weakness in US equities.
BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Ongoing escalation in the Middle East fueled a fresh surge in oil prices, with WTI crude passing $100 per barrel for the first time since May 21. Brent crude passed $105 per barrel on the day, nearing a new 16-week high.
CFDs on WTI crude oil one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Against a backdrop of increasing inflation due to higher oil prices, markets also faced a fresh breakout in long-dated US bond yields. These came despite the Treasury executing the first of its stepped-up debt buyback operations and repurchasing $6 billion worth of Treasurys on Wednesday.
The US 30-year yield reached 5.353% on the day, a level last seen in June 2007, while the 10-year yield hit its highest levels since November 2023 at 4.924%.
US 30-year bond yield one-month chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Commenting, trading resource The Kobeissi Letter warned of knock-on effects from high borrowing costs for both government and consumers.
“The bond market is quite literally fighting the US Treasury,” it wrote in a reaction on X.
Hot US PPI data adds to crypto’s macro headache
The August print of the Producer Price Index (PPI) underscored increased inflation, coming in at 5.4% year-on-year, 0.1% higher than expected. July’s headline PPI print was likewise revised higher.
“The index for final demand less foods, energy, and trade services rose 0.3 percent in August after moving up 0.4 percent in July. For the 12 months ended in August, prices for final demand less foods, energy, and trade services advanced 4.7 percent,” an official news release from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) stated.
US PPI one-month % change. Source: BLS
Market expectations of interest-rate hikes from the Federal Reserve jumped on the data. CME Group’s FedWatch Tool showed the odds of a 0.25% hike at the Fed’s Sept. 16 meeting at 69.8% at the time of writing versus 61.2% the day prior.
Fed target-rate probability comparison for September FOMC meeting (screenshot). Source: CME Group
As Cointelegraph reported, concerns over Fed policy tightening had already increased on the back of stronger nonfarm payrolls data. Friday will see the release of another key US inflation report, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which will form the last major inflation print before the Fed rate decision.
On Thursday, the European Central Bank enacted its own 0.25% hike, the second such move in 2026.

The Solana network reached an all-time high in daily token issuance, surpassing the number of new coins issued during the peak of the memecoin cycle in late 2024.
More than 263,000 new Solana Program Library (SPL) tokens were minted on the Solana blockchain on Wednesday, marking a new record high, according to Solscan. Some 40,000 to 50,000 daily tokens were issued on Solana at the peak of the memecoin cycle in December 2024.
Of the total 40,360 tokens issued through launchpads, memecoin platform Pump.fun accounted for the majority, or 34,184 coins, according to Blockworks’ dashboard.
A launchpad enables creators to easily design, launch and trade memecoins without needing extensive technical skills. They automate the token creation process and provide immediate liquidity and visibility for new tokens.
Pump.fun ranks as the leading Solana-native protocol by daily revenue, with $1.8 million generated in the past 24 hours, according to DefiLlama. Last Friday, Pump.fun’s daily revenue was briefly overtaken by trading app Fomo, which combines cryptocurrency trading with social features resembling a social media feed.
Pump.fun accounted for one-third of Solana’s first-quarter revenue in 2026, or $124 million out of the total $342 million, despite cooling memecoin activity.

Fnality has named former Bank of England deputy governor Jon Cunliffe to chair its UK board as the blockchain settlement company develops euro and US dollar payment systems.
The company said Thursday that Jochen Metzger, a former Deutsche Bundesbank director general for payments and settlement systems, had joined its European subsidiary’s supervisory board and was expected to chair it. Ron Berndsen, a former senior official at the Dutch central bank, also joined the board.
Fnality’s sterling payment system launched in 2023 and is regulated by the Bank of England. It enables market participants to settle obligations using central bank money balances.
The company said its blockchain settlement infrastructure is designed to support tokenized asset markets and banks’ activity in stablecoins and tokenized deposits.
“As the tokenisation of financial markets gathers pace, settlement in the safest assets available will be crucial to maintaining financial stability,” Cunliffe said in the announcement.
Fnality has established a subsidiary in Eschborn, Germany, to develop its proposed euro payment system. It has also set up Fnality Bank U.S. in Stamford, Connecticut, where it is developing plans for a dollar system and engaging with US regulators.
The London-based fintech raised $136 million in a Series C funding round in September 2025, with participation by investors including Temasek, Euroclear and Goldman Sachs, according to data compiled by Traxcn.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged lawmakers to pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act when the Senate returns from its August recess next week.
