Tag: Business – Decrypt

Scientists behind one of the world’s longest-running wildlife studies have turned to one corner of internet culture for funding—and found another waiting for them.

Researchers at UCLA launched an OnlyFans account called OnlyMarms to help support a project that has tracked yellow-bellied marmots in Colorado since 1962 after traditional research funding became harder to secure.

The idea came to professor Daniel Blumstein as research funding dwindled. A graduate student dubbed the account “OnlyMarms,” and the team leaned into the joke by promising subscribers “uncensored marmot content.” Blumstein said it has also become a way to reach new audiences.

“Maybe this is a different audience than, you know, most of our science communication reaches,” Blumstein told NPR in an interview. “That’s great. Turns out, it’s even bigger than this.”

The account has generated about $4,000 so far. Blumstein said the project ultimately needs between $75,000 and $100,000 a year to support graduate students and fieldwork, funding that federal grants once provided.

The marmot project has also attracted attention from the crypto community.

Over on Pump.fun, several OnlyMarms-inspired meme coins have appeared, though it’s unclear who created them or whether any are connected to the UCLA research team. Blumstein told NPR that the researchers did not create the tokens.

“People have independently created a meme coin and told us to grab the transaction—to register it, and then we get the transaction fees. And that is blowing up,” he said. “Apparently, this is a meme coin for good that people like.”

It wouldn’t be the first time an internet-famous animal inspired a cryptocurrency.

In 2024, the Solana token Moo Deng, based on the viral pygmy hippo, launched on Pump.fun and briefly reached a market capitalization of about $680 million before landing listings on major exchanges, including Coinbase.

The researchers have also partnered with a Colorado brewery on a “Marmot Tears” IPA and launched a public “Fat Marmot Week” competition.

Blumstein said the situation reflects the state of scientific funding in the United States, noting that raising money through platforms like OnlyFans is a far cry from how research projects were funded when he was in graduate school.

“No. It’s appalling,” he said. “What we’re doing is destroying the scientific structure and the university-federal partnerships that made us great, made us rich, made us the scientific leaders of the world. It’s being taken apart, and that’s really sad.”

A former FBI supervisory special agent has been charged with stealing nearly $1 million in cryptocurrency from wallets tied to FBI counterintelligence investigations, according to court documents that also detail how he later asked ChatGPT for advice on investing the money and relocating overseas.

On Friday, Patrick Steven Yaroch was charged with interstate transportation of stolen goods and receipt of stolen goods. Prosecutors allege the thefts occurred between early 2025 and July 2026 while Yaroch worked in the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division and held a Top Secret security clearance.

“During the afternoon of July 28, 2026, Yaroch contacted DOJ Employee 1 via Signal and requested to meet to discuss personal matters,” prosecutors said in the complaint. “Upon meeting DOJ Employee 1 at FBI headquarters, Yaroch immediately started to break down as he told his story.”

According to investigators, Yaroch admitted he accessed FBI systems to obtain cryptocurrency wallet seed phrases connected to investigations involving an unnamed foreign adversary. He allegedly memorized the recovery phrases, created his own cryptocurrency wallet, and transferred funds into accounts under his control about 10 times. He told investigators the holdings eventually grew to about $1 million.

During searches of his home and devices, investigators recovered a Trezor hardware wallet and handwritten cryptocurrency seed phrases. According to the affidavit, agents found a Kraken account with a balance of about $188,570, including roughly $166,000 in U.S. dollars and nearly $18,000 in USDC, along with small amounts of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Investigators also recovered several ChatGPT conversations from Yaroch’s phone. According to the affidavit, on May 28 he asked how he should invest or spend $1 million “to maximize profit and return.” Less than a week later, he asked what someone with about $1 million should do to leave the U.S. and become a resident or citizen of a European Union country. Later searches included whether Americans need a visa when connecting through Turkey and help drafting a follow-up email about a job opportunity and life in Greece.

