Market infrastructure provider Deutsche Börse plans to integrate the EURAU euro-pegged stablecoin issued by AllUnity, expanding the exchange group’s digital-asset strategy following earlier ties with Circle’s Euro Coin (EURC) and Societe Generale-Forge’s EUR CoinVertible (EURCV).
According to a Wednesday announcement shared with Cointelegraph, Deutsche Börse plans to integrate EURAU into its financial market infrastructure, starting with institutional custody through its central securities depository arm, Clearstream. The announcement also promised a future “integration of the euro stablecoin across the entire service portfolio.”
This would integrate the stablecoin into a sizable and growing market. According to World Federation of Exchanges data, Deutsche Börse’s domestic equity market capitalization is about $2.23 trillion with 474 listed companies.
The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding, but have not yet shared a specific date for when the new features will go live. AllUnity CEO Alexander Höptner said that the partnership is “making onchain cross-border payments and digital assets accessible to institutional market participants.”
Deutsche Börse Group executive board member Stephanie Eckermann said the “goal is to build a seamless bridge between the established financial world and the future of digital assets.” She added that this partnership is an important part of the effort and that embedding institutional-grade stablecoins allows clients “to confidently explore new possibilities in digital finance.”
Deutsche Börse’s EURAU integration follows its partnership with major stablecoin issuer Circle to adopt its EURC token in late September. Earlier this month, the company also announced that it had partnered with Societe Generale-Forge to integrate its EURCV stablecoin.
With this latest deal, Deutsche Börse appears to be playing the stablecoin game on all fronts, adding EURAU, issued by a German BaFin-licensed e-money institution. This complements EURCV, a bank-tied stablecoin, as Societe Generale-Forge is the blockchain arm of major French multinational bank Societe Generale; EURC comes from a US tech-sector issuer.
While not leading to as many headlines as the United States, the European Union is also making progress in stablecoin adoption following the full introduction of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework at the end of 2024. The announcement noted that the partnership “aligns with MiCA” and “represents a tangible step toward digitizing European markets and enhancing settlement and liquidity processes.”
Höptner said, “Europe is taking a global lead in regulated digital finance.”
Still, while picking up speed, stablecoin adoption remains low in Europe. Earlier this month, financial stability experts at the European Central Bank (ECB) said stablecoin-related risks in the euro area were limited due to low adoption and preventative regulation.
Some analyses point to euro stablecoins as a response to concerns that US dollar-backed stablecoins could threaten the European Union’s monetary independence. “Europe should not be dependent on US dollar-denominated stablecoins, which are currently dominating markets,” Pierre Gramegna, the managing director of the European Stability Mechanism, said earlier this month.
The industry is also seeing increasing involvement by local traditional financial players. In mid-October, Franco-German banking group ODDO BHF launched a stablecoin pegged to the euro under the MiCA framework.
In late September, a group of major European banks joined forces to launch a euro-pegged stablecoin under MiCA. The list of nine banks includes Dutch lender ING and Italy’s UniCredit.
Crypto-friendly White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett has reportedly emerged as a top candidate for the next Federal Reserve chair, replacing Jerome Powell when his tenure is up in May.
President Donald Trump’s advisers and backers see Hassett as the frontrunner to take over as Fed chair, as he’s expressed sympathy with Trump’s desire to cut rates, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Hassett is the director of the National Economic Council, who oversees the White House’s digital asset working group that Trump created in January. This group released a report in July outlining policy considerations for crypto.
Hassett is one of many reported crypto-friendly Fed chair picks who have backed Trump’s desire for the central bank to cut rates to juice up the markets. Powell’s time as chair is up in May, but his tenure on the Fed Board extends until January 2028.
Asked by Fox News on Tuesday if he would take a job as Fed chair, Hassett said, “Of course I’d have to say yes, because I want to serve my country and I want to serve my president.”
Kevin Hassett was speaking to Fox News on Tuesday. Source: Fox News
“President Trump and I have talked a lot about it,” he added.
Hassett owns Coinbase stocks, was a crypto adviser
In June, Hassett reportedly disclosed that he owned at least $1 million worth of Coinbase (COIN) stock.
He also disclosed that he received a $50,001 salary from Coinbase for serving on the crypto exchange’s Academic and Regulatory Advisory Council, which the company created in 2023 and also included Manhattan US Attorney Jay Clayton.
