Tag: cryptocurrency

Armed Robber Targets Sam Altman’s Ex-Boyfriend’s House, Forces Transfer Of $11 Million In Crypto

A thief barged into a house owned by Lachy Groom – a wealthy tech investor who once dated OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, tied up a victim, and made off with $11 million in Crypto Saturday evening in San Francisco, the NY Post reports.

Dressed as a delivery worker, the armed robber rang the door at Groom’s $4.4 million home on Dorland Street while carrying a white box, asks for Joshua – who lives with Groom – while claiming to be a UPS driver. The victim answers the door and identifies himself as Joshua. 

The thief then asked for him to sign for the package – asking if he can borrow a pen. The suspect then followed Joshua inside when a loud bang can be heard. 

According to the report, the suspect pulled a gun, tied up the victim with duct tape, and then stole $11 million worth of Ethereum and Bitcoin (exact method unknown), in what is believed to have been a hit by an organized crime group that the suspect was part of.

The suspect then tortured the victim, beating him while he held a phone up on loudspeaker as foreign voices on the line repeated his personal information that they had obtained. The thief then poured liquid on the victim before the crypto wallets were emptied.

The whole thing took around 90 minutes. 

Homeowner Lachy Groom, 31, is a venture capitalist and the ex-boyfriend of Open AI’s Altman, 40, who dated the billionaire sometime before he got married in 2024, sources with knowledge of their relationship said. Groom bought the property from Altman’s brother in 2021 for $1.8 million, property records show. Details of their relationship have not previously been reported. Attempts to reach Groom were not returned.

The Post has learned Joshua is a fellow tech investor who lives with Groom at the 4-bedroom Dorland Street home. 

Altman and Groom have invested together in various companies. Groom, a native Australian, has founded four startups and sold three before he turned 18. 

Keep reading

Microsoft Adds AI to Windows Despite ‘Novel Security Risks’

Microsoft’s recent introduction of Copilot Actions, an experimental AI agent integrated into Windows, has sparked criticism from security experts who question the safety of pushing new features before fully understanding and containing their potential risks

Ars Technica reports that Microsoft unveiled Copilot Actions this week, a set of “experimental agentic features” that allow AI to perform various tasks such as organizing files, scheduling meetings, and sending emails. While the company touted the AI agent as an active digital collaborator that enhances efficiency and productivity, it also issued a warning about the security implications of enabling the feature.

Microsoft’s warning reads:

As these capabilities are introduced, AI models still face functional limitations in terms of how they behave and occasionally may hallucinate and produce unexpected outputs. Additionally, agentic AI applications introduce novel security risks, such as cross-prompt injection (XPIA), where malicious content embedded in UI elements or documents can override agent instructions, leading to unintended actions like data exfiltration or malware installation.

Security concerns stem from known defects inherent in most large language models (LLMs), including Copilot. Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that LLMs can provide factually erroneous and illogical answers, a behavior known as “hallucinations.” This means users cannot fully trust the output of AI assistants like Copilot, Gemini, or Claude, and must independently verify the information.

Another significant issue with LLMs is their vulnerability to prompt injections. Hackers can exploit this flaw by planting malicious instructions in websites, resumes, and emails, which the AI eagerly follows without discerning between valid user prompts and untrusted, third-party content. These vulnerabilities can lead to data exfiltration, malicious code execution, and cryptocurrency theft.

Keep reading

Report: Crypto Drives Record Growth in Trump Family Finances

A new Reuters investigation reveals a scale of presidential enrichment unseen in modern U.S. history. Published Tuesday, a special report titled “Inside the Trump family’s global crypto cash machine” shows that the Trump family’s fortune surged in 2025. The summary reads:

The U.S. president’s family raked in more than $800 million from sales of crypto assets in the first half of 2025 alone, a Reuters examination found, on top of potentially billions more in unrealized “on paper” gains. Much of that cash has come from foreign sources as Donald Trump’s sons have touted their business on an international investor roadshow.

When President Trump’s term ends, he is expected to regain full control of a business empire now swollen with foreign capital and turbocharged by a crypto market shaped by his own administration’s policies.

The findings draw on official disclosures, property and court records, crypto trade information, and interviews. They outline a complex network of token sales, offshore investors, and regulatory changes that together fueled the company’s explosive growth. Reuters described the arrangement as “legal, but not ethical.”

Reacting to the report, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) struck a relaxed tone:

As long as [the president] disclose[s] the income and sources, I think that’s acceptable.