Investigators also found evidence of a planned family trip to Portugal, power-of-attorney documents related to Portugal, and what prosecutors described as previously unreported foreign travel. Prosecutors argue the evidence, along with Yaroch’s admissions and the recovered cryptocurrency, established probable cause for his arrest on July 31.

“FBI WF Agents mentioned to Yaroch that they located the power of attorney forms for Portugal. “Yaroch stated he was not planning to funnel money into Portugal,” the complaint said. “Yaroch told FBI WF Agents that his family had a trip planned to Portugal in September 2026 to meet friends. Yaroch realized he might not be able to attend the trip but stated he hoped his wife and child would still go on the trip.”

Bithumb has set out a three-stage path to a stock market listing in 2028, telling customers on Monday it will spend this year upgrading internal controls and preparing to switch accounting standards, then file for preliminary listing review in 2027. The exchange competes with Dunamu-operated Upbit for South Korea’s domestic market.

The notice is framed almost entirely around trust. Bithumb says it is rebuilding risk management to the standard required of regulated financial firms, moving from Korean accounting standard K-GAAP to the global K-IFRS standard, and strengthening compliance monitoring to institutional-finance level. It has split off Bithumb Asset to separate its business lines and, it says, remove scope for conflicts of interest, and has engaged domestic and overseas underwriters, law firms and accountants. It also promises regular disclosure of its finances and its own crypto holdings.

The record

The IPO roadmap comes as Bithumb faces a slew of legal and regulatory challenges.

In February, a display error credited thousands of Bithumb users with Bitcoin they did not own. Lawmakers criticized regulators over the handling of it, investigators examined the compensation arrangements, and the exchange went to court to recover coins from users who would not return them.

In March, financial regulators fined the exchange $24.5 million and ordered a six-month partial suspension over anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer failures. A court blocked the order in April after Bithumb challenged it.

Months later, chief executive Lee Jae-won was booked as a bribery suspect over the alleged hiring of a National Assembly member’s son, with police searching Bithumb’s headquarters in February and June.

None of it appears in Monday’s notice, which lists Bithumb’s promises to customers as transparent governance, stronger internal control, better investor protection, sustainable growth and a management system built to global standards. The company said the timetable could shift with market conditions and the pace of the review it will need to clear.

The theft of Bitcoin from compromised Coldcard hardware wallets is still underway, with researchers now tracking losses of roughly $88 million and warning that every vulnerable device will eventually be emptied.

Galaxy Research said Saturday it has identified a third wave of thefts, in which 207.73 BTC was drained, lifting its observed tally to about 1,367 BTC—around $88.6 million—across 4,585 addresses. The firm called the exploit ongoing and urged anyone holding single-signature funds on a Coldcard to move them at once. Galaxy said it has flagged roughly 600 suspected attacker addresses to federal investigators, compliance firms and cross-industry cyber investigators, crediting victims who shared transaction details for helping map the on-chain patterns.

“I continue to investigate and add new Coldcard victim and attacker addresses to our investigation database,” Galaxy’s head of research Alex Thorn posted to X. “The attack is ongoing—move your funds off Coldcard-generated addresses immediately if you have not done so.”

The flaw, as Decrypt previously reported, stems from a March 2021 firmware build error on Coinkite’s devices that caused seed phrases to be generated with far too little randomness, leaving private keys guessable. Thorn wrote that the sweeps look deliberate and programmatic, probably orchestrated with a large language model, and cautioned that every single-sig Coldcard address created after that 2021 update will eventually be drained, saying it is only a matter of time.

Thorn noted the stolen coins had sat untouched for years before being taken—an average dormancy of 3.18 years—underscoring that the victims were long-term holders. The funds from the three documented waves remain parked in attacker addresses and have not moved.

The fallout has driven a panicked response from affected users, with security experts urging caution when moving funds to new addresses. Many of the affected users are racing to move Bitcoin off self-custody and back onto centralized crypto exchanges, such as Coinbase or Binance, or freshly generated addresses—an inversion of the industry’s usual “not your keys, not your coins” ethos.

