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The ZKsync Association has confirmed the recovery of $5 million worth of stolen tokens from an April 15 ZKsync security incident involving its airdrop distribution contract.
The hacker agreed to accept a 10% bounty and return 90% of the remaining stolen tokens, transferring the ZKsync Security Council almost $5.7 million across three transfers on April 23.
“We’re pleased to share that the hacker has cooperated and returned the funds within the safe harbor deadline,” ZKsync Association posted to X on April 23, which was later reposted by ZKsync’s X account.
Matter Labs, the company behind the ZKsync protocol, also reposted the news shared on X.
The ZKsync X account previously confirmed that no user funds were compromised.
The hacker sent two transfers on the ZKsync Era blockchain, consisting of $2.47 million worth of ZKsync (ZK) tokens and $1.83 million worth of Ether (ETH) to the ZKsync Security Council’s ZKsync Era address.
Another 776 ETH worth nearly $1.4 million was also sent to their security council’s Ethereum address, Etherscan data shows.
The first transfer was made on April 23 at 2:39:57 pm UTC on and the last transfer was made roughly 13 minutes later — all within the 72-hour window that ZK Sync had initially set.
ZKsync Association said the company would publish a final report revealing more details from the security incident.
How the hack happened
The hacker breached ZKsync’s admin account, allowing them to exploit the airdrop distribution contract's sweepUnclaimed() function to mint 111 million unclaimed ZK tokens, worth approximately $5 million at the time of the April 15 attack.
The hack occurred while ZKsync was in the process of airdropping 17.5% of ZK’s token supply to ecosystem participants.
The recovered amount — almost $5.7 million — exceeded the $5 million originally stolen due to a rise in the market value of the stolen tokens, with ZK and ETH increasing 16.6% and 8.8% respectively since the April 15 attack, according to CoinGecko data.
Despite the asset recovery, the ZK token failed to rise substantially on the news and is currently down 0.2% over the last 24 hours.
ZKsync Era is an Ethereum layer 2 solution that uses zero-knowledge rollups to batch and process transactions offchain. It has nearly $59 million in total value locked on its chain and has over $2 billion in real-world assets onchain, according to DefiLlama and RWA.xyz.
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Russia’s finance ministry and central bank are reportedly planning to launch a crypto exchange for qualified investors under an experimental legal regime.
The platform will be aimed at “super-qualified investors,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said during a ministry meeting, according to April 23 reports from Russian media group RBC and Russian news agency Interfax.
“Together with the central bank, we will launch a crypto exchange for super-qualified investors. Crypto assets will be legalized, and crypto operations will be brought out of the shadows,” he said in a statement translated from Russian.
“Naturally, this will not happen domestically, but as part of the operations permitted under the experimental legal regime.”
The Russian central bank announced a proposal on March 12 to allow a limited number of Russian investors with a certain amount of assets to buy and sell cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) under a three-year experimental regime.
Under the proposal, the bank created a new investor category, super-qualified investors, defined by wealth and income thresholds of over 100 million rubles ($1.2 million) or a yearly income of at least 50 million rubles ($602,000).
Super-qualified investor definition not set in stone
The deputy director of the Finance Ministry’s financial policy department, Osman Kabaloev, said the criteria for a super-qualified investor are not yet final because they were floated in the early stages of discussions last year, according to RBC.
“Perhaps it will be in this format, or these indicators will be somehow adjusted in one direction or another - this is possible, I think there will be a wide range of discussions,” Kabaloev said in a statement translated from Russian.
Russia implemented a ban on using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin for payments under its first crypto law, On Digital Financial Assets, which came into force in January 2021.
However, the country has since been trying to make other crypto inroads. On April 16, Kabaloev said the Kremlin should be creating its own stablecoin after a recent freeze on wallets linked to the sanctioned Russian exchange Garantex by US authorities and stablecoin issuer Tether.
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Meanwhile, Evgeny Masharov, a member of the Russian Civic Chamber, proposed on March 20 to create a Russian government crypto fund that would include assets confiscated from criminal proceedings.
At the same time, other officials were progressing with new legislation on recognizing crypto as property for the purposes of criminal procedure legislation.
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Bitcoin has shown resilience compared to the broader financial market amid macroeconomic uncertainty, but analysts caution it’s still too early to know whether the trend will last.