Hassett has previously served on the advisory board for the crypto fund manager One River Digital Asset Management and was chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2017 to 2019, in Trump’s first term.
Also on the potential to take over the Fed is its vice supervision chair, Michelle Bowman, who said Fed staff should be allowed to invest a small amount in crypto to get a “working understanding of the underlying functionality.”
Whoever Trump picks, he’ll be pressuring them to cut rates. The Fed has cut rates twice this year by a total of 50 basis points.
The market has turned bullish on a Christmas cut when the Fed meets in December, with CME’s FedWatch putting the chances of a 25-basis-point cut at around 85%.
The pain may not be over yet for Bitcoin investors, according to one crypto analyst, arguing that there’s still more leverage that could be flushed out.
Crypto analyst James Check described the recent market meltdown as a “2-sigma long liquidation event,” which wiped out a “chunk of degen gamblers.”
Most of the leverage is gone, but the market “has an incredible nose that can sniff out the final hold-outs,” he added, cautioning that a further flush out could be on the cards.
“We wouldn’t be too surprised if we wick into the $70k-$80k zone to flush the final leverage pockets.”
A 2-sigma liquidation event in crypto refers to a significant market movement that triggers mass liquidations of leveraged positions, with “2-sigma,” or two standard deviations, indicating the statistical magnitude of the price swing.
Bitcoin shed over $24,000 in just ten days, dropping to a seven-month low of around $82,000 on Nov. 21.
Graph of Bitcoin’s 2-sigma liquidation event. Source: James Check
Bitcoin has found a local bottom
The crypto markets showed tentative signs of stabilization after last week’s dramatic sell-off, and may have found a local bottom, Augustine Fan, head of insights at crypto trading software service provider SignalPlus, told Cointelegraph.
“Markets are currently so oversold from both sentiment and technical perspectives (such as Bollinger Bands), and prices are likely to have seen local lows for now, absent any new exogenous factors (such as DAT forced selling),” she said.
Fan expects prices to range between $82,000 and $92,000 and identified the next significant price support around the $78,000 area.
“A sustained break below would open up further significant downside, but is not the base case scenario for now,”
Bitcoin whales are still distributing BTC
Analysts at blockchain data provider CryptoQuant identified a local bottom that could lead to a more sustained rebound.
“On-chain data shows a market shaped by institutional redistribution, structural weakness, and a rebound that may signal a local bottom,” said analyst Carmelo Alemán on Tuesday.
However, the crucial 1,000 to 10,000 BTC whale cohort is still selling, which prevents a full confirmation of the trend reversal, he added.
“The recovery is promising, but the end of the bearish phase requires a clear shift in whale behavior.”
Zcash surged more than 10x within weeks, briefly returning to large-cap territory with a valuation above $10 billion.
On Coinbase, ZEC became the most-searched asset in mid-November, surpassing both Bitcoin and XRP.
The rally is supported by several real shifts: the 2024 halving, rising shielded balances and the NU6.1 holder-controlled funding model.
Analysts are divided, with some calling the move a blow-off top and others viewing it as a repricing driven by renewed interest in “responsible” privacy coins amid stricter AML rules.
Zcash wasn’t expected to become a major story this market cycle. For most of the past few years, the privacy coin remained in the background while Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), XRP (XRP) and a rotating cast of memecoins dominated headlines and trading activity.
Then November arrived.
In just a few days, Zcash (ZEC) climbed to the top of Coinbase’s search rankings. A screenshot shared by Zcash adviser Thor Torrens showed ZEC drawing around 52,000 searches on the platform. This was ahead of both XRP and Bitcoin, which recorded roughly 41,000 and 39,000 searches, respectively.
Zcash tops search charts on Coinbase
At the same time, ZEC’s price had already surged, delivering a four-digit percentage gain over the past year and briefly pushing the token back into the large-cap bracket.
For a coin many traders had written off as a relic of the previous privacy cycle, the question now is simple: How did Zcash go from low-profile to most-searched in a single month?
Did you know? Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox is a longtime cypherpunk who worked on DigiCash in the 1990s and helped create projects such as Tahoe-LAFS, the BLAKE2 hash function and the concept known as Zooko’s Triangle long before ZEC launched.
How Zcash slipped into low-profile relic status
For readers who haven’t looked at it in years, it is worth remembering what Zcash actually is.
