An FBI agent with top secret clearance stole $1 million in crypto from bureau-investigated wallets. BlackRock debuts two blockchain-based money market funds. And Bitmine keeps buying ETH.
A senior FBI supervisory special agent with "top secret" clearance has been arrested and charged with stealing more than $1 million in cryptocurrency from wallets belonging to foreign individuals his unit had investigated. Patrick Steven Yarmoch, who worked in counterintelligence at FBI headquarters in Washington — specifically in a unit focused on an unnamed adversary nation — allegedly used access to FBI systems to extract private keys and made as many as a dozen transfers to himself, then routed the funds through Kraken and Suilend, a DeFi protocol on the Sui blockchain. Court filings say Yarmoch walked into the FBI himself and disclosed what he had done, before being suspended, fired, and arrested on July 31. Investigators who searched his devices found AI chat logs in which he asked how to move $1 million to Europe, which app recommended Portugal. He had also recently made unreported trips to Germany, Portugal, and Grenada in violation of FBI rules, and had booked travel for his family to Portugal next month. He is now in detention in Alexandria, Virginia.
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BlackRock launched two new blockchain-based money market products on Monday: the BlackRock Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund (BSTBL), a tokenized share class of an existing money market fund running on Ethereum, and the BlackRock Daily Reinvestment Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle (BRSRV), a new fund with daily dividend reinvestment accessible across multiple blockchains. Both are designed to qualify as eligible reserve assets for stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act, signaling BlackRock's ambition to be the dominant reserve manager for the stablecoin industry — a position its CFO Martin Small made explicit last quarter, noting the firm already manages $60 billion of reserves for Circle, roughly a quarter of the entire $300 billion stablecoin market. Securitize serves as BRSRV's transfer agent and tokenization provider. The moves follow the 2024 launch of BUIDL, BlackRock's first tokenized money market fund, which has grown to about $2.5 billion in assets and is widely used as collateral in crypto markets. The tokenized real-world asset market has grown more than 200% in the past year to over $30 billion.
Bitmine Immersion (BMNR), the largest Ethereum treasury company, purchased 10,399 ETH last week for roughly $19.1 million, lifting its holdings to nearly 5.8 million ETH — about 4.8% of Ethereum's circulating supply. The company also bought back 4.5 million shares, bringing total recent repurchases to 16 million shares. Chairman Tom Lee framed the purchases around ether's July performance: ETH outperformed the Nasdaq 100 by 2,500 basis points last month, the largest such gap since July 2025 — which preceded a rally from $2,375 to over $4,000 the following month. Bitmine has staked 4.9 million ETH, roughly 85% of its holdings, projecting about $247 million in annualized staking revenue through its MAVAN platform. The update came the same day that Strategy disclosed selling another 1,638 BTC worth $105 million — a contrast that underscores the diverging conviction between the largest bitcoin and ether treasury companies.
Coldcard exploit hits $114M across 4 waves — and a 4th is still live. Solo miner nets $200K. Senate leaves Clarity Act off Monday’s agenda. BTC under $63K, 200-week SMA now signals downtrend.
Monday, August 3, 2026
A solo bitcoin miner struck block 960,804 early Monday, netting a reward of 3.157 BTC worth approximately $199,300 — the second solo win in just three weeks and the 13th such block claimed this year, defying the statistical odds that favor large mining pools. The upbeat headline is tempered by the broader mood. The Coldcard hardware wallet exploit, now entering its fifth day, has grown to an estimated $114 million in losses across four waves and more than 5,200 addresses, with a fourth wave still active Monday. Unlike earlier sweeps, the latest transactions use bitcoin’s replace-by-fee feature, meaning victims who spot their address in the mempool may still have minutes to outbid the attacker. The incident has triggered a visible behavioral shift: the number of BTC sending addresses spiked on Friday to levels not seen since early 2024, with the exchange reserve rising to 2.718 million BTC. Bitcoin is trading below $63,000 and below its 200-week simple moving average — a level Strategy, the world’s largest publicly listed bitcoin holder, has flagged as a key long-term signal. The 50- and 100-week averages have also crossed bearishly, confirming the path of least resistance is lower. On the regulatory front, the Senate left the Clarity Act off Monday’s agenda, leaving just five days of scheduled session before the August 10 recess. Stay alert!
Major bitcoin wallet flaw drains 594 BTC in 25-minute sweep.
Roughly 594 bitcoin — worth approximately $38 million — was swept from around 500 separate wallets between 01:31 and 01:56 UTC on Friday in an attack traced to a flaw in how Coldcard hardware wallets generated their cryptographic keys. The attacker moved 1,324 chunks of bitcoin across 500 transactions inside a three-block window, then consolidated 562 BTC into a single address. The vulnerability was introduced in Coldcard firmware 4.0.0 in March 2021: a build setting caused devices to skip their hardware randomness generator and fall back to a software substitute seeded from the chip’s serial number and clock registers — none of which are secrets. Block’s Bitcoin engineering team disclosed the flaw publicly because exploitation was already under way. Coinkite warned users who generated a seed on an Mk3 running firmware 4.0.1 or later and stated that Mk4, Q, and Mk5 appear unaffected. The exposure extends beyond wallet seeds to paper wallet private keys, seed-splitting masks, device cloning keys, and Key Teleport transfers.
Coldcard wallet losses may near $114 million as possible fourth sweep emerges.
A fourth wave of sweeps targeting bitcoin held in Coldcard-generated addresses began early Monday and was still running hours later, with researchers estimating the attacker has moved about 1,816 BTC — roughly $114 million — from more than 5,200 addresses since July 30. Unlike the earlier three waves, the latest transactions use bitcoin’s replace-by-fee feature, meaning victims who spot their address in the mempool may still be able to outbid the attacker and move their funds first. Galaxy Research’s Alex Thorn, who flagged the wave, advised users to check funds, move anything off an affected device, and bid the fee up. The pattern covers blocks 960,778 to 960,792, with 218 transactions hitting 462 victim addresses — roughly 45 times the normal rate. None of the four waves touched multisignature setups, consistent with the flaw affecting only single-key seeds. Coinkite has released emergency firmware for all affected models; users who generated a seed on the flawed software should move funds to a wallet address created with a fresh seed immediately.
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