Bitcoin mining gone wrong… very wrong

Plus: Something’s brewing on BNB Chain

GM. Markets got you feeling like you bit into a rotten apple? Don’t stress – we’re here with the freshest picks from the crypto orchard.

🧯 A house fire in Malaysia exposed an illegal Bitcoin mining setup.

🍋 News drops: six charged for crypto kidnapping, Trump picks ex-crypto exec for the OCC + more

🍍 Market flavor today

Yeah, ’twas a crazy 24 hours in crypto.

Bitcoin dropped below $90K after shockingly high US inflation but then shot back up past $96K.

​​Ethereum also made a comeback from $2.4K, thanks to a new filing that could add staking to spot ETH ETFs.

If approved, it could really attract institutional investors – something Bitcoin ETFs have been way better at so far. Right now, spot ETH ETFs hold $3.1B, while Bitcoin’s sit at $40.2B in total net inflows.

But the real start of the show is BNB. It’s up by 4% today, 15% this week, and it surpassed Solana in market cap.

What’s behind the hype?

1/ Upgrades on BNB Chain

• According to BNB Chain’s 2025 roadmap, they want to cut block times from three seconds to under one = faster transactions;

• They’re also working on gasless transactions;

• Another highlight – smart wallets powered by AI. These wallets are supposed to make it easier to manage private keys, batch multiple transactions in one go, and handle gas payments. There’s even talk of AI tools that could help you manage your portfolio, compare prices, and do automated trades.

2/ The MyShell IDO increased demand

An Initial DEX Offering (IDO) is a way for new crypto projects to launch their tokens directly on a decentralized exchange and raise funds.

MyShell, a new decentralized platform for discovering and creating AI-native apps, decided to launch its token through an IDO on Binance Wallet.

If you wanted to participate and buy MyShell tokens, you had to hold BNB – so more people rushed to buy it just to join the IDO.

And the numbers went crazy – MyShell planned to raise 1,270 BNB, but it ended up with 27,959 BNB in total subscriptions. This means more demand for BNB = price goes up.

3/ Memecoins

Memecoins are making a comeback on BNB Chain, thanks to the Four(.)Meme platform that made it super easy for anyone to create their own token. And people aren’t wasting time – nearly 4K new memecoins popped up just yesterday.

But what actually cranked the hype up to 100 was Binance founder CZ (Changpeng Zhao if we’re talkin’ birth certificates).

It all started like this:

And we all know why people need this information – it’s prime memecoin material 👀

The real kicker? CZ, a guy who’s always been against memecoins and told devs to focus on “real” projects, suddenly started asking questions – like how people decide what counts as an “official” memecoin and if that even matters.

Then he started joking that he needed to think about whether to dox his dog and even said that he might interact with some of the memecoins on BNB Chain.

That’s all it took. Hype = more activity = more demand for BNB.

4/ Binance’s treasury moves

Lastly, there are rumors that Binance sold large amounts of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana while loading up more BNB.

Binance, on the other hand, says it’s just rearranging its assets for accounting, not actually dumping coins.

Either way, it seems to be pushing BNB’s price higher.

🥝 Memecoin harvest

Not sayin’ these tokens went to the moon, but they’ve definitely booked a ticket somewhere high up.

Data as of 06:50 AM EST.

Check out these memecoins and plenty more here.

When I was a kid, I spent most summers at my grandparents’ house in the countryside.

Mind you, this was back when kids were doing… idk, kid stuff (NOT rugging memecoins on pump(.)fun) – so we’d often climb trees.

My grandma always told me not to because I’d get hurt. Did I care tho’? Absolutely not.

Until this one time, when I was going up and the branch snapped under me. I fell. Arm went krrrk.

And that was double humiliation: 1) I broke my arm like an idiot, and 2) my grandma found out I didn’t listen to her.

Why am I bringing this up? I remembered that feeling when I read about what happened in Malaysia this week – except their L wasn’t just a bruised ego and a broken arm.

There was a house fire in Bandar Puncak Alam, and when firefighters put it out, they found something fishy: nine Bitcoin mining rigs, industrial fans, and a D-link router all running on stolen electricity.

Luckily, no one lived there, but now authorities are hunting down whoever was behind it.

Malaysia’s actually been dealing with miners stealing power for years – they lost around $750M because of that between 2018 and 2023 alone.

While mining Bitcoin isn’t illegal, messing with electricity lines will get you up to five years in prison and a fine of up to 100K Malaysian ringgit (~$23.7K).

No house, getting caught, and paying up? That’s triple humiliation.

Oh, and the media can eat this stuff up to paint crypto as the bad guy.

… Quadruple?

🍋 News drops

🚔 Six guys have been charged for kidnapping a family and their nanny in Chicago, then forcing them to hand over $15M in crypto. The kidnappers faked a garage accident to get inside, then held the victims hostage in Airbnb hideouts while demanding ransom.

🤖 Kanye West started selling swastika t-shirts, and one artist fired back with a deepfake video of Jewish celebs – including Scarlett Johansson and Sam Altman. Johansson herself commented that while she has zero tolerance for hate speech, AI-powered hate speech is an even bigger threat.

💵 Fed Governor Christopher Waller thinks stablecoins could help strengthen the role of the US dollar in global finance. He added that the market needs clear rules – tight enough to manage risks but open enough for both banks and non-banks to join the game.

🏦 Donald Trump wants ex-crypto exec Jonathan Gould to run the OCC, the agency that regulates banks. If approved, he’d be in charge for five years.

🧃 Sip of gains

Discover KuCoin’s $100M giveaway with the latest BitDegree Mission, “Earn Big as KuCoin Enters Its Next Chapter”:

🍌 Juicy memes