“I strongly urge everyone to remain at the negotiating table, agree to the motion to proceed, and continue the legislative process,” wrote Bessent in a Wednesday X post, warning that failing to pass the bill would send a “troubling signal” about America’s leadership in the digital asset industry.
The Senate is scheduled to return from its August recess next Monday, according to its legislative schedule. The CLARITY Act seeks to establish the first comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets in the US.
The remarks come a week after the National Sheriffs’ Association dropped its opposition to the crypto market structure bill on Sept. 3, changing its position on the bill to “neutral.”
Galaxy has reduced its odds on the CLARITY Act’s passing in 2026 several times over recent months. Now at 10%, that’s down from 75% set on May 22.
While the CLARITY Act cleared the Senate Banking Committee in May, most Democrats and the banking industry pushed back, arguing that it would allow crypto firms to offer yields on stablecoins without facing the same requirements as banks.

Hunter Biden has denied profiting from his LAPTOP memecoin after its launch-day price crash, adding that neither he nor his team had sold tokens.
Several X users accused the LAPTOP project of a “rug pull” after the memecoin lost more than 95% of its value in the first hour of trading on Wednesday. At the time of writing, the new token traded at $0.8562, according to CoinGecko data.
“The team’s allocation is locked. Nobody on our side sold, and nobody could have,” Biden said in an X post Wednesday. “I, personally, have not made a single dollar.”
Biden blamed the price action on insufficient liquidity and “snipers,” which are trading bots that quickly swoop up tokens when trading opens.
The Base memecoin takes its name from a MacBook Hunter Biden reportedly left at a repair shop in 2019. Trump allies used the New York Post’s reporting on files purportedly from the device against him and his father, former US President Joe Biden, during the 2020 election.
Before launching his own memecoin, Biden slammed the Trump family’s crypto ventures. In an Aug. 21 post, Biden said World Liberty Financial used political influence and leverage to benefit its founders.
Biden did not respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.
LAPTOP team announces liquidity incentives and token burns
The LAPTOP team defended the launch in a community update by claiming it held no token presale and made no allocations to investors or influencers. It said the contract address, token allocations, a Hacken security audit and a white paper were published before trading began.
“There was no stealth deployment, no hidden supply, and no surprise to benefit insiders,” the team said in a Medium post.
It claimed the initial pool launched at $0.05 per token, but the market maker’s liquidity was insufficient to meet demand.
LAPTOP added it would deploy 4 million tokens, or 0.4% of the total supply, as liquidity incentives for Aerodrome pools, starting at midnight UTC on Thursday. It also announced plans to burn 10 million tokens within the first week of launch through its predictions program, equivalent to 1% of the original total supply.
According to the project’s disclosures, founders are allocated 300 million tokens, or 30% of the 1 billion token supply. Those tokens are locked for six months and then vest monthly over the following 24 months.
Another 30% is allocated to predictions tied to political, cultural and crypto events. Tokens are burned when specified outcomes occur and allocated to charity otherwise. The disclosures say prediction-related burns affect unvested tokens.
The disclosures reserve 2% of the total supply for wallets that lost money on the TRUMP memecoin and 8% for eligible subscribers to Biden’s “Where’s Hunter” Substack newsletter. A separate 10% is allocated to future airdrops at the foundation’s discretion.
Nansen tracks wallet losses as Bubblemaps flags fresh holders
Nansen data shared with Cointelegraph on Thursday showed one LAPTOP wallet with an unrealized loss of $117,800 and another with a paper loss of $12,300.
Two other wallets showed unrealized gains of $13,100 and $1,800. None of those four addresses had sold LAPTOP at the time of the snapshot. The analysis covered five selected wallets.
Nansen also recorded 46,675 buy transactions and 16,038 sell transactions during the 24-hour period covered by its data, involving 20,085 unique buyers and 8,714 unique sellers.
Meanwhile, blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps said Wednesday that 60% of LAPTOP’s top-holder wallets had no prior activity.
In a follow-up post, it defined “fresh” wallets as those funded within the previous 10 days and said most had been funded on launch day.
Magazine: Is Bitcoin too volatile to risk your retirement on?

US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded $120.2 million in net outflows on Wednesday, bringing withdrawals across the first two sessions of the holiday-shortened week to $166.8 million, according to Farside Investors data.
The ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) led Wednesday’s withdrawals with $78 million, followed by Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC) with $27.2 million and BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) with $19.5 million. Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin Trust (MSBT) was the only fund to record inflows, adding $4.5 million.