For some, the warnings came too late. Canadian coach Jonathan Goodman said in a post on X that 18.25 BTC, worth about $1.6 million Canadian, was swept from his wallets in a seven-minute span on July 29, despite his keys sitting in a safety deposit box that never touched the internet. “Perhaps the hardest part about this is that I did everything right,” he wrote, adding that he is filing reports with police and the Ontario Securities Commission.

Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao is warning crypto owners not to place blind faith in hardware wallets, following an exploit that drained tens of millions of dollars in Bitcoin from Coldcard devices.

In a Saturday post on X, Zhao cautioned that even hardware wallets can carry bugs, and that older wallets with long histories are not immune. “Nothing is 100%,” he posted.

He suggested holders consider spreading their funds across several wallets as one way to reduce exposure, while acknowledging the approach carries its own trade-offs and that no setup is entirely foolproof. CZ closed with his familiar refrain urging users to stay informed and keep their funds safe: “Stay SAFU!”

His comments followed the discovery of a flaw in Coldcard devices made by manufacturer Coinkite. As Decrypt reported, a build error caused seeds on affected units to be drawn from a software fallback rather than the device’s hardware random-number generator, leaving the private keys far easier to guess than intended. The problem traced back to firmware shipped in March 2021, and updating the firmware does not fix a seed already created on a compromised device.

The scope of the theft has grown considerably since the first estimates. Early reporting pegged losses at roughly 594 BTC, or about $38 million, drained from around 500 wallets. According to a report from Galaxy Research, which mapped the flow of funds based on a pattern identified by engineers at Jack Dorsey’s Block, the toll is now put at 1,196 addresses drained for about 1,082.65 BTC, or roughly $70.2 million, in a 41-minute window on July 30. That is nearly double the initial figure.

Galaxy said every sweep paid an identical hardcoded fee and left no change output, a signature it described as consistent with an automated tool spending keys it already held rather than owners moving their own funds. The victims spanned native SegWit and older address types, pointing to multi-path key scanning. The stolen Bitcoin was consolidated within minutes into a handful of addresses and, per Galaxy, has not moved since.

Coinkite has shipped emergency hotfixes and urged exposed users to migrate to newly generated seeds.

In a report published Tuesday, polling company Gallup said Americans are cooling toward artificial intelligence after two years of growing more comfortable with the technology.

According to Gallup, seven in 10 Americans now say they are somewhat or extremely knowledgeable about AI, up from 64% in 2024. But as familiarity has grown, so has skepticism. More Americans now believe AI does more harm than good, expect it to reduce the number of U.S. jobs over the next decade, and are less likely to trust businesses to use the technology responsibly.

Thirty-nine percent of Americans now say AI does more harm than good, up from 31% in 2025. Just 9% say AI does more good than harm, while 52% believe it does equal amounts of harm and good.

The shift was most pronounced among adults ages 18 to 29. Nearly half now say AI does more harm than good, up from 36% last year. Gallup said younger adults also became more skeptical of AI’s overall impact, businesses’ use of the technology, and its effect on jobs.

Trust in businesses to use AI responsibly also declined.

Twenty-seven percent of Americans said they trust businesses at least “some” to use AI responsibly, down from 31% in 2025. Among adults ages 18 to 29, trust dropped from 30% to 20%, while those with no trust at all increased from 29% to 41%.

Nearly eight in 10 Americans said AI will reduce the number of U.S. jobs over the next decade, up from 73% in 2025 to 79% this year. The biggest increase came among adults ages 18 to 29, where the share expecting job losses rose from 62% to 75%. Among adults ages 45 to 59, it increased from 75% to 84%.

Gallup also found Americans increasingly view AI as performing about as well as people on tasks such as driving, providing financial advice, and providing medical advice. Even so, respondents continued to rate people higher than AI across every category measured, including hiring decisions, creative work, and helping students with schoolwork.