But the story Reuters pieced together suggests something deeper — a presidency and a family fortune advancing in parallel, powered by the same crypto engine.

The Dubai Pitch

The money trail begins in Dubai. In May, Eric Trump met with Chinese businessman Guren “Bobby” Zhou and others on the sidelines of a cryptocurrency conference, pitching World Liberty Financial, Inc. (WLFI), the family’s crypto business.

Buy at least $20 million of “governance tokens,” he said, and join a venture that would “embody the future of finance.” The technology behind the project appeared “rudimentary,” one attendee told the outlet. Yet, within weeks, Aqua1 Foundation, a state-linked Abu Dhabi investment group, announced a $100 million purchase — the largest known buy of WLFI tokens.

Reuters identified Zhou as being under investigation by Britain’s National Crime Agency for money laundering. He has also been linked to multiple money-laundering probes and civil court judgments in China. Aqua Labs Investment LLC, an affiliate of Aqua1, confirmed the deal as a “commercial decision consistent with advancing regulated digital-asset ecosystems.”

The Windfall

Dubai was only one stop on the Trump brothers’ investment tour. Reuters wrote:

In Europe, the Middle East and Asia, they have been promoting World Liberty and other ventures that funnel investors’ cash to Trump family businesses, known collectively as the Trump Organization.

The results were staggering. In the first half of 2025, Trump Organization income soared to $864 million, up from $51 million a year earlier. Over 90 percent came from crypto ventures, including token sales through WLFI.

Traditional businesses paled by comparison: golf clubs and resorts brought in $33 million, while name-licensing added $23 million. More than half of total income — about $463 million — came from sales of the family’s $USD1 tokens, including as much as $75 million from Aqua1 Foundation alone. WLFI’s website confirms that a Trump entity receives 75 percent of all token-sale revenue.

Keep reading

Trump Pardons Binance Founder Tied to His Crypto Venture

President Donald Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, co-founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, on Wednesday. Binance is a global trading platform that handles billions of dollars in crypto transactions each day. In 2023, Zhao, also known as CZ, pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program at Binance, a violation of the Bank Secrecy Act. He admitted that the company allowed U.S. customers to trade with sanctioned jurisdictions and ignored warning signs of criminal activity on the platform. Last year, he served a four-month prison sentence.

The pardon immediately drew criticism for Zhao’s known business links to World Liberty Financial, Inc. (WLFI). That is the president’s own crypto venture, co-founded with three of his sons, real estate developers Steve and Zach Witkoff, and several other investors.

Why Pardon Zhao?

At the White House, Trump was asked about the pardon:

Today you pardoned the founder of Binance. Can you explain why you chose to pardon him, and did it have anything to do with your family’s [crypto] business?

The president paused to confirm whom the journalist meant. He then launched into what sounded less like a legal explanation and more like a reflex — strongly evoking the “autopen” scandal of his predecessor:

I believe we’re talking about the same person, because I pardon a lot of people. I don’t know. He was recommended by a lot of people. A lot of people say — Are you talking about the crypto person? A lot of people say that he wasn’t guilty of anything.

He then continued,

He was somebody — I don’t know — I don’t believe I’ve ever met him. But I’ve been told by a lot — a lot of support — he had a lot of support, and they said that what he did was not even a crime, that he was prosecuted by the Biden administration. And so I gave him a pardon on request by a lot of good people.

Press-secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the move at a White House briefing. She said the president had exercised his constitutional authority and that the pardon followed “thorough” review. She added that the case was “overly prosecuted” by the Joe Biden administration.

Leavitt also issued a separate statement, reported by Politico. She argued that the Biden administration “pursued Mr. Zhao despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims.” She added that prosecutors had sought “a sentence so far outside the guidelines that even the judge called it unprecedented.” Leavitt said the case had “damaged America’s reputation as a global tech leader” and declared, “The Biden administration’s war on crypto is over.”

Keep reading

Unprecedented Times: “It’s Hard To Keep Up, Even By Experienced Folks”

That we are living in unprecedented times was borne out by events in the last couple of days again. Indeed, it is probably hard to keep up, even by experienced folks.

The London silver market saw the spot price of silver pushing above $51 per troy ounce on Friday (and higher again this morning) due to a short squeeze and shortage of silver in London vaults. Some say the situation now, in particular the lack of liquidity, is comparable or even worse than in the early 1980s when the famous Hunt brothers tried to corner the market (after which silver crashed).

