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CME Chairman and Kalshi Co-Founder Trade Personal Remarks at CFTC Roundtable on Prediction Markets
62d ago · cryptonews
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Edition · 2026-08-22
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Maya Protocol suffered a liquidity shortfall after an exploit on Aug. 18 that left about 20.83 BTC unspent in a wallet linked to the attack, while its pools sustained an estimated $11 million in damage, with the full impact still unresolved.
Context: The exploit involved six accounting and state‑handling flaws in a single transaction that produced a false missing‑transfer signal, inflating a CACAO pool balance and triggering a compensation path that allowed the attacker to withdraw roughly 48.87 million CACAO before swapping the tokens.
Details: On Aug. 18 at 17:32:18 UTC, ten deposits totaling 20.82730682 BTC were sent to the address, followed by a 546‑satoshi transaction; the wallet showed no outgoing spend through Aug. 21, with a current balance valued at about $1.59 million.
The founder, identified as Aaluxx, initially estimated a loss of roughly 20 BTC (approximately $1.4 million at the time) and said he would work to fix the incident and recover the funds.
According to a technical analysis by SigIntZero, six accounting and state‑handling flaws in a single 23‑message transaction caused the exploit, leading to an inflated balance in a thin ARB.LINK pool that held only about 168,000 CACAO.
The compensation mechanism credited about 49.45 million CACAO to the pool, after which the attacker received roughly 99.93 % of the pool’s ownership units and withdrew about 48.87 million CACAO, later converting them into assets held by other MAYAChain pools.
CryptoSlate analysis attributed roughly $6.4 million to CACAO price declines and $2.9 million to arbitrage after the token fell from $0.115 to $0.013, representing an 88.7 % drop.
The attacker’s total controlled value was estimated between $1.65 million and $1.7 million, while the pool impact was linked to $10.9 million in liquidity losses.
Maya Protocol has sought a bug‑bounty return and considered replacing the missing BTC through Aztec Chain investments, but has not disclosed which remaining losses will be restored or who will absorb the shortfall.
The situation remains unresolved, with the protocol awaiting community input on recovery options.
Four consecutive days of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF inflows totaled $1.61 billion from August 17 through August 20, according to Farside Investors, as Treasury yields approached a 3% real yield for the first time in nearly three decades. Bitcoin traded near $77,821 on August 21, up 7.2% in the prior 24 hours.
The ETF complex revived a regulated demand channel just as the U.S. Treasury reopened its February 2056 TIPS issue, which cleared at a real yield of 2.973%, about 50 basis points higher than the original February issue. The reopening left roughly 29.5 years to maturity and offered an inflation‑adjusted return close to 3% per year.
Daily net inflows were $297.5 million on August 17, $189.3 million on August 18, $517.2 million on August 19 and $606.3 million on August 20, with BlackRock’s IBIT accounting for $503 million of the final day’s total. The four‑day sequence provides a more informative view than a single‑session spike, though end‑of‑day fund reports do not reveal the timing, venue or price of individual Bitcoin purchases. Treasury auction activity included $183 billion of two‑, five‑ and seven‑year notes sold from August 25 to August 27, with bid‑to‑cover ratios improving to 2.82 and indirect bidders receiving 84.4% of competitive awards.
If inflows persist through the August 25‑27 auctions while the long‑term real yield remains near 2.97%, the regulated demand channel may absorb the new Treasury supply. Conversely, a decline in inflows or a reversal in Bitcoin’s price amid elevated yields would expose the rally to competition from government debt, indicating the durability of the ETF demand trend.
US prosecutors unsealed a 14‑count second superseding indictment that adds eight defendants to an existing case, bringing the total to 17 people linked to the Iran‑based Mabna Institute. Six of the new defendants are alleged participants in the 2017 HBO intrusion that led to a Bitcoin extortion attempt valued at roughly $6 million. Prosecutors say Mabna operated as a private firm carrying out cyber intrusions on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other Iranian government, university and private‑sector clients. The indictment alleges the group compromised more than 100,000 professor accounts, stole about 31.5 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property, and caused more than $20 million in investigation and remediation costs across private‑sector and government targets. The case expands a probe that began in 2018 and ties the HBO breach directly to the broader Mabna prosecution. The Justice Department has not alleged that HBO paid the ransom. The State Department’s Rewards for Justice program offered up to $10 million for information leading to the location of five named defendants.