Wednesday’s withdrawals followed $46.6 million in net outflows on Tuesday, marking the category’s first back-to-back outflow days since a three-day run ended on Aug. 14. Across the two sessions, GBTC lost $92.7 million, while ARKB and IBIT recorded net redemptions of $69.9 million and $8.8 million, respectively.
The two-day pullback erased about 4.4% of the $3.8 billion attracted during the funds’ strongest three-week stretch of 2026. Bitcoin ETFs have recorded about $55 billion in cumulative net inflows since their launch, while their combined 2026 net flows amount to about $1.07 billion in outflows, according to Farside Investors.
Ether and Solana ETFs return to inflows
Meanwhile, US spot Ether ETFs attracted $34.7 million on Wednesday after recording $24.3 million in withdrawals on Tuesday, leaving the funds with $10.4 million in net inflows for the week.
BlackRock’s ETHB led Wednesday’s Ether ETF inflows with $22.9 million, followed by its ETHA fund with $9.7 million. The 21Shares TETH fund added $2.1 million, while the remaining Ether ETFs reported no net flows.
Spot Solana ETFs also reversed Tuesday’s outflow of about $700,000, attracting $11.2 million on Wednesday and bringing their two-session total to $10.5 million in net inflows. All Wednesday inflows went to Bitwise’s BSOL.
Hyperliquid ETFs recorded net outflows for a second session, losing $5.3 million Wednesday after $13 million in Tuesday outflows, bringing the week’s total outflow to $18.3 million.
The mixed ETF flows came as Bitcoin traded near $78,000 on Thursday, down from about $79,700 when the earlier three-week inflow figures were reported. Ether traded around $2,470, while Solana hovered near $101, according to CoinGecko.
Magazine: 10 of the greatest unsolved crypto mysteries

Bitcoin (BTC) sell-side risk remains near historic lows as August profit-taking cools, new data shows.
Key points:
Bitcoin’s sell-side risk ratio fell to seven from 16 in September, placing it among its lowest-ever readings.
Selling pressure eased while Bitcoin held most of its 25% August gains.
Bitcoin ETF investors have spent 229 sessions below their aggregate breakeven level near $86,000.
Bitcoin hodlers are “selling less” in September, Glassnode says
In the latest edition of Glassnode’s The Week Onchain newsletter, the crypto analytics platform said Bitcoin’s sell-side risk ratio (SSRR) had reset lower.
Sell-side risk sums total onchain realized profits and losses and divides that figure by Bitcoin’s realized market cap. The result is a snapshot of the US dollar value realized over a given period relative to realized cap.
Glassnode describes lower values as signals of “macro market bottoms, accumulation phases and relatively low sell-side risk environments.”
SSRR reached 16 as Bitcoin’s price hit multimonth highs above $80,000 in late August. As of this week, however, the metric has more than halved to 7, one of the lowest readings on record.
Bitcoin SSRR data. Source: Glassnode
Glassnode said the August Bitcoin price rebound had “drawn little supply,” as measured by onchain activity.
“At the July 2025 and October 2025 highs the same measure spiked to 35 and 23 basis points. Only a small share of days in the past year have run lower than today,” it noted.
Data also shows that long-term holders — defined as wallet entities that hold a UTXO without spending it for at least six months — are realizing profits onchain at a lower rate this month.
“Long-term holders’ share of realized profit has fallen to 47% from 88% at the August peak, and September’s realized profit spike on September 3, 2026 was under half the size of August’s,” Glassnode continued.
“The sellers this month are recent buyers, and even they are selling less.”
Bitcoin ETF buyers eye breakeven point
The SSRR reading may ease concerns that even a modest Bitcoin price correction could trigger panic selling.
Bitcoin investor cohorts have returned to aggregate profit after Bitcoin reclaimed $80,000, potentially increasing the temptation to sell if the price retraces further. As Cointelegraph reported, the spent output profit ratio (SOPR) has remained in net profit for its longest stretch of 2026.
SOPR reflects the net profitability of spent coins, with 1 representing breakeven. Sustained readings above 1 can support a bullish long-term trend change.
Glassnode added that US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) investors would return to aggregate profit at $86,000. Bitcoin has closed below that level for the past 229 sessions, with ETF investors’ paper losses currently around $3.9 billion.
Bitcoin ETF profitability data. Source: Glassnode

Indian agricultural warehousing and lending company Arya.ag is testing a system to tokenize warehouse receipts for stored grain on a dedicated Avalanche layer-1 blockchain.
Arya.ag is working with Finternet to connect grain deposits, warehouse receipts, collateral commitments and loan status through the network.
