Cetus Relaunches After Recovering $162M From Exploit

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🔓 Cetus back after $162M heist

• 🛑 Sun-linked firm drops Coinbase suit

• 🛡️ Alex Lab plans money back

• 🧱 Bitcoin Core resists software mandates

Access up to $1M without selling your Bitcoin

Instant liquidity. No selling. No fees. No early penalties. Backed by your BTC.

Cetus Relaunches Protocol After Recovering $162M From Exploit

Sui- and Aptos-based decentralized exchange Cetus has relaunched its protocol 17 days after an integer overflow vulnerability in a shared math library used by Cetus’ contracts allowed an attacker to artificially inflate deposited tokens and drain funds from its liquidity pools.

Working with Sui validators, the protocol managed to freeze $162 million of the stolen assets on the Sui network. The Sui Foundation also extended a $30 million USDC loan to Cetus, and the protocol used its $7 million in reserves to help replenish affected liquidity pools.

Cetus announced the full relaunch on Sunday, saying that affected LP positions would see a recovery rate of between 85% and 99% depending on the extent of the attack on each pool. The team plans to use its native CETUS token to compensate users to 100% liquidity, with 15% of the token supply now deployed to the compensation contract — 5% will be claimable at launch, while 10% will be unlocked in a linear process lasting 12 months.

Despite the substantial recovery, assets worth tens of millions of dollars remain under the attacker’s control, and some have already been laundered.

“This restart signifies more than just a relaunch, but a renewal,” the Cetus team said. “We’re rebuilding — more secure, more resilient, and more dedicated than ever to delivering secure, powerful and user-friendly DeFi infrastructure for the Sui ecosystem.”

BiT Global Drops Lawsuit Against Coinbase Over wBTC Delisting

BiT Global, the crypto firm connected to TRON founder Justin Sun, has officially dropped its lawsuit against Coinbase regarding the delisting of wrapped bitcoin (wBTC) from the exchange. 

The suit, filed late last year, accused Coinbase of an unjustified delisting that allegedly harmed wBTC’s liquidity and reputation, and claimed the move favored Coinbase’s rival token, cbBTC, which had been launched just two months before the delisting.

Coinbase cited “unacceptable risk” as the reason for delisting wBTC, specifically expressing concern that the token could fall under Sun’s influence following his partnership with BiT Global. 

The lawsuit had initially sought more than $1 billion in damages and injunctive relief to prevent further harm to wBTC’s market position.

The suit was dismissed on Sunday “with prejudice,” meaning that BiT Global cannot bring the same claims again in the future, and both parties agreed to cover their own legal expenses.

Alex Lab to Reimburse Users After $8.3M Exploit

Alex Lab, a prominent Bitcoin DeFi protocol built on the Stacks blockchain, suffered a major security breach on June 6, resulting in the loss of around $8.3 million of digital assets. 

The attacker exploited a vulnerability in the protocol’s self-listing verification logic, allowing them to drain liquidity from several asset pools. The stolen assets included 8.4 million Stacks (STX) tokens, 21.85 Stacks Bitcoin (sBTC), and a few hundred thousand dollars of stablecoins USDT, USDC and Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC).

The exploit triggered a sharp market reaction, with the $ALEX token plummeting 45% following the news. The development followed an earlier $4.3 million theft from Alex Lab in May last year that the protocol linked to North Korean state-sponsored cybercrime outfit Lazarus Group.

Alex Lab Foundation, the entity behind the protocol, committed to fully reimbursing all affected customers using its treasury reserves. 

The team said compensation would be issued in USDC stablecoins, with reimbursement amounts calculated based on average onchain exchange rates between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. UTC on the day of the attack.

Bitcoin Core Says Contributors Should Not Mandate Software Policies

Bitcoin Core developers last week released a statement emphasizing that users are free to choose their own Bitcoin software and policies. They reiterated that no one, including Bitcoin Core, could force users to update or adopt specific rules.

Bitcoin Core said it would not block valid, fee-paying transactions that miners wanted to include in blocks, arguing that the software’s job was to efficiently relay transactions and blocks, not to enforce restrictions on new or unpopular transaction types, including inscriptions or non-financial data.

“This is not endorsing or condoning non-financial data usage, but accepting that as a censorship-resistant system, Bitcoin can and will be used for use cases not everyone agrees on,” the team said.

The statement was predictably met with some backlash from certain members of the Bitcoin community, including developer Luke Dashjr, a prominent Bitcoin Core developer and creator of the OCEAN mining pool, who strongly opposes the inclusion and propagation of what he considers "spam transactions" on the network.

Dashjr believes that so-called spam transactions, including ordinal inscriptions and similar data-heavy uses, are abuses of the blockchain, which he likened to denial-of-service attacks, not legitimate use cases.

“This OPED contradicts itself, presenting out of band relay as both negative and also ‘an important aspect of Bitcoin’s censorship resistance’” Dashjr said on X.

“It ignores the lack of consent to spam by users/node operators, giving deference to the attackers and the malicious miners who might conspire with them,” he said.

• 🇦🇷 Argentina’s anti-corruption office last week cleared President Javier Milei of ethics violations in the Libra crypto scandal, stating his promotional post was personal and not tied to government actions, although a separate federal criminal probe remains active.

• 📃 Exchange Gemini filed a confidential S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a potential IPO, following Circle’s explosive public debut, which saw shares surge 168%, signaling rising crypto firm interest in going public amid favorable market sentiment.

• 💵 Strategy on Friday priced a preferred stock offering expected to raise about $979.7 million to fund more bitcoin purchases, offering a 10% annual return with no management fees to long-term investors.

• 🪙 Metaplanet’s shares surged 22% after unveiling a record-setting $5.4 billion stock rights program aimed at growing its bitcoin holdings from 8,888 to 210,000 by 2027, potentially absorbing 1% of total supply and joining a wave of firms building corporate BTC treasuries.

• 🇬🇧 The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority proposed lifting its retail ban on crypto exchange-traded notes, aiming to align with global standards and open up access to high-risk crypto products on regulated investment exchanges.

• 🔥 1inch nearly doubled its DEX aggregator market share to 60% in May after expanding to Solana, capturing $31.5 billion in trade volume and overtaking rivals amid a memecoin trading boom concentrated on Solana.

• 📱For-profit blockchain developer the Tools For Humanity and the World Foundation launched its World Build 2.0 with $1.3 million in developer rewards to grow mini-apps for the World app, which has racked up more than 10 million Android downloads despite limited U.S. adoption.

• 🔐 After a rise in kidnappings targeting crypto holders, the Taihuttu “Bitcoin Family” has abandoned hardware wallets and spread encrypted seed phrase fragments across four continents in a fully decentralized, analog-digital hybrid setup.

• 📈 U.S. spot ethereum exchange-traded funds posted 15 consecutive trading days of net inflows totaling $3.33 billion amid ETH’s 40% price rally, driven by the Pectra upgrade and rising institutional demand, even as spot bitcoin ETFs shed more than $1 billion since late May.

• 🤝 X said on Friday that it was partnering with Polymarket to integrate prediction market insights using Grok AI and X content, marking the social media platform’s most significant crypto-linked collaboration to date as Polymarket user activity shifts and market creation hits all-time highs.

1. Asymmetric: Market Update #30

2. Fortune: Apple, X, and Airbnb among growing number of Big Tech firms exploring crypto adoption

3. Coin Metrics co-founder Nic Carter on how much real volume do stablecoins do