Launched in 2016 as a Bitcoin-style proof-of-work (PoW) chain with a hard cap of 21 million coins, it was built around cutting-edge zero-knowledge proofs. These allow users to send either transparent transactions, similar to Bitcoin, or fully shielded transactions where amounts and addresses are hidden but still mathematically verifiable.
For a while, it was treated as a kind of “science project with a price,” backed by heavyweight cryptographers and privacy advocates.
Then the spotlight moved on. As regulators increased scrutiny of privacy coins, several major exchanges delisted or restricted them, and Monero (XMR) gradually became the default choice for die-hard privacy users.
ZEC slid down the market capitalization rankings, daily volumes thinned out, and social chatter faded. By early 2024, despite having survived two halving events and multiple network upgrades, it looked more like a legacy token from an earlier era than a contender for a new narrative.
The slow turnaround: Halvings, shielded usage and a governance reset
The November spike did not come out of nowhere. Zcash spent the past two years quietly reshaping its underlying story, while most of the market was not paying attention.
On the monetary side, the most recent halving on Nov. 23, 2024, cut the block reward from 3.125 ZEC to 1.5625 ZEC, reducing daily new issuance from roughly 3,600 coins to about 1,800. With a fixed supply of 21 million and halving cycles now running on a tighter post-Blossom schedule, ZEC began to be discussed in “sound money” terms by parts of the community.
Under the hood, actual usage was shifting as well. Coinbase research notes that the amount of ZEC held in shielded addresses climbed from about 1.7 million coins to roughly 4.5 million over the past year, with more than 1 million coins moving into shielded pools within a three-week window.
Overall, more than 27% of the circulating supply is now shielded, and other trackers show the peak shielded supply briefly rising above 5 million coins. This suggests that users are not just trading the ticker.
At the same time, the new funding and governance structure went live. The NU6.1 upgrade, activated on Nov. 24, 2025, allocates 8% of block rewards to community grants and 12% to a coinholder-controlled fund. This gives ZEC holders a formal say in how millions of dollars in development capital are deployed between now and the next halving in 2028.
Together, these changes laid the groundwork for a rerating long before search volumes surged.
Did you know? The Electric Coin Company commissioned Rand Europe to study criminal use of Zcash. The researchers found that ZEC had only a minor presence on the dark web and that Bitcoin remained the dominant currency for illicit activity.
Privacy revival, Monero exploit and new AML rules
The spark for all this was a mix of narrative and timing.
Privacy suddenly returned to focus after a high-profile exploit in Monero shook confidence in the sector’s default choice. Commentators began looking for an alternative with active governance and a clear upgrade path. With a scheduled network update underway and a halving narrative in the background, Zcash positioned itself as a candidate to fill that vacuum.
At the same time, regulators continued tightening oversight on opaque money flows. New Anti-Money Laundering (AML) rules, stronger Travel Rule enforcement and increased scrutiny of mixers made “total darkness” harder to defend, whereas Zcash’s model of optional privacy and auditable view keys appeared more compatible with compliance-minded institutions.
A rival stumbling, a returning theme and a protocol that could be positioned as a “responsible” privacy coin gave ZEC a fresh story just as traders were looking for the next big narrative.
About the Coinbase surge: What 52,000 searches really mean
According to figures shared by Zcash adviser Torrens, ZEC logged around 52,000 individual searches on Coinbase in mid-November, compared with roughly 41,000 for XRP and 39,000 for Bitcoin.
That is a clear snapshot of retail curiosity, with tens of thousands of users typing “Zcash” into the search bar on one of the largest fiat on-ramps in the world.
Off-exchange, social data from X and Reddit showed a similar rise in mentions. Taken together, November was the month Zcash reentered retail consciousness.
Blow-off top or real repricing
Look only at the chart, and it is easy to call this a blow-off top. From late September to early November, ZEC climbed from the mid-$70s to more than $700, at one point rising over 1,000% this fall and more than 500% in a single month, before sliding about 30% from its local high.
Coinbase notes that Zcash futures volume approached $10 billion on Nov. 7, and derivatives platforms have reported rising open interest as traders piled into the move. For anyone who has lived through past altcoin manias, those indicators often appear in periods of heavy speculative positioning.
But there is also a case that November was more of a repricing rather than a pure mania spike. Supply growth has already been cut in half by the 2024 halving, shielded usage now accounts for more than a quarter of the circulating supply, and NU6.1 has introduced a clearer and more transparent funding model through the next halving cycle.
