Hi! In today’s edition:
🕵️ An FBI counterintelligence agent went looking for adversary wallets and found a criminal charge
🥶 Galaxy keeps revising the Coldcard damage upward, and it is not done counting
🎟️ One of crypto's most recognizable consumer products is switching off the lights
🟠 Strategy raised cash again last week, and bitcoin was one of the sources
Today’s newsletter is brought to you by 1inch!
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FBI Agent Takes the Keys, Then Confesses
A supervisory FBI agent with top secret clearance pulled seed phrases from bureau systems and moved about $1 million in crypto from accounts he was investigating into his own wallet, according to a criminal complaint filed August 1 in Virginia federal court.
Patrick Steven Yaroch made the transfers 10 to 12 times starting in late 2024, prosecutors say, then turned himself in. He messaged a Justice Department contact on Signal on July 28 and broke down the next day, saying the theft was "eating him up inside." He said he was frustrated the FBI would not act against the accounts. Two sources told NBC News the target was Russia.
Agents recovered roughly $925,426 from his Kraken and Suilend accounts, and found September flights to Portugal, power of attorney for two Portuguese lawyers, and ChatGPT chats about leaving the US with $1 million.
Coldcard's Bill Could Reach $130 Million
Confirmed losses from the Coldcard firmware flaw have passed $100 million. Galaxy Research said Monday it has high confidence that 1,596 BTC was drained from roughly 7,300 addresses across three waves, plus 14 smaller incidents.
A suspected fourth wave would push the total to 2,055 BTC, about $130 million. Galaxy excluded it because victims have not confirmed it. Roughly 90% of the stolen bitcoin has not moved, and Galaxy said it has passed attacker and victim addresses to US federal law enforcement, exchanges, and cyber investigators.
The Colcard exploit results from a March 2021 firmware build error that left Coldcard seeds guessable. Coinkite has shipped fixed firmware, but that does not repair a seed already created.
Crypto's Favorite Souvenir Is Shutting Down
POAP, the protocol that turned showing up at an event into an onchain collectible, is winding down. Co-founder Isabel Gonzalez announced the decision Monday, after more than five years and nearly 7.6 million badges minted by more than 46,000 issuers.
Gonzalez said crypto's funding cycles and distribution dynamics made it hard to build a sustainable company "without cannibalizing the ethos that made POAP mean something." Coinbase, American Express, Warner Music Group, and Bayer all ran POAP campaigns. Existing badges stay onchain and tradable.
POAP stopped onboarding new issuers in March, when it entered maintenance mode. Its exit follows BitMEX, Zapper, Odos, and Leap Wallet, and removes one of the few crypto consumer products that found real distribution outside crypto.
Strategy Sells Bitcoin $11,462 Below Cost
Strategy sold 1,638 BTC for $104.7 million between July 27 and August 2, cutting its holdings to 842,138 BTC, according to an 8-K filed Monday. The coins went at an average of $63,957, roughly $11,462 below the company's $75,419 average cost.
From the sum, $52.4 million funded preferred dividends and $52.3 million went toward repurchasing STRC shares. Strategy bought back 912,143 STRC shares for $81.2 million and raised another $290.6 million selling 3.01 million MSTR shares, $250 million of which went into a USD Reserve now at $4 billion.
The company has not bought bitcoin in more than five weeks. Strategy has held STRC's dividend at 12% and said it will not recommend a cut until the stock trades near its $100 par value. STRC was most recently trading over $92.
🚨TODAY ON DITC LIVE 🚨
The DEX in the City legal panel breaks down a brutal week for crypto law.
A 2021 firmware flaw let attackers drain roughly $89 million from Coldcard hardware wallets, reopening hard questions about who is liable when self-custody fails.
Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le also dig into Kalshi's latest court fight and the AI agents that escaped their sandboxes to breach real companies.
Streams today, Tuesday at 12pm ET.
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⚖️ Blockchain Association pushed back Monday against the National Sheriffs' Association's claim that the Clarity Act exempts DeFi, mixers, bridges, and developers from anti-money-laundering and sanctions law, arguing the group is describing a bill Congress did not write. CEO Summer Mersinger noted that the Fraternal Order of Police, NOBLE, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, and FLEOA all back the legislation, and that Title IX would route $600 million a year to state and local investigators from 2027 through 2031.
🔥 Solana validators began signaling support for SIMD-0553, which would charge transactions by the network resources they consume and lift daily SOL burns from roughly 650 coins, about $47,000, to as many as 9,000, or about $650,000. It is paired with SIMD-0550, which doubles the annual disinflation rate and pulls Solana's 1.5% terminal inflation floor forward to 2029 from 2032, and the two need about 40 million more SOL of stake to clear a 15% signaling threshold before Aug. 18.
🏦 BlackRock launched two tokenized money market products on Monday: onchain shares of its Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund (BSTBL) on Ethereum, and a new Daily Reinvestment Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle (BRSRV) offering daily dividend reinvestment across multiple chains. Both are intended to qualify as reserve assets for permitted US payment stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act, with Securitize acting as BRSRV's transfer agent and tokenization provider.
📈 Bitmine bought 10,399 ETH last week, lifting holdings to 5.8 million ETH, or 4.8% of supply, and repurchased 4.5 million common shares under its $4 billion buyback authorization. Chairman Tom Lee put total crypto, cash and "moonshot" holdings at $11.3 billion, with 4.9 million ETH staked, and said the company has bought ether every week since June 2025.
✂️ FalconX cut about 10% of its global workforce, roughly 35 of some 350 employees, as the prime broker braces for a longer downturn, Bloomberg reported Monday. About half the Singapore office was let go, and the firm is withdrawing its license application with the Monetary Authority of Singapore to concentrate there on derivatives while building out Europe.
🇯🇵 Bitget will stop serving residents of Japan, closing new signups as of Aug. 3, applying phased account restrictions from Nov. 1, and force-closing any remaining positions after Dec. 31. Anyone who believes they were wrongly flagged as a Japanese resident has until Nov. 1 to complete Level 2 verification.
🇰🇷 Bithumb laid out a timeline targeting a completed IPO in 2028, with internal controls work and K-IFRS conversion preparation this year and a preliminary listing review filed in 2027. The exchange said it has already split off Bithumb Asset to separate business lines and remove potential conflicts of interest ahead of the listing.
🇬🇧 Robinhood was added to the FCA's register of cryptoasset firms as of July 31, joining more than 50 approved companies including Ripple, Kraken, BlackRock and BNY. The timing counts because the authorization window for the UK's fuller crypto regime opens at the end of September and closes at the end of February, ahead of the rules taking effect in October 2027.
🔗 BitGo launched a control layer called Link that ties institutional clients' exchange accounts to its custody platform, giving trading and treasury teams one view of buying power across venues plus one-click transfers with automatic reconciliation. Transfers route through BitGo's existing policy engine, and CEO Mike Belshe framed the product as making BitGo the hub for institutional treasury and trading.
💰 Mastercard closed its acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK on Monday, a deal worth up to $1.8 billion including $300 million in contingent payments. The close follows Coinbase's abandoned $2 billion bid for BVNK in November 2025, and chief product officer Jorn Lambert framed the rationale as connecting fiat, stablecoins and tokenized deposits rather than building new rails.
💸 Ripple invested in ZILO and Licuido, adding regulated transfer agency, issuance and collateral mobility to its XRP Ledger stack, without disclosing amounts for either. Both were already Ripple partners on the Aviva Investors tokenized fund work, with RLUSD serving as the cash leg for delivery-versus-payment settlement.
Jonah Burian: Why Are Capitalists Giving Away Free Software?