“We’re not quite there yet, but if Bitcoin holds strength through the upcoming CPI, as well as ongoing Powell-related and equity earnings volatility, the decoupling narrative could evolve from “temporary divergence” to “regime change,” Bitfinex analysts said in an April 23 markets note viewed by Cointelegraph.
Bitcoin’s relative strength yet to be proven as structural
The analysts said that while Bitcoin’s (BTC) relative strength against US equities “appears real,” it is yet to be confirmed as structural. The analysts warned that Bitcoin has previously seen short periods of outperformance, only to eventually fall back in line with the broader market.
Cointelegraph recently reported that Bitcoin is increasingly abandoning its stock correlation to copy gold’s upside. At the time of publication, Bitcoin’s price has posted gains of 7.68% over the past 30 days. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq are down 6.79% and 8.14%, respectively, as per Google Finance data.
Over the same period, Nvidia (NVDA), which has outperformed Bitcoin over the past decade, fell 15.4%. The analysts attributed the decline to the “effective ban on advanced chip exports to China and tariff-driven volatility.” In May 2024, Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten said there is a “near zero chance of Nvidia outperforming Bitcoin over the next 10 years.”
The Bitfinex analysts described the current crypto market as a “hybrid state,” with rising macroeconomic risk on one side and an uptick in spot Bitcoin ETF inflows on the other.
April 22 alone saw $913 million in spot Bitcoin ETF inflows, the largest since late January.
“This backdrop favors Bitcoin as the “cleanest shirt in the dirty laundry.”
They added that this reinforces Bitcoin’s position as a strong store of value, with Bitcoin dominance rising to levels not seen since late 2021.
At the time of publication, Bitcoin's dominance was 64.39%, according to TradingView data.
Related: Bitcoin holders back in profit as new capital enters the market — Is $100K BTC price next?
Crypto market participants will be closely watching April’s Consumer Price Index (CPI), published on May 13, after March data showed a cooling trend that some saw as a short-term bearish signal for Bitcoin.
March’s CPI came in at 2.4% year-over-year, down from 2.8% in February, the lowest level since February 2023, according to the US Bureau of Statistics.
Meanwhile, some crypto analysts caution that other indicators suggest Bitcoin’s rally may not last.
10x Research head of research Markus Thielen said, “Given that our stablecoin minting indicator has yet to return to high-activity levels, we remain cautious about the sustainability of the current Bitcoin rally.”
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This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
Cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin is set to branch further into Southeast Asia, targeting the growing crypto market in Thailand.
KuCoin is planning to launch a crypto exchange platform offering digital assets and related products in the country, according to an April 23 announcement.
ERX Company Ltd, Thailand’s first Securities and Exchange Commission-supervised digital token exchange, has rebranded as KuCoin Thailand effective April 22, it stated.
The crypto exchange will operate under ERX, which recently received a crypto exchange license from the Thai financial regulator.
“We’re strengthening our ability to offer localized solutions tailored to the Thai market,” said ERX chief executive Att Tongyai Asavanund.
Existing ERX users have been migrated to the new KuCoin Thailand platform, and the KuCoin TH app is available on both Android and iOS.
KuCoin joins an increasingly crowded Thai market
KuCoin is entering a crowded market, as there are eight other companies licensed by the Thai SEC to operate as crypto and digital asset exchanges.
These are the WAAN Exchange, Gulf Binance, Thai Digital Assets Exchange, InnovestX Securities, GMO-Z.com Cryptonomics, Upbit Exchange, Bitkub Online and Orbix Trade.
Bitkub is the largest by far and has a current daily trading volume of around $70 million, according to CoinGecko. Comparatively, KuCoin’s global platform claims to have $3.8 billion in daily volume.
Related: Thailand SEC plans to launch tokenized securities trading system
In January, the Thai government announced a pilot program enabling tourists to pay using Bitcoin (BTC) in a sandboxed environment on the holiday island of Phuket. However, it has yet to be launched.
While crypto trading remains popular in Thailand, using crypto assets for payments was outlawed by the central bank in 2022.
In early April, Thai finance regulators targeted foreign peer-to-peer crypto platforms in their latest crackdown in an effort to combat scams and money laundering.
KuCoin is currently trying to get a settlement with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission resolved after it was sued under the previous administration in March 2024 for violating the Commodity Exchange Act.