If those fundamentals hold, some analysts argue that any sharp correction could represent a reset within a higher range, although outcomes remain uncertain. The hard part, as always, is separating narrative from lasting change in real time.
Did you know? Before Zcash launched in October 2016, futures contracts tied to the coin on over-the-counter (OTC) platforms jumped from about $18 to $261 in six weeks, a roughly 1,300% gain driven purely by anticipation of its privacy technology.
What Zcash’s November moment tells us about crypto narratives
Zcash’s November moment says as much about the broader crypto market as it does about one older token.
Markets have a habit of rediscovering assets that quietly improve their economics, strengthen governance and wait for the right macro story to catch up. In this case, the story centered on privacy. Rising concern over data exposure, tighter AML enforcement and fatigue with fully transparent chains created space for a “partial privacy” alternative that did not appear to be an immediate regulatory target.
For readers, the takeaway is twofold.
First, exchange search data is a useful early signal for where retail attention is drifting, but it often appears just as fear of missing out (FOMO) peaks.
Second, themes never truly disappear in crypto; they cycle. If Zcash can turn a legacy reputation into a fresh narrative, other forgotten categories may not be as dead as their charts suggest.
Caroline Pham, acting chair of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, called for nominations of CEOs to fill seats on a council to discuss policies, including those related to digital assets.
In a Tuesday notice, Pham said the CFTC would be accepting submissions until Dec. 8 for a “CEO Innovation Council,” referencing the regulator’s previous efforts to regulate digital assets, including its “Crypto Sprint” initiative, a crypto industry forum, and Congress’ progress with a market structure bill. The acting chair said the council would focus on the CFTC’s “expanded mission over crypto and prediction markets.”
“The CFTC stands ready to carry out our mission over expanded markets and products, including crypto and digital assets, and ensure our markets remain vibrant and resilient while protecting all participants,” said Pham. “In order to hit the ground running, it is critical that the CFTC drives public engagement with the support of expert industry leaders and visionaries who are building the future.”
It’s unclear when the CFTC will officially form the council, but it could occur after Pham leaves the commission. The acting chair could soon be replaced by SEC official Michael Selig, whose nomination as a Senate-confirmed chair of the commission is expected to be headed for a floor vote soon. Many lawmakers will not return to Washington, D.C., until after the Thanksgiving holiday.
Selig signals crypto priorities as CFTC faces leadership void
Though the Senate has not yet voted on Selig’s nomination, his testimony before lawmakers in the Agriculture Committee last week offered a preview of how he might approach digital asset regulation if confirmed.
Selig said it was “vitally important” to have a “cop on the beat” for regulating spot digital asset commodity markets. He also said it was “very valuable to have a diversity of viewpoints,” referring to the dearth of leadership at the CFTC — Pham has been the sole commissioner for months, and the White House had announced no additional nominations from US President Donald Trump as of Tuesday.
Friday’s $14 billion BTC options expiry favors neutral-to-bearish bets as most call (buy) strikes sit above $91,000, increasing pressure on bulls.
Bitcoin traders added year-end call options near $100,000 despite recent losses, showing that bullish expectations persist.
Bitcoin (BTC) price dropped on Tuesday after failing to hold the $89,200 level reached the previous day. Traders are increasingly concerned that Friday’s $14 billion BTC options expiry may reinforce bearish sentiment following weaker private employment data and a decline in US consumer confidence.
The aggregate BTC call (buy) options open interest stands at 104,300 BTC, valued at $9.12 billion at current prices. Yet the recent 23% decline in Bitcoin over 30 days caught bulls off guard, as 84% of these positions were placed above $91,000. These contracts are set to expire worthless if the spot price remains near current levels.
Nov. 28 aggregate BTC put (sell) options open interest, BTC. Source: laevitas.ch
Put (sell) options open interest totals 67,877 BTC, or $5.92 billion. Despite being 35% smaller than call open interest, put positions appear better aligned with prevailing market conditions, with 31% set at $84,500 or lower. Thus, even if Bitcoin recovers part of its recent losses by Nov. 28, probabilities favor neutral-to-bearish outcomes.
Risk sentiment deteriorated further after payroll processor ADP reported on Tuesday that US private companies shed an average of 13,500 jobs per week during the past four weeks. Labor market weakness poses an additional challenge for a consumer-driven economy.