The report follows several other surveys that have found Americans remain uneasy about AI despite using it more often.

In March, an NBC News poll found 56% of Americans had recently used AI tools such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or Google Gemini, yet 57% said the technology’s risks outweigh its benefits. In June, an Anthropic survey of nearly 52,000 Americans found job losses were the public’s top concern across every state and political party, while just 15% said they trust AI companies to make decisions about how the technology is developed and used.

Google has pulled a newly launched artificial intelligence feature from Google Earth barely a day after releasing it, following a swift backlash from journalists and open-source investigators who warned it could flood the internet with convincing fake satellite imagery.

The company introduced the tool on July 30, letting users zoom to any location on Google Earth’s web version, click “create image,” and generate a scene from a text prompt using its Nano Banana model. By July 31, it was gone.

In a statement posted to X, Google said people “uniquely trust Google Earth for a reliable view of the world,” and that while geospatial professionals had found useful applications, others were sharing generated images that appeared to violate its policies. It said it was rolling back the feature while building stronger guardrails.

The alarm centered on how easily the tool fabricated events that never happened. Tech outlet 404 Media demonstrated it could produce a blast crater in Los Angeles and add protesters outside Google’s own Mountain View campus. NPR generated images of Iran’s Kharg Island ablaze and a flooded U.S. Capitol, both of which would be major news if real. Open-source researcher Henk van Ess told NPR he tried prompts including refugees at the Mexican border and a nuclear plant in Iran, and that none were refused.

Satellite imagery has long served as a trusted anchor for verifying breaking news and atrocities, precisely because it has been difficult to fake. Bellingcat researcher Jake Godin cautioned that one-click generation would streamline the creation of fakes and accelerate their spread, adding that misinformation outruns any correction and that governments could now dismiss authentic images as fabricated.

Google had initially downplayed the concerns, noting that every image carries its SynthID watermark, which flags it as AI-generated in tools like Gemini, and that it blocks creation on harmful topics. Critics called that insufficient, arguing few people stop to verify images before sharing them.

Google said it would reinstate image generation in Google Earth only after implementing tighter protections, though it gave no timeline.

Iran is accepting Bitcoin from commercial shipping in exchange for passage through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the U.S. Treasury, whose Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned two firms behind the scheme on Wednesday. Vessels crossing the chokepoint, which carries a fifth of the world’s oil, are required to buy maritime “insurance” approved by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The cover protects against risks Iran itself creates, Treasury said, chiefly the seizure of vessels. Persian Gulf Marine Insurance Company, set up by Iran’s insurance regulator, brokers the policies. They are approved by the IRGC-backed Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which Washington designated in May.

The Bitcoin rail

The second firm, HormuzSafe Marine Services Authority, was developed by Iran’s Ministry of Economy and markets itself as a provider of traffic control, security and emergency response as well as insurance. It accepts Bitcoin and other digital assets, which OFAC said is part of an effort to bypass Western sanctions. Babak Morteza Zanjani, an Iranian financier sanctioned earlier this year, promoted it to his social media followers.

When the Financial Times reported in April that Iran would demand crypto tolls from shipping, starting at $1 a barrel, blockchain analysts were initially unconvinced.

At the time, TRM Labs policy head Ari Redbord told Decrypt he was skeptical, saying there was no data showing crypto being used at scale for Hormuz transit. Others noted that the man quoted in the report, an industry union spokesman, did not speak for the regime. Treasury’s designation settles part of that, naming a firm built by a government ministry that takes Bitcoin.

The shadow fleet

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Iranian regime is “desperate for cash,” with its economy “in freefall” and inflation in triple digits, and that Washington would not let Iran “hold global commerce hostage.”

