Crypto: 3rd June 2025

• The SEC officially dropped its lawsuit against Binance (theverge.com), dismissing accusations of illegal operations and investor fraud, marking a significant shift in regulatory stance towards cryptocurrency under the Trump administration.

• Trump Media made a $2.5 billion Bitcoin investment (qz.com), while experts continue to warn about memecoin schemes like 'pump and dump' operations (theguardian.com) that have led to substantial financial losses for investors following celebrities.

• Quantum computing poses a growing threat to crypto security (qz.com), raising concerns about the future vulnerability of blockchain encryption methods as the technology advances.

• Brazil launched the world's first program allowing citizens to monetize their digital data (restofworld.org) through 'data savings accounts', though concerns remain about inequality and data commoditization.

• Sleepagotchi Lite launched on Sony's Soneium blockchain (venturebeat.com) via Line Mini app, enabling seamless onboarding for 200 million users with blockchain gaming features and USDC/ASTR token support.

• A disturbing kidnapping and torture case targeting crypto investors (gizmodo.com) resulted in three arrests, revealing a crime spree specifically targeting high-value cryptocurrency accounts using extreme coercion methods.

The Trump Crypto Orgy of Corruption (stephendiehl.com, 2025-05-31). The Trump administration's involvement in cryptocurrency showcases systemic corruption through deregulation, conflicts of interest, and personal financial gains, with significant implications for American democracy and regulatory oversight

Crypto exchange BitoPro belatedly discloses $11.5 million hack (web3isgoinggreat.com, 2025-06-02). BitoPro, a Taiwanese crypto exchange, disclosed an $11.5 million hack involving the theft of funds from a hot wallet during a system upgrade, identified through suspicious transfers and laundering via mixer services

Should big tech be allowed to issue crypto? (taxresearch.org.uk, 2025-06-02). The GENIUS Act threatens macroeconomic control by allowing big tech firms to issue stablecoins, potentially leading to monopolistic control, financial risks, and challenges regarding regulation, currency stability, and economic sovereignty

Silk Road Founder Receives 300 BTC Donation from ‘Questionable Source’ (cosmicmeta.io, 2025-06-02). Ross Ulbricht, Silk Road's founder, received a surprise 300 BTC donation from an unidentified source, raising questions about the funds' origins. Crypto analysts are tracing the transaction using forensic tools like Chainalysis and CipherTrace

The Orb / Tools for humanity / Worldcoin in 5 min (reb00ted.org, 2025-06-02). Exploring 'The Orb' and World Network (WN), a privacy-focused digital identity system utilizing blockchain, unique public keys, and retinal scanning to prevent duplicate accounts and enhance online security

Keys are meaningless (fiatjaf.com, 2025-05-28). The focus on cryptographic keypairs in Nostr is misplaced; keys are mere numbers and lack intrinsic value without the ability to take meaningful action or communicate effectively in the world

The After-Effects of Ethereum’s Pectra Upgrade (coinmetrics.io, 2025-05-27). The Pectra upgrade raised Ethereum's validator max effective balance to 2048 ETH and doubled blobspace, impacting staking dynamics and Layer-2 scalability with increased blob counts and declining transaction costs

Eight Years, One Mission: Shaping Ethereum with Prysm (medium.com/offchainlabs, 2025-05-29). Prysm's mission to scale Ethereum continues as they successfully implement the Pectra hard fork, featuring significant EIPs like EIP-6110 and EIP-7002, and prepare for future upgrades including Fusaka and PeerDAS

De-anonymization attacks against the privacy coin XMR (monero.forex, 2025-05-28). Monero's privacy features, including ring signatures and stealth addresses, are examined against de-anonymization attempts by firms like Chainalysis and CipherTrace, revealing their limited efficacy and systemic challenges in breaking Monero's privacy

The Custodial Stablecoin Rekt Test (blog.trailofbits.com, 2025-05-29). Custodial stablecoins are critical yet risky assets. The Rekt Test provides a framework for assessing issuer security, emphasizing independent verification, continuous updates, quick fund recovery, infrastructure segregation, and immutability through tools like TPMS and Binary Authorization