Investors’ sentiment weakened further after the US Conference Board reported that consumer confidence fell to 88.7 in November, down from 95.5 in the previous month. Expectations for income and business also dropped, remaining well below the 80% neutral threshold for the tenth straight month, according to Yahoo Finance.
Weak economic data increases hopes for Fed intervention
Although deteriorating economic indicators weigh on investor expectations, they also raise the likelihood of the Federal Reserve adopting a less restrictive monetary stance. Gold rose 1.2% and the Russell 2000 small-cap index gained 1.9% as traders anticipated additional liquidity measures from the US Treasury to help stabilize the economy.
On Monday, US President Donald Trump signed the “Genesis Mission” executive order aimed at accelerating artificial intelligence development and reducing perceived risks tied to energy shortages and long-term financing needs, as large-scale high-performance computing facilities could strain credit markets.
Bitcoin options open interest change past 48 hours at Deribit, USD. Source: Laevitas.ch
Bitcoin traders responded by increasing year-end call option positions in the $100,000 to $112,000 range over the past 48 hours, signaling that medium-term optimism persists despite the recent price weakness.
$89,000 is the key level to decide Bitcoin’s momentum
Below are five probable scenarios for the November BTC options expiry based on current price trends:
Between $85,000 and $87,000: The net result favors the put (sell) instruments by $1.9 billion.
Between $87,001 and $88,000: The net result favors the put (sell) instruments by $800 million.
Between $88,001 and $89,000: Balanced outcome between call and put options.
Between $89,001 and $90,000: The net result favors the call (buy) instruments by $600 million.
Between $90,001 and $92,000: The net result favors the call (buy) instruments by $3.8 billion.
It may be premature to dismiss bullish BTC options strategies outright. Investors’ sentiment remains closely tied to macroeconomic conditions and expectations of potential stimulus efforts by central banks worldwide.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
Prediction platform Polymarket has received regulatory approval from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission to operate an intermediated trading platform.
In a Tuesday notice, Polymarket said the CFTC issued an Amended Order of Designation, which will allow the company to “operate an intermediated trading platform subject to the full set of requirements applicable to federally regulated US exchanges.” According to Polymarket, the approval will result in the platform onboarding brokerages and customers directly and facilitating trading on US venues.
“This approval allows us to operate in a way that reflects the maturity and transparency that the US regulatory framework demands,” said Polymarket founder and CEO Shayne Coplan.
The regulatory approval came about five months after the CFTC and the US Department of Justice closed an investigation into Polymarket regarding whether the platform accepted trades from US-based users. The FBI reportedly raided Coplan’s home as part of the probe into the prediction platform, seizing his electronic devices.
The predictions platform is subject to oversight and regulation from the CFTC while operating in the United States. A market structure bill moving its way through Congress could also expand the CFTC’s authority over digital assets.
CFTC leadership in flux
The CFTC notice under acting chair Caroline Pham came as the US Senate is expected to soon vote on the nomination of SEC official Michael Selig as the next chair of the commodities regulator. Lawmakers in the Senate Agriculture Committee voted along party lines to advance Selig’s nomination.
Even if Selig were to be confirmed, the CFTC would continue to have four empty commissioner seats. As of Tuesday, US President Donald Trump had not announced any potential replacements for the regulator’s leadership.
Cryptocurrency payments company MoonPay said it would expand its offering of regulated services after being granted a trust charter by New York’s Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).
In a Tuesday notice, MoonPay said New York’s financial regulator had granted the company a trust charter. The regulatory approval will allow the payments company to provide crypto custody and over-the-counter trading services in New York.
MoonPay co-founder and CEO Ivan Soto-Wright said the approval would allow the company to “deepen relationships with global financial institutions,” and expand its existing regulated services. The payments company secured a BitLicense from the NYDFS in June.
Other crypto and payments companies that have both obtained a trust charter and BitLicense from the New York financial regulator include Ripple Labs, Coinbase, and NYDIG. Both Coinbase and Ripple have applied for a federal trust charter with the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, but the banking regulator had not announced its decision as of Tuesday.
Pivoting into stablecoin infrastructure under the GENIUS Act
Since the GENIUS Act, which establishes a framework for payment stablecoins, was signed into law in the US in July, several crypto companies have expanded their services to include stablecoins.
Though the law has not yet taken effect, MoonPay said on Nov. 13 that it had launched an initiative allowing issuers to launch and distribute their own stablecoins.
