Happy Friday.
This week had a bit of everything: two eight-figure DeFi exploits on the same network, oil back above $100, a legendary exchange announcing its own funeral, an 85% token implosion, and a US crypto bill that keeps inching toward a deadline.
Let's get into it. 👇
If you traded perps on Arbitrum this week, pay attention. Two separate perpetuals DEXes were drained within days of each other — and in both cases, the smart contracts worked perfectly. The weak link was the off-chain infrastructure sitting around them.
On July 15, attackers got hold of an oracle signer private key and used it to feed the protocol fake prices. They ran ~20 looped open-and-close trades, pulling repeated payouts from the shared OLP liquidity vault without ever taking real market risk. Trader margin stayed isolated and safe — the loss hit shared LP liquidity.
Ostium@Ostium
An update on where things stand: What happened On July 15, Ostium’s LP (liquidity provider) vault was exploited for 23,752,746 USDC. Based on our ongoing investigation, the attacker compromised off-chain infrastructure related to the system that feeds prices into the protocol.
12:37 AM · Jul 19, 2026 · 125K Views
64 Replies · 32 Reposts · 253 Likes
The stolen USDC was swapped into ~12,084 ETH and pushed through Tornado Cash, so recovery odds are slim. Trading reopened July 23 with positions recalculated at live prices (no one liquidated during the pause), but LP compensation is still being finalized.
📖 Full breakdown: Ostium Hack — Oracle Key Exploit on Arbitrum
Barely a week later, on July 22, AFX Trade lost ~$24.15M USDC after an attacker compromised the validator signing keys of a bridge the protocol runs itself. Five hot-validator signatures met the withdrawal quorum, so the contract released the funds without any bug being triggered.
Lookonchain@lookonchain
AFX Trade(@AFX_XYZ) was exploited for $24.15M! The exploiter bridged 24.15M $USDC to #Ethereum and bought 12,467 $ETH at an average price of $1,937. arkm.com/explorer/addre…
12:46 AM · Jul 23, 2026 · 103K Views
23 Replies · 27 Reposts · 226 Likes
The USDC was bridged to Ethereum and swapped for ~12,467 ETH — but unlike Ostium, the funds are still sitting in a known wallet. AFX has publicly offered the attacker a 30% “white hat bounty” (~$7.2M) to return the rest. Arbitrum’s native bridge was never touched — this was a contained app-level failure.
📖 Full breakdown: AFX Trade Hack — Bridge Exploit on Arbitrum
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🏛️ CLARITY Act — the clock is ticking. Senate Republicans released the full ~616-page revised text of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act this week, adding stricter ethics rules (officials must sell crypto or use blind trusts). But confidence that it passes before the August recess is fading — the market is watching an Aug 10 informal deadline. Passage needs 60 votes, meaning ~7 Democrats must cross over. Bitcoin slid on the shrinking odds.
🛢️ Oil above $100 on US-Iran tensions dragged risk assets down across the board (more below).
📉 Bitcoin ETFs snapped a winning streak. Spot BTC ETFs logged ~$225M in net outflows Thursday, ending a week that had accumulated roughly $999M in inflows. Higher oil, new tariff talk and rising Treasury yields pulled institutions away from risk.
🏦 Goldman Sachs CEO backs the CLARITY Act, breaking from other big-bank leaders who oppose its stablecoin provisions.
🦄 Uniswap goes institutional, launching permissioned trading pools (with Superstate, Securitize & Dowgo) so regulated funds can trade tokenized assets on-chain while staying compliant.
🏛️ BNY Mellon confirmed plans to launch tokenized US Treasuries by late 2026, targeting 24/7 settlement in 2027.
😬 Fear still rules. The Fear & Greed Index sits around 31 (Fear) — though notably up from ~23 a month ago.
Where the majors sit right now:
🥇 Bitcoin (BTC): $63,904 — 24h: 🔻 1.21%
🥈 Ethereum (ETH): $1,855 — 24h: 🔻 1.66%
🟡 BNB: $559.97 — 24h: 🔻 1.13%
⚫ XRP: $1.08 — 24h: 🔻
🌞 Solana (SOL): $73.82 — 24h: 🔻 2.88%
🔺 TRON (TRX): $0.3301 — 24h: 🟢 +1.21%
🐕 Dogecoin (DOGE): $0.06869 — 24h: 🔻 1.47%
In short: a red 24h across almost the whole board, most majors still deep in the red YTD — with HYPE and TRX the notable exceptions bucking the trend.
🛢️ Oil Hits $100 as Iran Tensions Escalate — Why Bitcoin and Altcoins Are Falling
Oil surged above $100 as US-Iran tensions intensified, pushing Bitcoin below $65,000 and triggering losses across the crypto market.
⚰️ BitMEX to Shut Down All Operations on September 23 After 11 Years
BitMEX — the exchange that invented the perpetual swap — is closing for good. Here’s what users need to do before the deadline.
📉 DeXe (DEXE) Crashes 85% in Hours — Rug Pull Fears Grip Traders
DeXe collapsed roughly 85% from its $48.89 peak to under $5 in hours, sparking rug pull accusations. What happened and why did DEXE crash?
🇷🇺 Russia’s Crypto Bill Advances: Cross-Border Trade Stays in Focus as Bitcoin Prints 5-Week High
Russia’s revised crypto bill clears committee ahead of a second reading, keeping cross-border trade central — as Bitcoin posts its best weekly close in weeks.
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BitMEX, which announced its shutdown this week, is credited with inventing one specific product in 2014 that now dominates crypto trading volume worldwide. What is it?
A) The stablecoin
B) The perpetual swap (perpetual futures)
C) The spot ETF
D) The liquidity pool
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(scroll down for the answer)
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B) The perpetual swap. Co-founded by Arthur Hayes in 2014, BitMEX introduced the 100x-leverage perpetual swap — a futures contract with no expiry date. It became the single most-traded product type in crypto, copied by virtually every major exchange since. Fitting, then, that the two hacks headlining this week both hit perp DEXes. 🔁
That’s a wrap for this week. Trade safe, check what’s under the hood, and see you next Friday. 🫡
The information in this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry a high degree of risk. Always do your own research.
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