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A majority of crypto users are willing to allow artificial intelligence agents to manage part of their investment portfolios, according to the results of a recent CoinGecko survey.
Among the 2,632 crypto participants surveyed, 87% said they would let AI agents manage at least a tenth of their crypto portfolio, CoinGecko’s April 23 report shows.
Around half the respondents said they were willing to let an AI agent manage half their portfolio or less.
“This suggests that despite having doubts as to how safe or secure AI agents are, crypto users are still mainly curious about the technology and want to try using them for trading or investing,” CoinGecko research analyst Yuqian Lim said.
At the same time, around 36% of survey participants said they would allow AI agents to manage the majority of their holdings. A smaller group, roughly 14.5%, were willing to leave their entire crypto portfolio in the digital hands of an AI agent.
“In other words, 1 in 7 participants either think they can completely trust AI agents with all of their crypto, or believe the potential profits will outweigh the risks, or simply have a high risk tolerance for their crypto holdings,” Lim said.
Mixed opinions on human vs AI trading
However, opinions were mixed on whether AI agents would be better than humans at crypto trading and investing overall. There was a roughly even split, with half of the respondents saying AI agents would be better than humans at crypto trading and investing most of the time.
“That said, the remaining half of survey participants believed AI does not have an edge over humans in the crypto market yet, which suggests that opinions are still divided over this comparison,” Lim said.
About 13%, or 1 in 8, said they weren’t comfortable leaving any of their portfolios for management by AI or thought they could manage their crypto stash better than an AI agent.
The same survey found that participants had very mixed views on whether AI agents could be trusted with access to people’s crypto wallets.
“Specifically, 37.5% indicated that they do not trust AI agents with their crypto wallets, while a slightly lower 34.5% said they can be trusted and 27.9% were neutral on the matter,” Lim said.
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Agentic AI is already being used to build Web3 applications, launch tokens, and interact with people autonomously. Some platforms have also been exploring the use of AI agents for trading.
Last December, crypto industry execs told Cointelegraph they expected AI agents to transform Web3 in 2025, flagging crypto staking and onchain trading as emerging early use cases. However, there was also speculation that AI would face headwinds, including technical challenges, regulatory hurdles, and centralization.
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The host of The Wolf Of All Streets podcast, Scott Melker, says he’s received word that his face and name are being impersonated by scammers, with at least one victim duped out of $4 million.
On April 23, the crypto investor said, “I’m sick,” reporting that he’d been contacted by a private investigator revealing that a client of his was scammed for $4 million by a Nigerian group using his name and face as bait.
“They’ve apparently scammed a number of people,” Melker said, adding, “They sent him a fake driver’s license to prove it was me,” and used his X avatar as the photo.
The scammers used AI to generate the fake ID and used a fake but convincing-looking email account.
“They do zoom calls with AI,” which are “apparently sophisticated,” said Melker, who added that the scammers have also spoofed accounts of his wife and kids to support identity confirmation.
Technical analysts “TheChartGuys” reported something similar, with a person getting scammed for $5,000 after the scammers replicated their voice using AI deepfakes.
Fake ID is easy to spot, says trader
Crypto adviser and trader “Nebraskan Gooner” said a quick Google search easily reveals that the ID is fake.
He pointed out that there were a few subtle discrepancies in the address and date formats. He said that it it sucks that these scammers are getting so sophisticated, but was “surprised how badly this was with how sophisticated of an operation these seems to be.”
Cointelegraph reached out to Melker for further comments but did not receive an immediate response.
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AI-generated scams are surging as the technology evolves.
In March, California’s Department of Justice warned that it had discovered seven new types of crypto scams that involved AI.
In February, Chainalysis said that 2025 will be a big year for AI scams, stating that generative AI is making scams “more scalable and affordable for bad actors to conduct.”
In a recent report, software giant Microsoft said that bad actors were using AI to “supercharge their scams.”
“AI tools can scan and scrape the web for company information, helping cyberattackers build detailed profiles of employees or other targets to create highly convincing social engineering lures,” it stated.
“It’s going to get exponentially worse, I would imagine,” lamented Melker.
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The Los Angeles Police Department has recovered $2.7 million worth of Bitcoin mining machines it alleges were stolen by a crime ring in a heist at the city’s airport.
