The good news for cryptocurrency investors came shortly after 8 on Friday: Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency market in the United States, had reached an agreement with US regulators to reject a cause that had hung the industry for years.
But in a few hours, the cryptocurrency market has fallen into a new crisis. At 10:51, bybit, another exchange of cryptocurrencies leader, said he had been violated – with analysts in the sector that estimate the loss of almost $ 1.5 billion, the largest theft in the history of cryptocurrencies.
The prices of Bitcoin, Ether and other important cryptocurrencies have collapsed. The price of Coinbase shares also decreased by 8 % by the end of the day.
This contrast with a divided screen was a significant example of the cryptocurrency state in 2025. Although President Trump embraces the industry, he remains the wild west of the financial world, subject to scams, thefts and sudden collapses of the market.
A series of political changes in Washington are ready to encourage millions of investors to delight in cryptocurrency for the first time, despite the continuous struggles of the sector for the police and prevent criminal activity. The hack recalled that, for all its growing influence in politics, Crypto remains a kind of free will, a chaotic market in which even more experienced investors sometimes undergo extreme losses.
“These guys whose entire activity is cryptographic, being intelligent about these problems, have just lost $ 1.5 billion,” said Corey Frayer, who worked on cryptographic policy at the Securities and Exchange Commission during the Biden administration. “So, how do we expect regular Americans who only want their debit card to work safely use the products?”
The news on Coinbase and Bybit reached the end of a Russian mountain of a few days in the world of cryptocurrencies. A proliferation of new memecoin – digital currencies based on an internet joke or a mascot of celebrities, without practical function – has pushed complaints widespread on the scams.
Last week, a memecoin promoted by the president of Argentina, Javier Milei, suddenly precipitated value, triggering a political crisis there and costing investors more than $ 250 million.
Recently, cryptocurrency managers expressed concern about the spread of these high -risk cryptocurrencies, taking care to be able to cancel some of the progress that the industry has made with the legislators. Shortly before his inauguration, Mr. Trump put his memecoin for sale – has increased in value before crashing. More than 800,000 cryptographic accounts have lost money.
“Memecoins are not just a casino – I’m worse,” Haseeb Qureshi wrote, an investor of cryptocurrency quotes, wrote on social media this week. “I am a casino in which each slot machine has a different owner, everyone tries to tear you as much as possible before moving on to the next one.”
Under the Biden Administration, the federal regulators supervised a vast repression of cryptocurrency, intended legal actions against many of the largest companies in the sector.
At the top of that list was Coinbase, a 60 billion dollar company that became public in 2021. Two years ago, the century sued at coinbase, claiming that the digital currencies sold on its platform were the titles, just such as the actions and bonds exchanged on Wall Street. The regulators claimed that Coinbase should have registered at the century and follow rigid rules to protect investors from financial damage.
But the posture of the government towards Crypto has turned when Mr. Trump came into office. The president has his cryptocurrency, World Liberty Financial, giving him a personal participation in the success of the sector. And he appointed an ally of the cryptocurrency industry, the lawyer Paul Atkins, to guide the century, which quickly reduced his efforts of application.
On Friday morning, in a regulatory storage, Coinbase announced that the century had agreed to abandon its cause without imposing any financial sentence. (The agreement requires approval by the Agency’s commissioners, a process that should be a formality.)
In post -celebratory social media posts, the managers in the sector have declared the end of a “siege against cryptocurrency” by the federal government.
The euphoria did not last long. Bybit, which is based on Dubai and proceeds tens of billions of dollars in daily transactions, revealed that the thieves had violated its system, stealing huge quantities of ether.
Crypto has a long history of harmful hacking, but bybit theft has diminished the previous record, when the thieves stole $ 611 million in cryptocurrencies by a platform called PolyNetwork in 2021.
Even outside the world of cryptocurrencies, there is little precedent for such a great theft. “It could also be the largest single theft of all time,” said Tom Robinson, co-founder of Elliptic, a cryptocurrency analysis company.
On social media, Ben Zhou, CEO of Bybit, assured customers that the company was still solvent. “Even if this loss of hack is not recovered, all customer resources are supported from 1 to 1,” he wrote. “We can cover the loss.”
On Friday, in a live streaming, Mr. Zhou, who was swimming Red Bull, said that the “affected amount” was 401,000 ether, or about $ 1.1 billion. Crypto Forensics experts estimated the total closest to $ 1.5 billion, based on the analysis of public transactions registers.
Bella does not offer customer services in the United States, according to its website. The representatives of the company did not immediately respond to a commentary request.
A research group of cryptocurrencies, Arkham Intelligence, said that the North Korean hackers were behind the violation of Bybit. The attacks of the North Korean groups have plagued the industry for years.
The Bitcoin price returned from around $ 100,000 to the beginning of Friday to just over $ 95,000 that evening, a 5 %drop. Other cryptocurrencies have decreased further.
And a day of celebration for Coinbase ended with an equity dip: when the market closed on Friday, its actions were exchanged at their lowest price since November.