TikTok has agreed to pay $400 million to settle a U.S.
By · 62d ago · Source: bbc
TikTok has agreed to pay $400 million to settle a U.S. lawsuit alleging violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. The settlement, announced on Friday, includes an immediate payment of $300 million to the Department of Justice and an additional $100 million after the agency vacates a 2019 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. The parent company ByteDance and its predecessor Musical.ly, which paid a $5.7 million fine in 2019 for COPPA violations, are part of the agreement. The suit, filed in 2024, claimed that TikTok collected extensive data on millions of users under 13 without obtaining parental consent. The Department of Justice said TikTok has made significant changes to its ownership structure, privacy practices and controls for young users since the lawsuit was filed. A jury trial began this week. Other companies have faced similar penalties, including Google’s YouTube unit, which paid $170 million in 2019, and Epic Games, which paid $275 million in 2022. Meta is also under investigation for potential COPPA violations. TikTok’s U.S. operations are 81 percent owned by a consortium of investors, while ByteDance retains a 19 percent stake. A TikTok spokesperson declined to comment.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered consent orders on Tuesday that impose a five‑year trading ban on former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and a five‑year trading ban on FTX co‑founder Zixiao “Gary” Wang. The orders also impose a ten‑year registration ban on Ellison and an eight‑year registration ban on Wang.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said the bans reflect the material assistance both individuals provided in the agency’s FTX‑related investigations. Ellison was previously sentenced to two years in prison, and Wang received time served in a separate criminal case involving the misuse of customer funds.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York filed an opposition to a motion to dismiss submitted by Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a former service member who alleged he earned more than $400,000 on Polymarket using nonpublic information tied to a military operation that removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The filing argued that Van Dyke’s arguments about the Commodity Exchange Act were speculative and based on improper inferences.
Judge Anna J. Howard of the Northern District of Georgia ordered the unsealing of an indictment on Monday that charges Edward Zimbardi with twelve counts of wire fraud, one count of money‑laundering conspiracy and eleven counts of transactional money‑laundering. Prosecutors allege that Zimbardi tricked thousands of investors into a “Crypto Program” with promises of high returns. The indictment, unsealed by Magistrate Judge Howard, lists assets seized by Dutch authorities, including 11.87 Bitcoin, 2.15 Ether, 713,344,695 Shiba Inu, 47,110 USDT, 12,095 USDT0, 3.3 million XRP, 1,095 Dogecoin, 10.2 million Osaka Protocol, and 11.97 Polygon, valued at approximately $6 million.
The cases illustrate continued legal scrutiny of crypto industry participants by U.S. regulators and courts.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 features the return of the Riot Shield, now destructible and available as a field upgrade rather than a weapon slot. The shield can be placed on the ground to provide cover, and players may mount weapons on it for stability. It offers frontal protection and a melee attack that knocks enemies down. In objective‑based modes, players can use the shield to hold positions. Activision says the shield is durable enough for strategic use but will eventually break, encouraging limited deployment. The game’s beta is available to pre‑order customers, with an open beta scheduled for August 28‑September 1. Modern Warfare 4 launches on October 23 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Switch 2, marking the series’ first Nintendo console release since 2013.
Ed Martin, a former senior Justice Department official who served as interim United States attorney for the District of Columbia and led a task force intended to examine critics of former President Donald Trump, announced his resignation, a move highlighted by Trump’s statement that Martin would “go outside to fight legal battles for the upcoming Midterm Election and the Presidential Election of 2028.”
Martin had been an active advocate of Trump’s claim that the president could direct federal prosecutors to pursue his critics, and he used his position to issue letters threatening officials such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, anti‑Trump protest groups, and academic institutions, as well as to promote claims that the January 6 Capitol attack was a “hoax” and that its participants were “patriots.” He also appeared outside the Brooklyn home of New York Attorney General Letitia James in August 2025, wearing a trench coat, in an effort to draw attention to alleged fraud in her real‑estate investigations.
During his tenure, Martin oversaw investigations into former CIA Director John Brennan, Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook, the indictment of Letitia James, and the case of former FBI Director James Comey, which was initially dismissed and later reinstated on a separate charge related to a threatening image posted on social media. He was removed from the weaponization task force in February after Attorney General Todd Blanche, who succeeded Martin as acting attorney general, judged his work to be lacking in substantive results. Blanche has said he will allow the president to weigh in on individual prosecution decisions and has declined to state that the Justice Department is independent of presidential directives.