The stablecoin law may have also influenced how traditional finance companies do business in the US. Visa said in July that it had expanded stablecoin offerings on its settlement platform, and Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan reportedly said the bank was considering creating a stablecoin in partnership with other financial institutions.
Portfolio diversification has overtaken the pursuit of the “crypto megatrend” as the top reason for investing in crypto in 2025, according to Sygnum Bank’s new Future Finance Report 2025.
According to the report, 57% of respondents now view diversification as their primary motivation for investing. This surpassed last year’s top driver, exposure to crypto’s long-term upside, which fell from 62% to 53%.
“This could indicate that crypto is now being used more deliberately as a core portfolio component, with its perceived diversification benefits taking precedence over chasing pure upside potential,” Sygnum wrote.
While diversification leads, 45% of respondents view crypto, particularly Bitcoin (BTC), as a safe-haven and macro hedge, driven by rising sovereign debt loads, inflation concerns, geopolitical tensions and falling trust in fiat currencies. Interest in crypto as a “new alternative asset class” declined to 28%.
Top reasons for investing in crypto in 2025. Source: Sygnum
The report also noted a maturing market environment, with the adoption of regulated derivatives, corporate balance-sheet growth and a surge in exchange-traded fund products contributing to broader confidence. More than 150 crypto ETF applications are pending in the US, and 70% of investors say they would increase exposure if staking is permitted in future products, particularly Solana (SOL) and multi-asset ETPs.
About 70% of surveyed investors said they would increase their allocations to crypto ETFs if staking yields were included. Even those already interested in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) ETFs indicated that staking would materially influence their allocation decisions.
Sygnum said high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) represent the largest cohort in this year’s survey, often allocating 10%–20% or more of their investable wealth to cryptocurrency. Ninety percent of these investors said that crypto was important for long-term wealth preservation and legacy planning, with more than half strongly agreeing.
Regulatory uncertainty remains the biggest barrier to crypto investment, cited by 40% of respondents, ahead of custody and security concerns at 38% and asset volatility at 36%. This is notable given the significant regulatory progress across the US and Europe in 2025.
Biggest barriers to entry in 2025. Source: Sygnum
Meanwhile, 80% of respondents said regulatory clarity had significantly improved since 2025, an 11-percentage-point increase. About 83% also agreed that recent US policy shifts have strengthened crypto’s investment case.
A crypto airdrop farmer lost more than $112,000 in newly issued tokens by burning the entire reward on failed blockchain transactions.
In crypto, a professional airdrop farmer (or squatter) is a person who interacts with emerging protocols solely for the airdrop rewards, often using multiple wallets to compound the rewards.
Cryptocurrency wallet 0x7f4 received about $112,700 worth of Monad (MON) tokens as a reward for activity leading up to the launch.
In an unfortunate turn of events, the trader lost the entire $112,000 across hundreds of failed blockchain transactions, which all deducted gas fees despite not being completed, according to blockchain data from Solscan.
“Congratulations to 0x7f4e…fa7d who managed to spend their entire Monad airdrop (112.7k) on failed txn fees,” wrote crypto investor Joe, in a Monday X post.
The incident serves as a reminder to run test transactions before large-scale transfers, which involve users sending a small amount of funds to the destination address to verify that the transfer parameters are correct.
Based on the transaction patterns, the user behind the wallet probably submitted hundreds of transactions in a short time, likely through a script, but didn’t notice that the first transactions had begun failing.
The incident came as some Monad airdrop recipients reported missing allocations. According to Cos, founder of blockchain security firm SlowMist, a vulnerability in the Monad claim portal allowed hackers to bind a user’s allocation to an attacker-controlled wallet.
Multiple users reported not receiving their airdrop shares, which were “bound to a hacker’s address” before the allocation was disseminated, wrote Cos in a Tuesday X post.
Cos said the exploit let attackers “hijack” a user’s session on the claim page and redirect the airdrop to their own address without requiring wallet confirmation.
Airdrop farmers have been a long-standing issue for emerging cryptocurrency projects due to their value-extraction methods, which seek to sell the tokens immediately after the airdrop.
In March 2023, it was revealed that airdrop hunters consolidated $3.3 million worth of tokens from Arbitrum’s ARB airdrop from 1,496 wallets into just two wallets they had controlled.
Earlier in February, non-fungible token (NFT) platform OpenSea paused its airdrop reward system, following user backlash that the new mechanics promoted wash trading and prioritized earning fees, not genuine builder activity.