The LAPD said on April 22 that detectives from its Cargo Theft Unit, along with the city’s Port Police, the railroad-based Union Pacific Police, and the city’s Airport Police, arrested Oscar David Borrero-Manchola and Yonaiker Rafael Martinez-Ramos over the thefts.
Authorities claimed the pair are “prominent members” of a South American crime ring tied to the theft and sale of stolen goods in and around Los Angeles.
The LAPD said searches of storage unit facilities in the San Fernando Valley, northeast of downtown Los Angeles, recovered $4 million worth of stolen goods, including the Bitcoin (BTC) mining rigs taken from Los Angeles International Airport “as the shipment was about to be loaded onto a plane headed to Hong Kong.”
Detectives also found and seized over $1.2 million in allegedly stolen tequila, clothing, shoes, speakers, coffee, body wash, and pet food.
Borrero-Manchola and Martinez-Ramos were booked at Van Nuys Jail in the city’s northwest. Borrero-Manchola was cited for receiving stolen property and was released, while Martinez-Ramos was arrested on a no-bail warrant.
The LAPD said that “the investigation remains ongoing, and additional arrests may follow.”
Crypto mining rigs fetch top dollar
The LAPD didn’t share the number of machines it seized or what model the rigs are, but a typical, current-model Bitcoin mining machine sells for between $3,000 to over $5,000.
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US law enforcement has recovered stolen crypto mining rigs in the past. In July, the LAPD said it arrested a man it alleged was in possession of stolen Bitcoin mining rigs worth $579,000, seizing them from a cargo van and storage unit.
One of the largest thefts of Bitcoin mining rigs happened in late 2017 and early 2018 in Iceland, where a group robbed data centers to make off with over 600 machines.
The rigs reportedly ended up in China, as just three months after they were stolen, Chinese authorities seized a similar number and model of mining rigs in Tianjin, a city southeast of the capital, Beijing.
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Twenty One Capital, a new Bitcoin treasury company led by Strike founder Jack Mallers with the support of Tether, SoftBank and Cantor Fitzgerald, is looking to supplant Michael Saylor’s Strategy to become the “superior vehicle for investors seeking capital-efficient Bitcoin exposure.”
Twenty One revealed it plans to launch with 42,000 Bitcoin (BTC) (worth $3.9 billion) with roughly 23,950 BTC coming from Tether, 10,500 BTC from Softbank and 7,000 BTC from Bitfinex, which will be converted into equity at $10 per share, according to an April 23 statement.
The firm is seeking a public listing via a blank-check merger with Cantor Equity Partners and will trade under the ticker XXI on the Nasdaq once it finalizes an agreement with investors to raise $585 million through convertible bonds and equity financing.
“Our mission is simple: to become the most successful company in Bitcoin, the most valuable financial opportunity of our time. We’re not here to beat the market, we’re here to build a new one,” said Mallers, the founder and CEO of Bitcoin payments-focused firm Strike.
“A public stock, built by Bitcoiners, for Bitcoiners.”
Twenty One specifically compared its business model to Strategy’s in an investor presentation to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, claiming it is potentially a “superior vehicle for investors seeking capital-efficient Bitcoin exposure.”
It claimed that Strategy’s ability to create shareholder value through future Bitcoin purchases will be limited because the firm — which holds 534,741 BTC — would need to make even larger investments to increase its Bitcoin Per Share, or BPS, thus diminishing the per-share dollar impact of future capital deployments.
Twenty One said it would be a more “pure play” for investors seeking Bitcoin exposure with Bitcoin-native operations and more “flexibility” for strategic capital raises.
A launch of 42,000 Bitcoin would make Twenty One the third-largest corporate Bitcoin holder, trailing only Strategy and Bitcoin mining firm MARA Holdings, which holds 47,600 BTC, according to BitcoinTreasuries.NET data.
Twenty One plans to do more than just stack Bitcoin
Twenty One also intends to build out several Bitcoin-focused offerings, including Bitcoin debt and equity products, an advisory service, a lending platform and an educational platform.
“Twenty One’s mission will be to accelerate Bitcoin adoption and Bitcoin literacy at both institutional and retail levels,” the firm said.
Related: Bitcoin ETF inflows top 500 times 2025 average in 'significant deviation'
The firm will also partner with industry players to host Bitcoin conferences.