Devika Mittal, Ava Labs’ head of India, told Cointelegraph that testing was underway and said each tokenized receipt would represent ownership of the stored commodity. The companies did not disclose an expected launch date or how much grain or lending the initial deployment would cover.
Sanmesh Kalyanpur, a director at Finternet Labs, said Arya.ag’s samplers collect information about stored grain and enter it into the company’s portal. Finternet will combine farmer, commodity, warehouse and insurance information into what Kalyanpur called a “composite token” that banks can use when assessing collateral risk.
Arya.ag stores about $2 billion in agricultural commodities across its warehouse network and supports approximately 120 billion Indian rupees (about $1.26 billion) in loans annually, according to the announcement. Its lending arm, Arya Dhan, issues about $230 million in loans each year.
The figures describe Arya.ag’s existing business and do not represent assets or loans already brought onchain.
Finternet concept traces back to 2024 BIS paper
The Finternet concept was outlined in a 2024 Bank for International Settlements paper co-authored by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and then-BIS General Manager Agustín Carstens.
The paper proposed interconnected unified ledgers for tokenized assets while emphasizing the need for supporting legal and regulatory frameworks.
In January, Cointelegraph reported that the value of tokenized real-world assets on Avalanche exceeded $1.3 billion at the end of 2025, driven by loans and tokenized money-market funds.
India expands warehouse-backed agricultural lending
Electronic warehouse receipts allow farmers and agricultural businesses to borrow against commodities held in storage instead of selling them immediately after harvest.
Arya.ag and Ava Labs said their system is designed to give lenders a shared record showing what grain is stored, who owns it, whether it is already pledged as collateral and what debt is outstanding.
The system will still depend on accurate verification of the physical commodities represented by the digital records, according to the announcement.
In 2024, the Indian government launched a 10 billion-rupee credit-guarantee program intended to encourage financing against electronic negotiable warehouse receipts, particularly among small and marginal farmers.
Magazine: 10 of the greatest unsolved crypto mysteries

TransparentBusiness Inc., which does business as Unicoin, sued Universal Navigation Inc., which does business as Uniswap Labs, in the Southern District of New York, seeking declarations that its UNICOIN mark does not infringe or dilute Uniswap’s claimed marks.
TransparentBusiness argued in a complaint filed Tuesday that its UNICOIN mark does not infringe or dilute Uniswap’s claimed UNI, UNISWAP and UNICHAIN marks. It also asked the court to cancel US trademark registration for UNI.
The complaint says Uniswap’s counsel sent three demand letters on June 3, July 17 and Aug. 14, accusing Unicoin of trademark infringement, dilution, cybersquatting and unfair competition, and threatening further legal action. The letters demanded that Unicoin stop using UNICOIN and other UNI-formative marks, transfer its unicoin.com and unicoin.org domains, provide an accounting of revenue and profits, and reimburse Uniswap’s legal fees.
The complaint also seeks a declaration that unicoin.com and unicoin.org domains do not violate the federal Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.
Cointelegraph has approached Uniswap for comment on the lawsuit.
At the time of writing, DeFiLlama ranked the Uniswap protocol first among decentralized exchanges by 24-hour volume, with more than $3.9 billion.
The lawsuit was filed weeks before the Sept. 28 public launch date that Unicoin lists on its website for the UNCN token.

Hardware wallet makers Trezor and BitBox warned users about phishing emails disguised as urgent security notices after suspected compromises involving third-party email services.
On Wednesday, Trezor said its email provider had been breached and warned that a message titled “Critical Security Alert: STM32 Entropy Vulnerability” was fraudulent. The company urged recipients not to click any links.
On the same day, Bitbox warned users about a phishing email pretending to come from the company. The company said its preliminary review indicated that its newsletter provider was likely compromised, adding that multiple Bitcoin companies appeared to have been targeted through a shared provider.
The warnings come after several recent security disclosures across the hardware-wallet sector. On Aug. 13, a breach at Trezor shipping provider ShipMonk exposed data belonging to nearly 14,000 customers. On Sept. 4, Trezor disclosed that another 67,000 US customers were affected.
In July, BitBox said its devices were unaffected by a vulnerability involving Coldcard’s random-number generation. In August, it released an update fixing two severe firmware vulnerabilities, with no known exploitation or stolen funds reported.
Cointelegraph reached out to Trezor and BitBox for more information but did not receive responses before publication.

United States authorities restrained more than $52 million in crypto linked to Xinbi Guarantee and its vendor network as part of a coordinated operation against the scam marketplace.