The same action designated eight tankers and their operators over cargoes of Iranian crude and petroleum products, most of the companies registered in Hong Kong. More than 100 vessels tied to Iran’s shadow fleet have been sanctioned since January. Treasury said the insurance schemes were set up to replace revenue lost to Operation Epic Fury.

On Myriad, a prediction market owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, users place a 38% chance on the Iranian blockade ending by August 31.

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors are red while stocks grind higher; BTC -2% at $63.7k
• BTC ETFs see $233M in net inflows, 2nd biggest day since early May
• Coinbase posts surprise loss in Q2 earnings; Strategy books $8.2B loss
• NY AG files petition to shut down Kalshi, seeks $36B in damages
• Coldcard exploit leads to $38M in Bitcoin losses

📉 Coinbase Posts a Surprise Loss as Trading Dries Up

Coinbase reported $1.22 billion in second-quarter revenue on Thursday, down 14% from the prior quarter and 19% from a year ago, along with a net loss of $359 million. COIN stock fell roughly 5% after hours.

The miss was broad: revenue came in below the $1.29 billion Wall Street expected, and the loss of $1.36 per share was far worse than the roughly break-even result analysts had modeled. Total crypto spot trading volume fell more than 20% from the prior quarter as prices slid and volatility hit multi-year lows, dragging transaction revenue down 21% to $599 million.

Subscription and services revenue also missed, despite being the less trading-dependent segment of the business. Coinbase blamed late-closing USDC commercial agreements and lower staking revenue from falling prices, but the shortfall undercut the idea that the diversified businesses are decoupled from the trading cycle.

On the bright side, stablecoin revenue reached $292 million, with average USDC held on Coinbase products hitting a record $20 billion, more than 30% of all USDC in circulation. Prediction-market revenue more than doubled quarter over quarter, up 106%, and crossed a $100 million annualized run rate. Coinbase’s share of global crypto trading volume hit a record 10.3%, its third straight quarter of market-share gains, and the company said 88% of net revenue now comes from sources other than Bitcoin spot trading, up from 45% in 2020. It also held $8.6 billion in cash, extended a 14-quarter streak of positive adjusted EBITDA, and lowered its full-year expense outlook.

Now that the results are in, it’s interesting to look at Robinhood and Coinbase side by side. Both reported crypto trading revenue shrinking and prediction markets surging, but Robinhood posted record profit while Coinbase posted an outright loss. Coinbase is clearly far more exposed to the trading cycle it’s trying to grow beyond, and it doesn’t yet boast 13 9-figure product lines. As for Q3, guidance is looking fairly soft. But that may not be accounting for Cobie taking over trading and the apps. Let’s see how fast he can get to work on turning the story around…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are slightly red; BTC -2% at $63.7k; ETH -2% at $1,880; SOL -1% at $73.40; HYPE +3% at $54.90
• Top alt movers include UNI (+5%), PUMP (+5%) and ADA (+3%)
• Oil +1% at $85; Gold +1% at $4,115
• Stock futures are green as tech stocks and memory go higher; DOW +0.5%, Nasdaq +1.2%
• Strategy booked an $8.2 billion Q2 loss as Bitcoin fell below its $75,476 cost basis, far worse than the $2.15 billion Wall Street expected, though it added 11% to its stack and said its cash reserve covers two-plus years of dividends
• Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest sold BitMine while adding to Coinbase and Circle, trimming about $4.4 million across BitMine, Robinhood, Block, and Bullish after their shares fell, while recently buying roughly $43.5 million of Coinbase and Circle
• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged the Senate to pass the CLARITY Act, accusing Democrats of stalling for political reasons and closing his appeal by quoting Satoshi Nakamoto: “If you don’t believe me or don’t get it, I don’t have time to try to convince you, sorry.”
• The Bitcoin quantum threat inched closer as IBM claimed a “trusted quantum advantage,” a milestone that renews urgency around hardening Bitcoin’s cryptography
• Elon Musk’s xAI sued Minnesota to block the US’s first AI nudification law, challenging it on free-speech grounds
• Ondo Finance is weighing an acquisition worth up to $500 million, as the real-world-asset tokenization firm looks to expand through M&A