The news sparked a massive 54.2% price rally in Cantor Equity Partners (CEP) shares to $16.50 on April 23 and has risen another 25.1% in after-hours, Google Finance data shows. CEP will convert to XXI once the $585 million agreement is completed.
The venture strengthens Tether’s ties with Cantor, which manages US Treasury reserves backing Tether’s USDT, which boasts a market cap of $145.3 billion. Cantor also owns a 5% stake in the stablecoin issuer.
Twenty One will be majority-owned by Tether and crypto exchange Bitfinex, while Japanese investment holding firm SoftBank will own a “significant” minority share.
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has released its annual report detailing complaints and losses due to scams and fraud involving cryptocurrency in 2024.
According to the report released on April 23, the IC3 received more than 140,000 complaints referencing cryptocurrency in 2024, resulting in roughly $9.3 billion in losses. The bureau reported that individuals over the age of 60 had been the most affected by crypto-related fraud, with roughly 33,000 complaints and $2.8 billion in losses.
“Last year saw a new record for losses reported to IC3, totaling a staggering $16.6 billion,” said the report. “Fraud represented the bulk of reported losses in 2024, and ransomware was again the most pervasive threat to critical infrastructure, with complaints rising 9% from 2023," notes the report, adding that, as a group, those over the age of 60 suffered the most losses and submitted the most complaints.
The report added that the resultant losses had increased roughly 66% since 2023, from roughly $5.6 billion to $9.3 billion. The most significant percentage of losses occurred due to crypto investment schemes, while the largest number of complaints related to “sextortion” schemes, in which fraudsters manipulated photos and videos to create explicit content. Other scams included schemes involving the use of crypto ATMs or kiosks.
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In February, the FBI reported its “Operation Level Up” had saved potential victims of crypto fraud roughly $285 million between January 2024 and January 2025. However, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis speculated that 2025 could see the largest number of scams to date, given that generative AI is making the practice “more scalable and affordable for bad actors to conduct.”
Globally, Chainalysis estimated that there had been roughly $41 billion in illicit crypto volume in 2024, with roughly 25% of the funds involved with “hacking, extortion, trafficking, or scams.” Some of the most high-profile crimes included the $1.4 billion in crypto stolen from the Bybit exchange in March and North Korean hackers taking more than $1.3 billion.
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Sovereign wealth funds and other institutions were accumulating Bitcoin (BTC) during April 2025, while retail traders were exiting the markets via exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and spot markets, according to John D’Agostino, the head of strategy at Coinbase Institutional.
During a recent appearance on CNBC, the Coinbase executive likened Bitcoin to gold and said that many institutional buyers bought BTC as a hedge against currency inflation and macroeconomic uncertainty. The Coinbase executive said:
"Bitcoin is trading on its core characteristics, which again are similar to gold. You've got scarcity, immutability, and non-sovereign asset portability. So it's trading the way people who believe in Bitcoin would like it to trade."
"When you do the work, there's a very short list of assets that mirror the characteristics of gold. Bitcoin is on that shortlist," the executive added.
Governments and financial institutions are increasingly adopting Bitcoin to protect purchasing power and the value of their treasuries in the face of macroeconomic shocks and geopolitical tensions.
Related: Bitcoin holders back in profit as new capital enters the market — Is $100K BTC price next?
Institutions adopting Bitcoin reserve strategies to combat inflation
Sovereign countries like El Salvador and Bhutan have adopted national Bitcoin reserves and actively purchase Bitcoin for their reserves.
Municipalities and state governments have also adopted pro-Bitcoin policies and proposed legislation to accumulate Bitcoin to protect the purchasing power of treasuries from depreciating fiat currencies.
Michael Saylor and Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, popularized the corporate Bitcoin treasury concept now adopted by a growing list of companies, including MARA, MetaPlanet, and Semler Scientific.
The executive also transformed the business software and intelligence company into a Bitcoin holding firm, akin to a BTC hedge fund.
On April 20, Saylor announced that over 13,000 institutions have direct exposure to Strategy, while an estimated 55 million beneficiaries have indirect financial exposure to the company.
Bitcoin recently surpassed Google in market capitalization, making Bitcoin one of the top five assets in the world, ranking above Amazon and Silver and showcasing the supply-capped digital asset's meteoric growth since 2009.
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