A deep dive into Axiom’s Halo2 circuits (blog.trailofbits.com, 2025-05-30). Axiom's blockchain system utilizes Halo2 for ZK-proofs, revealing 35 security issues during audits, including under-constrained bugs, elliptic curve operations, and leveraging tools like Semgrep for analysis and remediation

Riverguard: Mutation Rules for Finding Vulnerabilities (neodyme.io, 2025-05-28). Riverguard, an automated vulnerability discovery tool for Solana contracts, implements basic mutation rules or 'fuzzcases' to identify issues like missing account checks and Denial of Service risks in smart contracts

Social attacks with monetary value (blog.vrypan.net, 2025-05-28). Explores how Snapchain transactions and miniapps like amps.fun can create financial attack vectors in social platforms, enabling exploitation of tipping mechanisms for monetary gain through user interactions and app key vulnerabilities

Massive Ethereum Key Leak Confirmed by Vitalik Buterin: All EVM Wallets at Risk (energyflux.news, 2025-06-01). Vitalik Buterin confirms a significant Ethereum key leak, putting all EVM wallets at risk, amidst essential market updates and energy price navigation in Europe

Talking Transactions: Decentralized Communication through Ethereum Input Data Messages (IDMs) (arxiv:cs, 2025-05-30). This study analyzes Ethereum Input Data Messages (IDMs), revealing language use, emotional tone, and community interactions, utilizing LLMs for detection while highlighting security implications and the need for content regulation in decentralized systems

Supporting Long-term Transactions in Smart Contracts Generated from Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) Models (arxiv:cs, 2025-05-30). Proposes transforming BPMN models into blockchain smart contracts using DE-HSM modeling, identifying nested trade transactions, and automating transaction mechanisms to ensure privacy and interoperability across different use cases like order processing and supply chain management

A Smart-Contract to Resolve Multiple Equilibrium in Intermediated Trade (arxiv:econ, 2025-05-28). A smart-contract utilizing fully homomorphic encryption on a public blockchain resolves multiple equilibrium in intermediated trade by maximizing broker-dealer joint profit through structured trade offer protocols and agent commitments

BPMN to Smart Contract by Business Analyst (arxiv:cs, 2025-05-28). This research presents a methodology for Business Analysts to generate smart contracts from BPMN models using TABS, leveraging DMN for business logic representation, facilitating independent development without software developers' assistance

DeSocial: Blockchain-based Decentralized Social Networks (arxiv:cs, 2025-05-27). DeSocial introduces a decentralized social network framework on Ethereum, enabling personalized social predictions through user-driven model selection and multi-node validation, enhancing user empowerment in blockchain environments

Balancing incentives in committee-based blockchains (arxiv:cs, 2025-05-30). This framework quantifies denial of profit attacks in committee-based blockchains, revealing imbalances in reward mechanisms of Ethereum and Cosmos, and suggests alternative parameters for better attack balance and participant incentives

Transaction Proximity: A Graph-Based Approach to Blockchain Fraud Prevention (arxiv:econ, 2025-05-30). A fraud-deterrent system for blockchains uses 'Transaction Proximity' and 'Easily Attainable Identities' to analyze wallet connections, potentially preventing incidents while maintaining privacy and openness in blockchain environments

Split the Yield, Share the Risk: Pricing, Hedging and Fixed rates in DeFi (arxiv:econ, 2025-05-28). This work presents a stochastic model for yield tokenization in DeFi, enabling no-arbitrage pricing, risk management, and fixed-rate lending protocols using automated market makers for optimal interest rate discovery

Singularity Protocol for Cross Chain AMM without Intermediate Tokens or Bridges (arxiv:cs, 2025-05-30). This work introduces a novel cross-chain AMM design that avoids intermediate tokens and bridging risks, using a new invariant to facilitate efficient swaps across any combination of L1, L2, and L3 blockchains with lower gas costs