On Wednesday, the US Justice Department said its Scam Center Strike Force seized two wallets used by Xinbi to collect vendor payments containing about $12 million. Law enforcement also sought restraints against 47 additional wallets believed to be connected to money laundering across Xinbi’s network.
The DOJ said the US District Court for the District of Columbia authorized the seizure of Telegram channels hosting the marketplace on Sept. 7. According to the unsealed warrant, vendors used the channels to advertise money laundering, custom scam-investment websites and recruitment services for scam compounds in Southeast Asia.
The operation targets the financial and communications infrastructure supporting industrial-scale scam centers, expanding enforcement beyond individual operators to the marketplaces and service providers that allow the networks to function. The DOJ credited stablecoin issuer Tether with assisting in the investigation.
Treasury sanctions Xinbi and technology providers
In a coordinated action on Wednesday, the US Treasury Department said its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Xinbi as a significant transnational criminal organization. OFAC also sanctioned Singapore-based SafeW Technology and Cambodia-based Anwen Technology for allegedly providing technological and financial support to Xinbi.
According to the Treasury, Xinbi began moving its merchant and money-laundering networks to SafeW’s encrypted messaging application around June 2025 as law-enforcement scrutiny intensified. Anwen allegedly developed XinbiPay, also known as NewPay, a crypto wallet and payment application used by the marketplace.
The Treasury said Xinbi has processed over $24 billion in crypto and fiat since around 2022, primarily through Southeast Asia. The department said its platform has been used by North Korean hackers and entities connected to the sanctioned Prince Group.
The sanctions block Xinbi’s US property and interests and generally prohibit US persons from transacting with the designated entities.
The latest US action follows UK sanctions imposed against Xinbi. On March 26, the UK government imposed sanctions on Xinbi aimed at cutting the platform off from crypto access. Under the sanctions, UK assets connected to Xinbi will be frozen, and the platform will be barred from the country’s financial, trade and travel networks.
Magazine: Tether sued over $42M in frozen coins, 6,600 students get crypto loans: Asia Express

In an industry built on transparency and verifiability, newcomers might assume that crypto and blockchains leave very little room for mystery.
They’d be completely wrong of course, because the murky world of digital assets is rife with underhanded dealings, unsolved enigmas and fortunes disappearing behind pseudonyms.
From the identity of Bitcoin’s mystery creator to what really happened to a DAI developer on a beach in Puerto Rico, here are 10 crypto mysteries that remain unsolved.
1. Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
More than 17 years after Bitcoin’s creation, the greatest unsolved crypto mystery persists. We still don’t know who Satoshi Nakamoto is, or even whether Satoshi was one person.
He, she, or they published the Bitcoin white paper in 2008, mined the genesis block in January 2009 and remained active in its early development before disappearing from public view in 2010.
The quest for Satoshi’s identity has since produced an endless parade of possible candidates, from cryptographers and cypherpunks to British academics, early Bitcoin developers and even convicted sex offenders.
The latest serious attempt to solve the mystery came in April 2026, when The New York Times published a lengthy investigation naming British cryptographer Adam Back as its leading candidate.
The Times claimed there were similarities between his writings and Satoshi’s, their shared cryptographic interests, Back’s work on Hashcash — which was cited in the Bitcoin white paper — and a series of other circumstantial clues, all of which Back strenuously denied.
Adam Back’s Hashcash is cited in the Bitcoin Whitepaper. Source: Bitcoin.org
Other suspected candidates over the years have included core developer Peter Todd, cryptographer Hal Finney, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and others. Self-proclaimed Bitcoin creator Craig Wright is the only major Satoshi candidate to have been formally ruled by a UK court not to be Satoshi.
There were even some bizarre online claims that notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein could be Satoshi after a newly released tranche of the Epstein files revealed the sex trafficer had been involved in the early crypto industry, and made a 2014 investment in Back’s Blockstream.
There is no credible evidence that Epstein was Satoshi, , and so the enigma remains: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto and where is he now?
2. Who was the Patoshi miner?
If you thought the Satoshi mystery was strange, try digging into Bitcoin’s earliest blocks like blockchain researcher Sergio Lerner.
In 2013, he discovered a pattern in the way Bitcoin’s earliest blocks were mined and linked it to a single miner he later dubbed “Patoshi.”
Lerner estimated that the miner had accumulated about 1.1 million BTC across 22,000 blocks, which makes the enigmatic figure the largest holder of BTC today, above Coinbase, BlackRock and Strategy.