Meanwhile, crypto markets saw on Friday what data tracker Coinglass dubbed the “largest liquidation in history”, leading to hefty declines in cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. But significant losses were also recorded in global equity markets, with the S&P500 down 2.7% and investors seeking refuge in ‘safe-haven’ bond markets (10Y USTs -11bp, German Bunds -6bp).

That volatility was clearly driven by the strong-worded warnings by President Trump at the address of China (more on that below), although there were other factors at play, including (geo)political instability. Indeed, just name me one country where the political situation is stable, where there is no ‘polarization’ of society and where policy making is ‘boring’… Still thinking?

In France, newly appointed PM Lecornu, who threw in the towel last week after trying to glue together a group of parties able to steer a budget through parliament was re-appointed by President Macron, again with the same task: …to glue together a group of parties able to steer a budget through parliament. On Sunday President Macron announced the new cabinet, headed by Lecornu.

The turn of events, including Lecornu’s conclusion that it should be possible to reach a deal on the 2026 budget, supported French bonds on Friday. But we think there is not much scope for a further rally in the near term. In fact, as we pointed out last week, we think there is not much scope for a further rally in the near term. Political risks remain until the budget negations are concluded. Both key parties on the far left and right have already indicated they will not support this cabinet and so Lecornu will need all the support he can get elsewhere. It is not to be excluded that he will be toppled again in a no-confidence vote this week. But if he stays, negotiations are likely to remain tough. Most parties underscore the need for a budget, but they will undoubtedly demand (further) concessions, which may weaken fiscal consolidation. In the longer run, that leaves the French curve more vulnerable to future fiscal setbacks.

However, the political focus shifted back to Japan last Friday as the long-standing LDP-Komeito coalition collapsed following Sanae Takaichi’s election as LDP leader. She was set to become Japan’s first female Prime Minister after Shigeru Ishiba stepped down, but Komeito withdrew support over disagreements, particularly on stricter party funding rules. While Takaichi’s leadership is now uncertain, she may still retain power if she can secure backing from parts of the fragmented opposition. Otherwise, snap elections are a real possibility.

Keep reading

Bitcoin crash proves crypto is a rigged casino

Something strange happened in crypto-land this weekend. On Friday afternoon at around 4:30 pm, a large “whale” — a player big enough to noticeably move asset prices — began placing shorts on crypto. Short orders occur when traders borrow an asset, which they immediately sell, before buying it back at (they hope) a reduced price, repaying the loan and then pocketing the difference.

Minutes later, President Donald Trump announced a 100% tariff on Chinese imports. The price of Bitcoin then plunged by 4%, whereupon most of the short positions were closed. Whoever was doing the trading walked away with a profit of $192 million. Nice work if you can get it.

Of course, everyone else in the crypto space lost around $200 billion among them. The immediate suspicion was that someone in the administration knew what was coming and decided to make a fast buck.

It’s not the first time strange movements have taken place in markets just before a major Trump announcement that moved asset prices. In April, the Attorney General Pam Bondi sold millions of dollars worth of stock in Trump Media just hours before the President’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement sent its price tumbling. A week later, Trump’s tweet urging that it was a “great time to buy,” just before his U-turn on tariffs, raised further suspicion. ProPublica has documented several similar cases where market swings coincided suspiciously with presidential statements.

Trump denies any insider dealing while acknowledging, albeit doubting, that administration insiders could be profiting from privileged information. And it would be very difficult to prove that anyone broke the law. In any case, there’s more to the story than an engineered crash: cryptocurrency prices were already sliding before Trump’s announcement, which merely accelerated the fall — if only briefly.

The crypto market is highly leveraged, with traders taking on debt to buy digital assets on the assumption that rising prices will make repayment easy. But when prices turn, some owners are forced to sell quickly to meet their debt obligations. That appears to have exacerbated Friday’s plunge.

Keep reading

New CLARITY Act Draft Could Shield Crypto Developers From Past Liability

In the U.S. Senate Banking Committee’s most recent version of the CLARITY Act, Bitcoin and crypto developers would be protected from being charged with operating an unlicensed money transmitting business moving forward — and retroactively.

On Friday, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee released its latest draft of the CLARITY Act (CLARITY), in which it proposes an amendment to 18 U.S. Code § 1960(a) stipulates that only crypto developers or providers that “knowingly exercise control over currency, funds, or other value that substitutes for currency” be treated as money transmitting businesses.

What is more, this amendment would not only protect Bitcoin and crypto developers in the wake of a bill with this language included in its passing, but it would also protect said developers retroactively.

