Jack Morse6/12/24

Crypto firm behind massive stablecoin collapse to pay $4.5 billion fine

Terraform Labs, the crypto company whose blowup helped kick off a crypto winter in 2022, agreed to an enormous fine on Wednesday.

Terraform Labs said it’d pay $4.47 billion in fines and penalties following a settlement with the SEC. The deal also requires the company to seek approval for its bankruptcy liquidation plan and close up shop “as soon as possible."

Terraform Labs first rose to fame with its algorithmic stablecoin terraUSD. The coin attempted to maintain a one-to-one peg to the US dollar, but its value proved to be anything but stable in May of 2022 when it collapsed dramatically. The fall wiped out $40 billion in investor value and caused a domino effect that brought down crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and scores of other crypto projects.

Do Kwon, the company’s founder, was arrested in Montenegro in 2023 and convicted of using a fake passport. Both the US and South Korea are trying to extradite him to possibly face additional charges.

$4.47B

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Sage D. Young7h

Solana drops to price not seen since February as Drift exploit rattles sentiment

Solana has historically seen its largest price declines on Thursdays, and today is no exemption as the crypto industry reels from the over $270 million exploit that occurred yesterday on Drift, a trading venue native to the solana blockchain.

The price of solana has decreased 5.5% to around $78, a level not seen since February, data from CoinGecko shows.

Drift was one of the largest protocols on the solana network by total value locked, which now sits at nearly $245 million. The total value locked on solana has shrunk by nearly $1 billion since the incident, per DefiLlama.

Exploit likely involved from social engineering

The attack, which has turned into a wider contagion event, is unsettling for those in the industry. It did not come from a bug in the protocol’s smart contracts or programs. “Humans remain the bottleneck,” Mert Mumtaz, cofounder and CEO of solana development firm Helius, said in response to the incident.

The exploit involved unauthorized transaction approvals likely facilitated through social engineering. The sophisticated operation “appears to have involved multi-week preparation and staged execution,” the team said on Thursday.

Omer Goldberg, founder of risk management firm Chaos Labs, added, “The DeFi [decentralized finance] ecosystem continues to grow in scale, but not in operational security.”

“Protocols now have custody of hundreds of millions in user funds while depending on admin key setups that would be considered unacceptable in TradFi for a fraction of that AUM [assets under management],” Goldberg wrote on X.

“Most hacks come down to the simple act of one clicking a link they shouldn’t have clicked. These are picking up in pace, be extra cautious clicking any link or file,” continued Helius’ Mumtaz.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

Optimism around bitcoin’s trajectory is fading following Trump’s address, as whales continue to offload

Bitcoin has been stuck in a narrow range for the past few weeks, seemingly incapable of breaking in either direction.

People walk past an advertisement feature Donald Trump with...

Sage D. Young4/1/26

April 1 is known as a day for funny pranks. However, a popular trading venue on the solana blockchain, Drift, is suffering from an ongoing exploit today, on-chain data shows.

“Drift Protocol is experiencing an active attack. Deposits and withdrawals have been suspended. We are coordinating with multiple security firms, bridges, and exchanges to contain the incident. This is not an April Fools joke,” the team said on social media at 2:58 p.m. ET.

TheBlock reported the exploit is at least $200 million, while blockchain sleuth Lookonchain estimates the figure is $270 million. It could be even more. At this range, the Wednesday hack is among the largest ever, according to the exploits ranking dashboard from Rekt.

Drift’s exploit is concerning for those within the crypto industry. Solana treasury firm DeFi Development Corp. allocates a portion of its balance to on-chain strategies to generate yield, including Drift, though the firm announced it had no exposure to the protocol and “was not impacted by an alleged exploit affecting the platform,” per its press release.

Drift also provides to qualified users sACRED, a derivative token of a tokenized feeder fund that is linked to Apollo Global Management Inc.’s traditional Diversified Credit Fund.

Google Research: Quantum computers a “serious threat” to 6.7 million bitcoin, including Satoshi’s coins

“Their fast-clock architecture could crack a private key in 9 minutes, while bitcoin blocks take 10 minutes on average. That changes the threat model entirely.”

Quantum Computing illustration

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

Bitcoin treasury firm Nakamoto bought high and sold much, much lower as bitcoin suffers another bad quarter

Bitcoin is on track to close the first quarter of 2026 down more than 24%.

A bronze statue of “Satoshi Nakamoto”

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