Martin’s exit follows Blanche’s confirmation as acting attorney general and underscores a continuation of the administration’s strategy to influence the department’s enforcement priorities, though the broader implications for the department’s independence and ongoing cases remain unclear.
Donald Trump’s personal lawyer sent a letter to the Center for American Progress threatening a $5 billion lawsuit unless the organization retracts a report on the National Guard deployment. The report, published on July 13, examined crime data in Washington, D.C., Memphis and Los Angeles and found no statistically significant difference in crime trends between cities that received National Guard deployment and those that did not. Crime declines began before the 2025 inauguration, the report noted. Alejandro Brito, a lawyer representing Trump, argued that the report misrepresented crime statistics, deceived the public, and alleged that the administration manipulated data for political advantage. The White House declined to comment and asked for the letter to be sent. Cap’s president Neera Tanden said the lawsuit threat was without merit and an attempt to silence factual analysis. She emphasized that the report concerns crime statistics and government actions, not the president personally, and that the organization will defend its work. Cap stated that the allegations of defamation are absurd and that the statements in the report are factual conclusions based on its research. The dispute remains unresolved.
Pentagon officials announced on Friday that they dismissed Stars and Stripes editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, publisher Max Lederer and reporter Lara Korte for insubordination after they participated in a CBS interview in which they said editorial independence was at risk.
Stars and Stripes, a Pentagon‑funded newspaper with a statutory mandate of editorial independence, has been subject to heightened oversight under the current administration. The firings follow statements by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s team that the paper should focus exclusively on warfighting topics and eliminate what they call distractions.
Slavin said he was removed for stating in the interview that hypothetical censorship of news for service members would constitute a red line. Korte said on X that she was fired for telling a CBS reporter she works for Stars and Stripes, not the Pentagon or any policy maker. Lederer, who announced his retirement earlier this month after three decades with the paper, said his leadership philosophy no longer aligned with the Defense Department’s direction.
National Press Club President Mark Schoeff Jr. called the dismissals an attempt by the Pentagon to dictate military coverage and urged an immediate reversal. Media observers noted that the actions are part of a broader pattern of the administration restricting press access to the Defense Department and pursuing legal and regulatory measures against major news outlets.
Slavin and Korte have not responded to requests for comment. Lederer, who served as publisher since 2007, wrote in a staff memo that his vision of the newspaper’s mission diverged fundamentally from the department’s new leadership. The Pentagon’s newly installed deputy publisher, Navy Capt. William Urban, said in a posted letter that he is committed to independent journalism serving service members and their families, though he declined to comment on his future role.
The situation leaves the future of Stars and Stripes’ editorial independence unresolved, as the Pentagon has not clarified whether Slavin or Korte will be replaced or if the newspaper will retain its statutory autonomy.
Chief Justice John Roberts on Friday allowed the White House to continue construction of a $400 million ballroom in the White House complex while the Supreme Court considers the administration’s request to intervene in lawsuits concerning the project.
The temporary order blocks a lower‑court decision that would have halted work because the president did not obtain congressional approval. The stay, signed by Roberts, remains in effect until the Supreme Court issues a further ruling.
Construction of the 90,000‑square‑foot ballroom, which replaces the former East Wing, is about 65 percent complete, according to Justice Department filings. The work has proceeded around the clock, with crews working 20 hours a day, seven days a week, and roughly $200 million in private donations has been spent or committed.
The administration argues that the president has the authority to renovate federal buildings as he sees fit and says the project is needed for national security.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation argues that the president lacks unilateral authority and has said the White House is trying to outpace the courts.
A district judge in Washington ordered a stop to above‑ground construction in April; the order was paused by an appeals panel before being reinstated. The ruling permitted below‑ground work on military bunkers to continue.
Two appellate judges appointed by Democratic presidents said the project was a matter for Congress, while a third judge appointed by Trump found the preservation group lacked standing to sue.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer described the lower‑court halt as extraordinary and unlawful and said completion of the ballroom is vitally required for national security.
The White House has not responded to requests for comment, and the preservation group says the Roberts order is not a final decision and will await further action.
The Supreme Court has not indicated when it will rule on the emergency request, and the outcome will determine whether construction can proceed permanently.
This edition was assembled from neutral, agent-rewritten summaries of the day's aggregated news.
Why it matters: Every article was reviewed for loaded language, partisan framing, and missing attribution before publication.
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