Author: rb809rb

The European Union’s (EU) crypto clean-up has handed scammers a weapon.

When the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulations’ ramework came into full force on July 1, more than 1,700 unlicensed crypto platforms were required to stop serving EU customers and direct them to licensed alternatives. Only 323 companies held a valid MiCA authorization at the time. That gap, in which up to 10 million users were told to move their digital assets, is exactly what fraudsters needed.

. The mechanism is straightforward. Scammers copy the language of real migration notices, impersonate regulators, and push users to fake platforms before victims realize the difference.

Social engineering scams were already concerning in 2025. Crypto exchange WhiteBIT found that nearly 41% of crypto incidents last year involved malicious actors deceiving victims through fake investment offers or impersonation. European regulators, however, say they have seen an increase in crypto scams since the July 1 deadline.

A spokesperson for France’s Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) noted scammers were posing as AMF employees, convincing victims to pay upfront administrative fees to recover stolen funds.

The breach has impacted 39,798 customers who placed orders between March 2, 2025 and April 11, 2026.

SafePal stressed that the core security of its wallets remains intact, adding that users’ seed phrases, private keys, bank passwords, bank account information, payment card numbers, and government-issued IDs were not affected.

However, SafePal said users who have shared their private keys or seed phrases via a phishing email, phone call, or letter should treat their wallet as compromised and transfer their assets to a new wallet.

How SafePal is responding

The company said it had patched the vulnerability and introduced additional security measures in response. SafePal notified all affected customers by email from security@safepal.com on Sunday and hired an independent third-party security firm to audit the fix and review its order-processing systems.

SafePal also said it would retain customers’ personal data in its order-processing system for only 90 days from the date of collection. In addition, the company identified and removed more than 30 fraudulent websites and phishing links associated with the breach.

Customers can use a verification tool on SafePal’s website to check whether their data was affected, the company said.

“The old ‘long bitcoin, short the bankers’ trade is over: banks have moved from resisting digital assets to building and enabling or distributing them through custody, tokenization and regulated trading,” Dori said.

He attributed the shift to client demand and clearer rules, calling it structural rather than cyclical.

Early bank entrants included Swissquote, which added bitcoin trading in 2017, DBS in 2020 and BBVA in 2021. BNY Mellon started institutional crypto custody in 2022, the same year Nubank launched bitcoin and ether trading and LGT added crypto services.

St.Galler Kantonalbank and Santander followed in 2023, while Zürcher Kantonalbank added retail trading in 2024, before other major financial industry players including Standard Chartered, Charles Schwab, SoFi and Morgan Stanley entered the space.

Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley, meanwhile, said its client roster has increasingly reflected the convergence of traditional and decentralized finance over the past two years.

Large financial firms are partnering with specialist providers rather than building their own infrastructure, he said. Still, real-world assets coming onchain and crypto wrappers being created by large asset managers is showing two worlds are increasingly becoming one.

“We’re quickly headed towards a world where there isn’t ‘traditional finance’ and ‘decentralized finance.’ There’s just ‘finance,” McCauley told CoinDesk. “

Veteran trader Peter Brandt has stated that he has little interest in owning the Ripple-linked $XRP cryptocurrency. Moreover, he has made it clear that he would immediately convert a large $XRP position into Bitcoin.

This comes after the trading vet was challenged over his views on $XRP on the X social media network. “Are you kidding me? Who the heck even cares about $XRP?” he wrote.

“I do all my betting in futures,” Brandt continued. “Who knows if you would even be good for the bet if you lost. And I could care less about owning a half million $XRP. I would convert it immediately to BTC.”

$XRP plunges below $1

In the meantime, the Ripple-linked token is currently struggling to hold the psychologically important $1 level.

The popular cryptocurrency was recently trading around $0.9992, according to the price data provided.

$XRP remains about 72.6% below its $3.65 all-time high reached on July 17, 2025, CoinGecko data shows.

As reported by U.Today, the token recently slipped below $1 for the first time since November 2024. Ironically, it is now worth less than the highly regulated RLUSD stablecoin, which was launched by Ripple in late 2024.

A veteran $XRP naysayer

Brandt has frequently clashed with members of the $XRP community, and he is known as one of the most high-profile critics of the token.

In December 2025, he wrote that “no group of traders has been more easily baited” than $XRP and silver bulls.

He was even more blunt in October 2025, calling $XRP “addicts” the “most immature unprofessional group on X” and saying he believed they “deserve to end up broke.”

Earlier, Brandt described $XRP as “the Edsel” (one of the biggest car failures in automotive history).

In June 2020, he went so far as to call $XRP a “manipulated scam (IMO),” while in July of that year he compared Ripple’s relationship with $XRP to the Federal Reserve’s relationship with the U.S. dollar. He previously argued that Ripple was effectively $XRP’s “bag holder.”

Still, there was a temporary truce between Brandt and the $XRP community. In late 2024, Brandt warmed up to the token, which was highly unusual for him. In November 2024, the legendary trader noted that $XRP had cleared its 2023 high and pointed to a “massive coil.” Back then, the token was in the middle of a huge rally.

His bullishness did not last long. In March 2025, he warned of a possible decline toward $1.07 if $XRP‘s bearish head-and-shoulders pattern played out.

With $XRP again trading around or below $1, Brandt might finally feel vindicated.

Strategy founder Michael Saylor said that Bitcoin is reshaping the way wealth is stored and transferred by converting digital scarcity into economic value.

Saylor stated that Bitcoin combines computers, digital networks, and cryptography, describing this structure as “the first digitally designed monetary network in human history.”

According to Saylor, Bitcoin digitizes monetary assets entirely, ensuring that supply is controlled by publicly available protocols rather than the decisions of individuals or institutions. Thus, economic value is transformed into information that can be securely transmitted over global communication networks.

Comparing Bitcoin to gold, Saylor stated that increasing the supply of Bitcoin is more difficult, while integrating it with software and transferring it is easier. He noted that network participants are incentivized to protect the system’s security, arguing that the proof-of-work mechanism connects Bitcoin to the physical world.

Saylor noted that this mechanism consumes real energy in exchange for ledger security, increasing the cost of altering past transactions. He stated that miners, energy companies, and investors have formed a common defense system around this structure, adding that while Bitcoin could be described as “digital gold,” the term “digital monetary energy” is more accurate.

Saylor stated that the Bitcoin network is not merely fixed software; it is an adaptable system comprised of miners, nodes, developers, capital, and users. He explained that Bitcoin is deliberately kept simple at its core, and that its primary purpose is to create a secure and reliable ledger for scarce digital assets.

Saylor stated that complex functions are left to applications at higher levels, arguing that this architecture makes Bitcoin a foundation upon which economic value can be transferred across time and space. According to Saylor, this structure also supports innovations in payment, credit, and financial services.

Saylor stated that Bitcoin’s deeper impact lies in creating a new form of digital sovereignty, noting that private keys allow individuals to control their economic power without permission. He added that in this system, ownership is verified through mathematical methods rather than institutions.

Saylor stated that companies, banks, trusts, and applications could build comprehensive economic systems around Bitcoin, and that social networks could also leverage this technology to add real costs and responsibilities to the digital environment.

Saylor stated, “Gold’s physical scarcity translates into money, while Bitcoin’s digital scarcity does the same.” Arguing that Bitcoin is more than just a means of payment, Saylor likened money to energy, describing Bitcoin as the monetary energy of the digital age.

*This is not investment advice.