In Section 501 of section Title V of the draft, entitled “Protecting Software Developers and Software Innovation,” it states that “This section, and the amendments made by this section, shall apply to conduct occurring before, on, or after the date of enactment of this Act.”

A Positive Development for Tornado Cash Developer Roman Storm

If this language is included in a version of the bill that is enacted into law, Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm, who was found guilty of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business last month, stands to benefit.

Storm has alluded to the notion that he plans to appeal the guilty verdict, as per reporting by Eleanor Terrett.

If CLARITY becomes law and the language regarding retroactive developer protection is included in the draft of the bill that passes, Storm’s legal team should theoretically have no issue winning at the appellate level.

Unfortunately, if CLARITY passes with the retroactive protections included, this will not help the Samourai Wallet Developers, who accepted a plea deal for operating an unlicensed money transmitting business in July.

Keep reading

Has El Salvador Made Its Bitcoin Holdings Quantum-Proof?

El Salvador says its bitcoin reserve is safer from quantum threats — but the reality behind the claim is less sweeping than it sounds.

What to know:

  • El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office announced changes Friday to how the country secures its reserve.
  • Officials framed the move as “quantum risk mitigation” and “future-proofing.”
  • Bitcoin OG Adam Back said the shift reflects sound bitcoin custody practice.

El Salvador has overhauled how it stores the nation’s bitcoin, saying the change both strengthens security today and prepares for technological risks that could emerge in the future.

In an announcement on Friday, the Bitcoin Office said the country’s entire reserve has been moved out of a single wallet and spread across many new ones. Each wallet will hold no more than 500 BTC, a limit meant to reduce the potential damage if any one of them were ever compromised.

Officials described the new setup as following established industry practices while also anticipating advances in quantum computing. Quantum machines, they noted, could one day break the cryptographic math that secures bitcoin, as well as everyday systems like banking, email and online communications.

The concern arises when coins are spent. To move bitcoin, the digital signature protecting those funds must be revealed on the blockchain. Today, that’s safe, but in theory, a future quantum computer could exploit the exposed information to calculate the private key and steal the coins before the transaction is confirmed.

By shifting coins into many unused wallets, El Salvador reduces the chance that its reserve is left with too many exposed keys at once. Most of its holdings remain locked behind information that cannot currently be attacked, and capping the size of each wallet means even a breach would not put the entire reserve at risk.

The government also admitted that its earlier setup — keeping everything in a single address for the sake of transparency — created unnecessary exposure. That address was used repeatedly, which meant its keys were visible on the blockchain almost continuously. In the new model, a public dashboard allows anyone to track the reserve across multiple wallets, preserving accountability without repeatedly reusing the same address.

In plain terms, the shift is like moving money out of one giant vault and into a series of smaller safes. The locks on those safes stay hidden until they are opened, and no single safe holds too much cash.

Beyond the quantum angle, this also lines up with basic bitcoin housekeeping. Experienced users often warn against reusing the same wallet over and over, since it weakens privacy and security. They also recommend breaking large balances into smaller chunks, which limits the fallout if something goes wrong.

That’s why Adam Back, one of bitcoin’s earliest pioneers and the CEO of Blockstream, praised the change. Writing on X, he said it’s “generally a good practice” to split funds into many pieces — called UTXOs in bitcoin jargon — rather than piling them into one place and reusing the same address.

Keep reading

Up To 37% Of Circulating Bitcoin May Be Lost Forever In Silent Supply Shock

While Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million coin cap was designed to counteract fiat inflation and mirror gold’s scarcity, a massive pool of permanently lost coins further tightens supply.

Estimates from on-chain analyses suggest that between 2.3 million and an incredible 7.8 million BTC (roughly between 11—37% of total supply), may have vanished forever, trapped in lost wallets, forgotten keys, or in addresses abandoned due to unexpected deaths. These ‘zombie’ or ‘ghost’ coins then effectively reduce Bitcoin’s effective circulating supply from the current 19.9 million to as low as a range of 12.1—17.6 million BTC.

A Donation to Everyone

As well as intensifying Bitcoin’s existing inherent scarcity, coins that permanently vanish boost the true value of all remaining Bitcoins. As Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator/creators, stated in a foresightful observation in April 2010 in a post on the BitcoinTalk forum: “Lost coins only make everyone else’s coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.”