Satoshi Nakamoto is the top Bitcoin holder. Source: Arkham
While Patoshi has never conclusively been proven to be the mysterious Bitcoin creator, the pattern is still one of the strongest pieces of evidence linking a huge stash of early Bitcoin to Satoshi.
So who was Patoshi? Was it Satoshi operating a single machine, another early Bitcoin enthusiast, or something else entirely?
3. What happened to Mt. Gox’s missing Bitcoin?
When Mt. Gox collapsed in February 2014, it claimed that around 850,000 BTC had disappeared — only to later uncover some 200,000 BTC hiding in old-format wallets it previously believed to be empty. To this day, the rest of the coins’ whereabouts remain a mystery.
More than 12 years later, creditors are finally getting some of their money back, but what happened to Mt. Gox’s missing Bitcoin has never been resolved.
Investigators have traced portions of it, including some coins connected to Russian cybercriminals and the BTC-e exchange. US prosecutors have also alleged that Russian nationals stole and laundered roughly 647,000 BTC from Mt. Gox, yet the full story of the stolen coins has not been completely solved.
Russian nationals charged with hacking Mt. Gox. Source: DOJ
Who stole them? How long had the theft been happening? How much was taken through hacking versus internal failures? And more importantly, where are all those coins now?
4. What really happened to QuadrigaCX’s missing funds?
Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX shot to the top of crypto’s mystery list in December 2018 after its founder, Gerald Cotten, died suddenly in Jaipur, India.
The exchange was unable to access millions of dollars in cryptocurrency that customers had deposited, and it was popularly believed at the time that Cotten had taken the exchange’s private keys with him to the grave.
An investigation by the Ontario Securities Commission later found that he had actually transferred millions of dollars of client funds to his and his wife’s personal accounts, and had also used client assets to cover his own trading losses and personal expenses.
Was Quadriga a massive fraud that collapsed when its orchestrator died? Did Cotten leave behind wallets nobody has found, or did he fake his death and pocket the funds?
5. Where is the CryptoQueen?
Few crypto mysteries involve a missing person quite as notorious as Ruja Ignatova, AKA the CryptoQueen.
The charismatic Bulgarian founder of OneCoin allegedly helped build one of the world’s biggest crypto scams, with the FBI saying the scheme defrauded victims worldwide of more than $4 billion.
In October 2017, Ignatova flew from Sofia to Athens and then promptly disappeared, never to be found again.
The FBI added Ignatova to its 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list in 2022 and still offers a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to her arrest and conviction. In a 2026 update, the FBI said she remains at large and described her as “well-funded” and “well-connected.”
Rula Ignatova is still at large, according to the FBI. Source: FBI
So, is she still doing the crypto conference circuit undercover today, scheming for her next victims? Was she killed, or did she escape with millions of dollars and is living under a new identity with the aid of extensive plastic surgery?
Where is Ruja Ignatova? Maybe she’s sipping Mumbai Mules on a beach somewhere with Gerald Cotten.
6. Will James Howells ever get his lost Bitcoin back?
Back in 2013, Welsh IT worker James Howells accidentally threw away a hard drive containing the keys to what would later become a massive Bitcoin fortune, unwittingly becoming the poster child for how not to self-custody your BTC.
Howells insists that the infamous hard drive ended up in a massive landfill and spent years trying to recover it, even proposing to excavate part of the landfill with specialist equipment and AI-powered sorting systems to search the waste.
But after years of legal battles and failed attempts to persuade Newport City Council to let him excavate the site, his efforts to recover the drive have been in vain. A High Court judge ruled that he had no realistic prospect of succeeding in January 2025.
James Howells’ BTC is still on the blockchain. Source: Mempool.space
The Bitcoin itself, however, isn’t gone; it’s still sitting on the blockchain, visible to anyone who cares to look in the natural history museum of self-custody blunders.
7. Who was the DAO hacker?
Remember the 2016 DAO hack that would change Ethereum forever? This epic exploit wasn’t just one of crypto’s biggest early hacks; it helped determine what Ethereum would become.
An attacker exploited a vulnerability in The DAO’s smart contract to drain more than 3.6 million ETH into a child DAO, siphoning over 30% of the DAO’s funds before the attack stopped.
The attacker was never identified, and the aftermath would change crypto history, ultimately splitting Ethereum into two blockchains: the one we all know today and a smaller purist version, Ethereum Classic. In 2022 Laura Shin claimed the attacker was Austrian programmer Toby Hoenisch, but he denied the claims and has never been charged.
