On May 15, news broke that Coinbase had been the victim of an extortion bid for $20 million. Cybercriminals hired overseas agents to leak user data in order to commit social engineering frauds.
Although less than 1% (or 20,000) of Coinbase’s monthly active users have been affected, expected costs for remediation, reimbursement, and other expenses are between $180,000,000 to $400,000,000, with the exchange pledging to pay all phishing victims.
Despite the attack on the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange, investor sentiment remains optimistic, with the Fear & Greed Index remaining firmly in the “Greed” CoinMarketCap zone above 69 data.
Coinbase, which is based in the United States, saw a net withdrawal of $1 billion of Bitcoins on May 9. This was the biggest outflow since 2025. Analysts predicted a Bitcoin rally driven by heightened supply.
Coinbase to pay $400 Million after Insider Phishing Attack
Coinbase said that it was the victim of a $20,000,000 extortion after cybercriminals hired overseas agents to leak user data.
Coinbase has revealed that an external group of actors paid bribes and worked with customer support companies to hack into internal systems in order to steal data from user accounts.
“These insiders abused their access to customer support systems to steal the account data for a small subset of customers,” Coinbase has confirmed that there are no affected passwords or Coinbase Prime account funds.
The company stated that the hack only affected less than 1% (one percent) of Coinbase users who transacted monthly.
The attackers tried to demand $20 million in Bitcoin after stealing data.BTCCoinbase agreed to not disclose the violation in return for not disclosing it. Coinbase declined the request.
In its place, the company promised a 20 million dollar reward for any information leading to an arrest or conviction of those involved in the scam.
Analysts warn about a supply shock as $1 billion Bitcoin leaves Coinbase within a single day
Coinbase, which is the third-largest crypto exchange worldwide, reported its largest daily Bitcoin withdrawals in 2025, on May 9,
On May 9, Coinbase saw 9,739 Bitcoin, worth more than $1 billion, withdrawn from the exchange, the highest net outflow recorded in 2025, according to Bitwise head of European research André Dragosch.
“Institutional appetite for Bitcoin is accelerating,” Dragosch is added as a new X in the May 13th x post.
Outflows occurred when Bitcoin was trading above $103,600, and days after White House announced 90-day reciprocal reduction of tariffs between US and China. This announcement eased market concerns, and lifted investor sentiment.
A 90-day period of suspension on additional tariffs eliminated the threat of “sudden re-escalation,” What may be a good idea? help Bitcoin, altcoins Aurelie Bärthere, Nansen’s Principal Research Analyst, tells Cointelegraph that it is due to the improved risk appetite of Nansen’s research analysts, Aurelie barthere.
Aave DeFi reaches 40 billion dollars in locked-onchain value
According to DefiLlama, Aave is a protocol for decentralized financial (DeFi). It has reached a record amount of funds in the blockchain.
The X postAave announced that the total locked value (TVL), which is what Aave calls its “total value”, surpassed $40.3 Billion on May 12, 2018. Onchain data reveals Aave, the newest version of this protocol, currently has a TVL value of about $40 billion.
Aave, a DeFi-lending protocol, allows users to borrow cryptocurrency through the deposit of other cryptocurrency types as collateral. Lenders earn yield from the borrowers.
“With these milestones, Aave is proving its dominance in the Lending Space,” In a May 12, X article, DeFi analyst Jonaso stated that he was a x post. TVL stands for the total amount of crypto-currency deposited to a protocol’s smart contracts.
SEC delays Solana ETF decisions as Polkadot and XRP loom
US Securities and Exchange Commission has pushed its decision to a spot Solana ETF back. The cryptocurrency industry is now focusing on the June deadlines of the Polkadot and XRP based exchange traded funds.
Grayscale’s Solana spot was not listed by the SEC until after it had received a request from Grayscale.SOL) A May 13 report stated that Trust ETF would be traded on the New York Stock Exchange through October 2025. filing The Securities Regulator
Canary Capital (Litecoin) was the subject of a SEC decision that had been delayed for a few weeks.LTC) ETF. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart in an X post.
Spot ETFs drive institutional and retail adoption of digital assets. The US Bitcoin spot ETFs represented an estimated 80% of the total US Bitcoin market. 75% of new investment After launching the ETFs, BTC was able to recapture $50,000 in February 2024. This is a full month after they were first traded.
As a result, Solana ETF may Although it will only generate a small fraction of Bitcoin ETF inflows, this could help increase Solana’s institutional adoption by providing investors with a “regulated investment vehicle” Ryan Lee, Chief analyst at Bitget Research and Cointelegraph, said that the company may attract capital worth billions.
Starknet hits “Stage 1” decentralization, tops ZK-rollups for value locked
Starknet, the Ethereum layer-2 scale platform developed by Vitalik Buterin as a means of decentralization, has now reached an important milestone in its development. It is currently the largest network based on zero-knowledge and rolled up value.
Starknet, in a release sent to Cointelegraph by the company, said that they have hit “Stage 1” decentralization, according to a framework Buterin outlined in 2022 means that the network is operated with minimal oversight. “training wheels.”
Starknet also added that Starknet was the framework. “gold standard onchain tool for analyzing Ethereum scaling solutions,” It said that it had achieved this milestone by making changes, such as establishing a Security Council and mechanisms to avoid censorship.
Although the system is still able to be influenced by a security committee, a valid proofing system has been implemented that’s governed entirely by smart contracts.
Starknet has become the biggest ZK-rollup chain with its total value locked at $629 millions, only slightly behind ZKsync. according It is L2beat.
Starknet ranks fifth in the world’s largest network layer-2 network By value-locked, the top four Optimistic rollups have all reached Stage 1 of decentralization by using fraud proofs.
Market overview of DeFi
The data collected from Cointelegraph Markets Pro TradingView shows that most of the top 100 cryptocurrencies, ranked by their market capitalization, ended the week on the positive side.
Dogwifhat is a memecoin based on Solana.WIFThe biggest gains this week were made by the decentralized exchange Raydium (RAY( token) is up by almost 19% during the past seven days.
Thank you for reading this summary of the most important DeFi news from last week. We’ll see you next Friday with even more news, insight and information about this rapidly advancing field.
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Source: cointelegraph.com