The lost coin range estimate (2.3—7.8 million) also comfortably exceeds the combined total of Bitcoin ETF and corporate treasury holdings which together total approximately 2.2 million BTC, a point rarely highlighted by a mainstream financial media fixated on the latest Blackrock Bitcoin ETF inflows and [Micro]Strategy’s latest BTC purchases.

No Keys, No Coins

Bitcoin’s rarity is thus magnified by these permanent losses, as the lost coin supply shock increases the value of every remaining coin, in contrast to traditional centralised assets such as stocks or bonds, In Bitcoin, there is no safety net. Once access is gone, the coins are effectively removed from circulation.

With a self-custodial architecture of ‘be your own bank’ but on an immutable blockchain, any lost and inaccessible coins on the Bitcoin network remain visible but untouchable. There is no bank and no bailout – only the owner and their private keys.

The familiar warning about exchange-held BTC of “not your keys, not your coins” now becomes the even more dramatic “no keys, no coins” in the off-exchange world.

Bitcoin relies on private keys (unique 256-bit cryptographic strings) to control and transfer ownership between addresses. Forgotten passwords, lost seed phrases, overwritten files, corrupted drives, or discarded hardware all result in irreversible inaccessibility.

Real-World Losses

Real-world cases highlight the dramatic scale and drama of lost Bitcoin. In 2013, the now infamous Welsh IT engineer James Howells accidentally discarded a hard drive containing private keys to 8,000 BTC in a landfill, worth roughly USD 900mn at current prices. But local city council rulings about environmental regulations prevent the obsessed Howells from launching a search for the lost hard drive.

Stefan Thomas, former Ripple CTO, lost access to 7,002 BTC (circa USD 777mn today) after forgetting his IronKey hard drive password, which locks permanently after 10 failed guesses. In January 2021, with two attempts left, Thomas described to the New York Times his repeated, desperate, and unsuccessful efforts to regain access.

Deaths also contribute to Bitcoin inaccessibility when holders die without succession plans. Gerald Cotten, CEO of Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, allegedly died in 2018 without revealing how to access USD 190mn in client funds, which included substantial Bitcoin holdings.

Romanian early Bitcoin miner Mircea Popescu drowned off a Costa Rica beach in 2021, widely rumoured to have left up to 1 million BTC inaccessible. (potentially worth USD 111bn). While the size of Popescu’s BTC holdings is unproven, he was known to have had sizeable holdings.

And then there’s Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, who pulled his own vanishing act in April 2011, leaving behind an estimated 1 million BTC mined between 2009— 2010. This Satoshi stash is now possibly ‘lost’ forever, or has been left intentionally dormant as a ‘donation’ to the network.

Keep reading

The Surveillance Net Is Closing, But the Smart Ones Can See the Writing on the Wall

The privacy coin Zano just rallied nearly 70 percent in the last 30 days, lifting its market cap toward a quarter billion dollars and pushing daily trading volume close to three million. The spike isn’t about speculation alone. It reflects a shift underway as people begin to hedge against a tightening surveillance state.

The latest proof of financial control came just last month, when Tether froze $49.6 million in USDT at regulators’ request during a coordinated international crackdown. Regardless of the guilt or innocence of the targets, the lesson is obvious. These assets can be frozen in an instant, with no trial and no process, making them less a hedge against the state and more a compliant extension of it. 

Congress reinforced this fact with the GENIUS Act, a law that hard-wires surveillance into stablecoins by forcing issuers to operate under bank-style oversight, AML regimes, and reserve mandates. The fact that Democrats and Republicans both lined up behind it should tell you everything. In Washington, true bipartisan consensus only happens when war, debt, or control are on the line.

That same logic now extends to the streets. National Guard units are being deployed into American cities to “fight crime,” but the justification is always the same: safety over freedom. Deployments like this normalize militarization at home and make clear that the tools built for foreign wars are now being pointed inward. 

The grid doesn’t stop at the barrel of a gun either. It runs through data. Federal agencies have been caught buying location data from brokers like Venntel to track millions of Americans without warrants. The AT&T Hemisphere program continues to funnel call records to law enforcement, building a quiet dragnet with virtually no oversight. License plate readers vacuum up hundreds of millions of scans, with databases shared across jurisdictions and tapped for immigration enforcement. Flock Safety’s license-plate readers generated 1,400+ immigration-related searches in Denver and 113 million scans in a year in Austin, triggering local backlash over data-sharing and policy violations. This is mass movement tracking, normalized street by street. All of this happens without a vote, without consent, and in most cases without warrants.

Keep reading