The DAO hack raised questions that persist today about whether code is law and blockchain transactions are immutable, or whether they can be rolled back if we don’t like them.
8. Who really stole the $400 million from FTX?
FTX’s collapse was already one of crypto’s biggest disasters when, just hours after the exchange filed for bankruptcy, hundreds of millions of dollars in digital assets began disappearing from its wallets. About $415 million in crypto was ultimately reported stolen.
Of course, the timing immediately raised suspicion, with FTX in chaos, employees trying to secure assets, bankruptcy proceedings beginning and different groups racing to determine who actually controlled the exchange’s wallets.
The US Department of Justice eventually seized hundreds of millions of dollars in assets linked to FTX and investigators have traced parts of the movements, but the identity of the attacker remains an unsolved crypto mystery.
Was it an opportunist outside hacker who happened to strike at the perfect moment? Was it somebody with inside access, or did the swirling chaos around the collapse create an opportunity that someone close to the exchange exploited? To this day, we don’t have an answer.
9. What really happened to Nikolai Mushegian?
Nikolai Mushegian was an early MakerDAO developer and a co-founder of Balancer who helped shape some of DeFi’s first infrastructure.
On Oct. 28, 2022, Mushegian was found dead in the waters off Condado Beach in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Local police said he had been out swimming and was caught by strong ocean currents.
Not everybody buys that version of events, however, since Mushegian had taken to Twitter to warn of his impending assassination just hours earlier.
In a series of disturbing and paranoid messages, he claimed that the CIA, Mossad and “pedo elite” were involved in a sex-trafficking operation in the area and were planning to frame him and kill him.
Nikolai Mushegian alerted his followers of his death before it happened. Source: Nikolai Mushegian
The Puerto Rico Justice Department investigated his death for almost a year and determined no criminal involvement, but given his online messages, questions about what happened remain.
Was Mushegian really caught by currents, as authorities reported, or was something more sinister going on in his final hours?
10. Why did someone deliberately burn 107 BTC?
Perhaps one of the weirdest mysteries of all is why anyone would burn a Bitcoin fortune after HODLing it for more than 12 years? Yet that’s exactly what happened in May 2026.
Someone sent 107 BTC, worth about $8.5 million, to a Bitcoin address from which the coins are rendered unspendable, effectively destroying them.
The coins had been acquired around 2014, when Bitcoin was trading below $600, making the timing particularly strange. Why would anyone voluntarily destroy millions of dollars in Bitcoin after holding it through a 12,000% rise in its value?
Stranger still, one of the five wallets suddenly sent about 20 BTC, worth roughly $1 million, to what appeared to be a large crypto custodian in March.
Almost exactly the same amount came back three weeks later, before the Bitcoin was ultimately burned, adding another layer to the mystery.
For an industry still in its teenage years, crypto sure has endured its fair share of intrigue. Be careful next time you decide to self-custody your fortune — you might just end up as one of crypto’s next great mysteries.
Magazine: Is Bitcoin too volatile to risk your retirement on?

DoubleZero, a network for high-speed data distribution, has added real-time data from Kalshi’s election and politics markets as prediction market trading picks up ahead of the US midterm elections in November.
The expansion adds Kalshi’s election contracts to DoubleZero Edge, which already carries data from the prediction market’s sports contracts and crypto perpetual futures, according to a Wednesday announcement.
The feed includes top-of-book and trade data, along with aggregated order book data from Kalshi’s election markets. Andy Ross, head of institutional at Kalshi, said the integration is intended to make political market data easier to incorporate into institutional workflows as expectations shift around election outcomes.
According to data from the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, betting on the 2026 US midterms had reached $133 million as of Aug. 10, surpassing the $92.4 million wagered during the entire 2024 congressional election cycle.
At the time of writing, a Kalshi midterm market that asks which party will win the US House had recorded more than $35 million in trading volume, with Democratic victory odds at 84%.
Kalshi’s prediction market on which party will win the US House. Source: Kalshi

Consensys Software Inc., the Ethereum software company behind MetaMask, plans to split into two independent companies, separating its consumer business from its institutional blockchain infrastructure operations.
According to Wednesday’s announcement, the separation is expected to be completed by the end of 2026, with Joe Lubin serving as chairman and CEO of MetaMask and executive chairman of the new Consensys.
The new Consensys will house the company’s protocols and institutional infrastructure businesses, including Linea, Besu and Teku, and will be led by CEO Mike Kriak and President David Cunningham. The company will focus on Ethereum infrastructure and helping financial institutions deploy blockchain technology for tokenization, stablecoins and other onchain financial services.
