Q2 2026 just set a record: 83 separate crypto hacks, the most ever in a single quarter. over $750 million stolen. april alone was $606 million across just 12 incidents. and we're barely halfway through the year. but the scary part isn't the numbers. it's how the attacks are happening. multiple security firms (TRM Labs, CertiK, Chainalysis) are now saying the same thing: attackers, especially North Korean groups, are using AI to find and exploit vulnerabilities faster than protocols can patch them. here's what that actually looks like in practice: AI-powered vulnerability scanning. attackers are running AI agents that scan smart contracts continuously for exploitable bugs. a protocol's security team might audit their code once or twice. an attacker's AI agent runs 24/7 for weeks, spending $10-20k in compute to find a single crack. the economics are wildly asymmetric: a defender's audit has a budget and a deadline. an attacker's scan has neither. deepfake social engineering. the Zerion hack in april used AI-generated social engineering in a long-term campaign to steal from hot wallets. there are now tools being sold that use voice manipulation and deepfakes specifically to bypass KYC checks on exchanges. this isn't theoretical. it's a service you can subscribe to. automated exploit development. tasks that used to take skilled researchers months, like reverse-engineering contract logic and chaining exploits, can now be done in hours with AI assistance. the barrier to entry for crypto hacking has dropped dramatically. target selection. AI is being used to identify the highest-value targets by scanning TVL, contract complexity, and security posture across hundreds of protocols simultaneously. attackers are picking their targets more intelligently, not just opportunistically. the result: more frequent attacks, more sophisticated execution, and a structural advantage for attackers over defenders. one security researcher put it bluntly: "before AI, the number of elite hackers was limited. now almost anyone could operate like an elite hacker for a subscription fee." the uncomfortable question this raises for defi: most protocols are still running the same security playbook from 2022. periodic audits, bug bounties, maybe a monitoring dashboard. that worked when attackers were humans with limited time. it doesn't work when the attacker is an AI agent that never sleeps and costs almost nothing to run. what actually needs to change? is it just "more audits and bigger bug bounties" or does the entire security model for on-chain protocols need to be rethought from the ground up? submitted by /u/ginete_tech [link] [Kommentare]
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Owner @James · 1731 posts · 2 joined · Status active · Posting permission: Every logged-in user can post
Banks been bragging about their ironclad systems while running 60-year-old COBOL spaghetti that no one understands anymore. 95% of ATMs, core financial plumbing, all held together by duct tape, prayers and coke. Anthropic drops Mythos and it speedruns classified systems in hours, not weeks. Warner dropped the quote, Dimon himself admitting AI just exposed a mountain of vulnerabilities. Hey y’all... go check out my pet rock collection. Those rocks don't have technical debt. They don't cry when the next AI red-team rolls up. Imagine calling Bitcoin a pet rock while your industry depends on a programming language from 1959, undocumented workarounds nobody understands, and a COBOL engineer who retired three times but still gets emergency calls on weekends. The same people telling us crypto is a dangerous experiment are quietly praying nobody touches their mainframe because nobody knows why it still works. At least the pet rock don’t require a crisis meeting because someone restarted a server. It doesn't have 40 years of technical debt hidden behind a login screen. Our traditional finance is a haunted archaeological site that somehow processes trillions of dollars a day. TL;DR: The people mocking the pet rocks are running civilization on COBOL spaghetti submitted by /u/FluffyAspie [link] [Kommentare]
Hey folks, first time crypto buyer. Bought small amount of USDC (16$) via a bitcoin atm so that I can send it to my poker app to play some microstakes. When I tried to send it from my samsung wallet to my poker balance it says I did not have enough eth. After some googling it looks like I need to have some eth as gas fees, my own stupidity I should have checked how that works. I assumed the fee would just take from USDC. My question - does anyone know how to convert some of the USDC to eth? When I try and send it to eth wallet I need eth to cover the fees. If there is no way I will just have to wait until I can get to a bitcoin atm again. Thanks in advance! submitted by /u/Esteagee [link] [Kommentare]
Attached is a screenshot of my top holdings and returns. I believe in bitcoin and ether the most. Should I let go of my alts or continue to hold open to suggestions. submitted by /u/thegoodlife1980 [link] [Kommentare]
I am down so bad in $high Highstreet token. Any chance that it may come back? After being delisted by binance seems that no more liquidity submitted by /u/cryptoinsiderrrsz [link] [Kommentare]
Update to my original post A few weeks ago I made a post because my ETH withdrawal got stuck in “Initiating” without a TXID and remained there for weeks. At first I believed it was just a temporary technical issue and that support would eventually solve it, but after weeks of getting nowhere I decided to investigate the exchange myself. For weeks I was trying to understand why my withdrawal wasn’t moving. Support kept asking for patience, tickets received generic responses and Telegram admins eventually stopped replying altogether. The only way to get their attention again was to create a new Telegram account and ask questions publicly inside the official group. Every time I did that, admins suddenly became active again while private messages continued to be ignored. A few days ago I reached the point where I simply couldn’t accept that my funds might be gone, so I started spending time on blockchain explorers trying to understand what was actually happening. During the last two days I began analyzing AscendEX hot wallets across multiple chains: Arbitrum Ethereum BSC Polygon Solana Arkham Multichain hot wallet: 0x983873529f95132BD1812A3B52c98Fb271d2f679 What I found was very concerning. The exchange appears to hold millions of dollars in assets, but most of the value comes from newly listed low-liquidity project tokens such as REUR, ASD, FTRB and other small-cap tokens. AscendEX constantly lists new projects and users deposit USDT, ETH and other liquid assets to buy them, but when users want to withdraw their funds, certain assets and networks appear to become extremely difficult to withdraw. While my ETH withdrawal remained stuck, some of their wallets contained almost no native ETH. At the same time trading activity continued normally and markets remained active. Personally, after monitoring the exchange activity and wallet movements during the last several days, I became convinced that a significant part of the exchange volume is likely generated by market-making bots. Markets remain active, orders continue moving and volume looks healthy even while users struggle to withdraw certain assets. During my research I also discovered another Telegram group (t .me / ascendexx) Inside that group I recognized several usernames that I had previously seen asking questions inside the official AscendEX Telegram group before being banned. I was eventually banned myself after repeatedly asking questions regarding my withdrawal. Speaking with these users confirmed many of my suspicions and showed me that my case was not an isolated incident. The most important thing I learned is that support was completely useless. The only progress I made came from monitoring the wallets myself. I started checking which assets were actually available on specific chains and whether enough liquidity existed before attempting withdrawals. After identifying a token that was present in one of their wallets, I performed a small test withdrawal and it succeeded. At this point I have managed to recover a small portion of my funds and I continue withdrawing through assets that still appear to have available liquidity and that can easily be exchanged elsewhere after withdrawal. The fact that users have to monitor exchange wallets in real time in order to determine which assets can actually be withdrawn should concern everyone using this exchange. Everything I learned came from blockchain analysis, wallet monitoring and communication with other affected users. Support never explained which assets were working, which networks had problems or how users could recover their funds. At this point I strongly do not recommend depositing funds to AscendEX under any circumstances. In my experience, getting money into the exchange is very easy, but getting it back out can become extremely difficult. If you currently have funds on AscendEX, I would strongly recommend testing small withdrawals immediately and verifying that the assets you hold can actually be withdrawn before depositing anything else. submitted by /u/itsckomi [link] [Kommentare]