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mixed; DOGE -1%, SHIB even, PEPE -1%, PENGU +4%, TRUMP -2%, BONK -5%
• Robinhood chain was led by FRONG (+600x) and IF (+74%)
• Solana leaders included Moondogecoin (+300x) and KET (+60%); ANSEM +4% at $178M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• The New York Attorney General filed a petition to shut down Kalshi in New York State over what it’s calling an illegal gambling operation and seeks at least $36B in damages
• Pons went live on Uniswap’s Launches aggregator, touting more than 210,000 tokens launched in two weeks and over $283 million in volume through Uniswap pools, with a v2 coming on Uniswap v4 to bridge memecoins and RWAs on Robinhood Chain (PONS -12% to $28M)
• A Coldcard key flaw drained $38 million in Bitcoin, with 594 BTC swept from about 500 wallets in 25 minutes after a build error left seeds far more guessable than intended; maker Coinkite believes an attacker used AI to find the bug in its open-source firmware, a review its own AI had missed weeks earlier

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were red; Punks even at 32.3 ETH, BAYC -1% at 8.3 ETH, Pudgy -4% at 3.8 ETH; Hypurr’s even at 189 HYPE
• No notable movers

New York State is seeking at least $36 billion from Kalshi, asking a state court to shut its prediction market down and strip it of three times whatever it has earned. Attorney General Letitia James filed the petition on Friday alongside a motion for a temporary restraining order, treating the platform as an unlicensed gambling business across eight counts. Filings put the damages figure at a minimum, pending a full accounting.

The counts run from the New York Constitution’s gambling ban to bookmaking, possession of gambling records, unlicensed mobile sports wagering and the federal Wire Act. The state also wants $100,000 for every offer of sports wagering, restitution and disgorgement.

“Kalshi has chosen to ignore New York’s gaming laws, which exist to protect consumers, prevent problematic gambling, deliver funding for critical public services, and ensure that every company plays by the same rules,” said New York Governor Kathy Hochul in a statement, adding that the state was taking action to stop its “illegal behaviour” and bring the firm into compliance.

Investigators placed test bets, including four contracts on Connecticut to beat Michigan in April for $1.14 including fees. The petition says Kalshi lets 18-year-olds open accounts where New York sets the floor at 21, and offers markets on games involving New York college teams, which even licensed operators are barred from touching.

A federal-state collision

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission had moved first. It sued New York in April to establish that federal law gives it sole authority over event contracts, and on Thursday asked the court in that case for a restraining order barring the state from bringing criminal or civil enforcement against Kalshi or any other CFTC-registered platform. New York filed the next day regardless.

Kalshi has mostly been losing. It sued the New York State Gaming Commission in the Southern District last October, was denied a preliminary injunction on July 7 and refused protection pending appeal on July 27. A Michigan judge restrained it in June, and King County Superior Court granted Washington a preliminary injunction on July 20. Its two real wins are the Third Circuit, which upheld an injunction against New Jersey in April, and Minnesota, where a federal judge blocked the state’s ban on July 27.

The Minnesota ruling turned on whether event contracts count as swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act. Judge Katherine Menendez found many do, and singled out sports and pop-culture markets as the doubtful cases. New York’s petition is aimed almost entirely at sports.

Washington versus the states

New York is the latest front in a campaign the Trump administration has run for months. The CFTC has sued Illinois, Arizona and Connecticut over their attempts to police event contracts, added Wisconsin, and moved against Minnesota within hours of its ban becoming law. The president has backed the agency directly, calling state officials who oppose prediction markets “SCUM.”

Kalshi’s own figures, quoted back at it in the petition, put its valuation at $22 billion and annualized trading volume at $178 billion. James sued Coinbase and Gemini in April on a similar theory.