MetaMask will remain focused on consumer self-custody while expanding beyond crypto into payments, savings, investing and traditional financial products.
Source: MetaMask
MetaMask has recorded more than 100 million downloads across roughly 190 countries and facilitated trillions of dollars in transaction volume, according to the company.
The company said the restructuring reflects increasingly different priorities for its consumer and institutional businesses.
MetaMask’s evolution beyond crypto wallet
MetaMask, which launched in 2016 as an Ethereum browser extension for accessing decentralized applications and managing crypto assets, has expanded beyond those roots over the past year, adding products spanning payments, yield and tokenized traditional assets.
In June, MetaMask launched Money Account, which allows users to earn up to 4% variable APY on eligible mUSD stablecoin balances and spend the funds through MetaMask Card. The yield is generated through DeFi lending strategies rather than interest paid by MetaMask or the stablecoin issuer.
Source: MetaMask
In February, the company added access to 200 tokenized US stocks, exchange-traded funds and commodities through Ondo Global Markets for eligible users outside the United States.
Later that month, it rolled out its Mastercard-enabled spending card across 49 US states, expanding a product previously available in markets including Europe, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.
Magazine: Token buybacks are booming. But are they good for crypto projects?

Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs has doubled its valuation to $2 billion following an expansion of its Series C funding round led by Blockchain Capital. The company did not disclose the size of the latest investment but said its annual recurring revenue has quadrupled over the past three years, according to an announcement Wednesday.
The expansion follows a $70 million Series C in February, also led by Blockchain Capital. TRM provides blockchain intelligence and investigation software used by more than 600 government agencies and private-sector institutions across 75 countries, the company said.
Prior to the February round, the company was valued at $930 million, according to data compiled by Traxcn. It breached the $1 billion valuation mark in the round that included Citi Ventures and Galaxy among the investors.
TRM said its AI-powered tools are used to investigate fraud, money laundering, sanctions evasion and other forms of digital crime.
Digital crime losses reported to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center rose to $21 billion in 2025 from $16 billion in 2024, while TRM said criminal adoption of AI has risen 40% year over year in 2026, citing its AI-in-Crime Adoption Index.
The new valuation comes about two months after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) awarded TRM a roughly $95 million, one-year contract for forensic software and support services for Homeland Security Task Force investigations.
Rival Chainalysis challenged the sole-source award in federal court later that month, alleging ICE’s decision was “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.”
Magazine: Is Bitcoin too volatile to risk your retirement on?

U.S. Bank, the fifth-largest commercial bank in the United States, has completed a live cross-border payment using its proprietary USBDC stablecoin on the Stellar blockchain.
The pilot moved funds between U.S. Bank entities in North America and Europe, with USBDC issued and transferred on the public Stellar network. It also tested the stablecoin’s minting, redemption, freezing and clawback functions while integrating with the bank’s existing risk, compliance and operations systems.
The transaction validated U.S. Bank’s internally developed Digital Asset Platform, which connects tokenized assets with its traditional banking infrastructure, the bank said Wednesday. The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based bank is exploring additional uses including cross-border treasury operations, liquidity management and moving collateral onchain.
The pilot builds on U.S. Bank’s broader push into digital assets. In October 2025, the bank established a dedicated Digital Assets and Money Movement unit focused on stablecoin issuance, crypto custody, asset tokenization and digital money movement.
The country’s sixth-largest financial institution by assets, U.S. Bank has been testing custom stablecoin issuance on Stellar since at least November 2025, working alongside PwC and the Stellar Development Foundation.
Related: Jack Dorsey’s Block seeks US trust bank charter for Bitcoin, stablecoin
Banks deepen stablecoin push
While American banks have pushed back against allowing stablecoin issuers and crypto platforms to offer yield or rewards, some of the industry’s largest lenders are moving ahead with stablecoin projects of their own.
On Sept. 1, 21 major financial institutions, including Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and UBS, announced plans to form a company to issue stablecoins.
The group plans to launch a US dollar-denominated stablecoin in the first half of 2027 before expanding to other G7 currencies. The token is expected to target wholesale, institutional and retail markets, including cross-border payments and digital asset settlement.
Fidelity also entered the market in February with its Fidelity Digital Dollar (FIDD), issued through Fidelity Digital Assets, its national trust bank, and available to retail and institutional investors. FIDD had about $50 million in circulation at the time of writing, according to DefiLlama data.
FIDD market cap. Source: DefiLlama