[News Brief] Jul 26, morning | U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington, D.C. and Secret Service seize more than $25 million in crypto

U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington, D.C. and Secret Service seize more than $25 million in crypto

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington, D.C. and the Secret Service’s Washington Field Office said on July 21 that they had seized more than $25 million in cryptocurrency through a Cyber Fraud Task Force investigation.

Prosecutors filed five civil forfeiture complaints to recover the seized crypto assets. The assets were identified as being linked to an international fraud network targeting residents in the United States and Canada.

The largest case involved a romance scam that victimized more than 200 people and totaled about $12.1 million. Another case involved a suspicious wallet network flagged to the Secret Service by Canadian authorities, with a value of about $10.4 million.

Investigators traced more than 270 suspected victim transactions connected to fraudulent investment platforms. These two cases accounted for about 85% of the total assets subject to forfeiture.

The remaining cases involved restricted withdrawals, fake investment accounts, and tracing fraud proceeds. Investigators said many of the main suspected money launderers were in Southeast Asia and confirmed internet addresses linked to China, Malaysia, and Cambodia.

Mirae Asset Consulting secures control of Korbit, to rebrand it as DigitalX

Mirae Asset Consulting has secured management control of Korbit, one of South Korea’s early cryptocurrency exchanges. Korbit will change its name to DigitalX and transition into a digital asset infrastructure platform.

According to Odaily, Mirae Asset Consulting raised its stake in Korbit to 97.15%. The deal size was about 141.4 billion won, equivalent to roughly $95 million to $102 million based on the exchange rate.

South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission approved the transaction on July 9, 2026. The commission concluded the acquisition was unlikely to restrict competition, citing Korbit’s approximately 0.5% share of the domestic crypto trading market in 2025.

Mirae Asset said Korbit’s operating entity, customer deposits, and core trading services would remain unchanged for the time being. Customer assets will continue to be segregated and held under current protection rules.

Park Hyeon-joo, founder and global strategist of Mirae Asset, said DigitalX is a core part of the firm’s Mirae Asset 3.0 strategy. Through DigitalX, Mirae Asset plans to connect real-world asset tokenization, security tokens, stablecoins, traditional securities, and digital assets on a single platform.

Mirae Asset said DigitalX is not intended to surpass Upbit or Bithumb in trading volume, but rather to serve as an infrastructure platform combining its securities and asset management capabilities with Korbit’s digital asset operating experience.

Uniswap introduces v4-based permissioned pools

According to Wu Blockchain, Uniswap introduced v4-based permissioned pools on the 26th.

The key feature applies on-chain allowlist verification procedures so that regulated assets such as tokenized securities, funds, and stocks can be traded through automated market makers (AMMs).

Launch partners include Superstate, Securitize, and Dauga. Existing permissionless pools on Uniswap v4 will continue to operate unchanged.

Russia’s Sberbank prepares crypto trading infrastructure and digital custody services

Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, is preparing cryptocurrency trading infrastructure and digital custody services for regulated financial institutions.

According to Odaily, Sberbank plans to launch the related services before Dec. 1. The infrastructure is intended to support Russia’s regulated financial system.

Russia’s new rules related to crypto trading, custody, and settlement will take effect on Sept. 1. Requirements for licensed intermediaries will apply starting in July 2027.

Public crypto trading in Russia will be limited to assets that meet liquidity and market capitalization standards. However, the use of cryptocurrency for domestic payments for goods and services will remain prohibited.

Odos operator to shut down all services on July 30

Odaily reported that the operator of DeFi trade aggregator Odos will shut down all services on July 30, 2026.

The Odos app will switch to read-only mode starting July 27. Users will be able to check balances and transaction history, but will not be able to make new trades.

Odos said the platform has never directly held user funds, and assets in external wallets such as MetaMask, Rabby, and hardware wallets remain controlled by users’ private keys. Users who created Odos-native wallets through Google, Apple, or email login must export their private keys or move assets to self-custody wallets before July 30.

Odos spun out of Semiotic Labs, a contributor to The Graph, in 2022, and has routed more than $104 billion in cumulative trading volume across about 15 blockchain networks. Monthly trading volume peaked at about $7.85 billion in December 2024 before falling to the hundreds of millions of dollars by mid-2026.

Odos said the ODOS token will continue independently of the service shutdown and that the Odos DAO and the operating company are separate organizations. It also warned users to beware of scams, saying there are no plans for new products, token migration, token claims, or airdrops.

Upbit lists EUL on KRW market

Upbit announced that it will list the EUL token on its Korean won market.

According to Odaily, based on OKX prices, EUL rose more than 100% intraday and at one point climbed to $2.730. It is currently trading at $2.303.

AFX Trade hacker swaps 12,467.4 ETH for BTC

According to on-chain analyst EmberCN, the attacker behind the AFX Trade hack swapped 12,467.4 ETH into BTC.

Previously, on July 23, AFX Trade’s Arbitrum cross-chain bridge was hacked, resulting in a loss of about 24 million USDC. The attacker later reportedly bridged the stolen funds from Arbitrum to Ethereum in stages.

FBI investigates eight malware-laced games; 80 crypto wallets affected

According to Odaily, the FBI is investigating an incident in which eight downloadable games infected about 8,000 devices with malware.

Authorities believe the attacker used the malware to access about 80 cryptocurrency wallets and steal at least $220,000 worth of digital assets.

According to the indictment, the activity continued from May 2024 to February 2026. Zyair Dontavious Jamarion Wilkins, 21, of North Lauderdale, Florida, is accused of funding the malware operation and helping promote it.

Court documents state that after users installed the games, sensitive information including passwords, wallet credentials, and browser data was collected. Investigators said Discord, Telegram, X, and LinkedIn were used to promote the games, and automated bots were used in online communities to identify crypto holders.

The FBI is collecting information from users who downloaded the related games, including Blockblasters, Chemia, Dashverse and DashFPS, Lamphy, Lunara, PirateFi, and Toknova. Wilkins is charged with conspiracy to obtain computer information for private financial gain and faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Chainalysis CEO: North Korea actively steals bitcoin to fund nuclear weapons

Chainalysis’s CEO said on CNBC that North Korea is actively stealing bitcoin to fund its pursuit of nuclear weapons, according to a July 26 post by @pete_rizzo.

Chainalysis is a blockchain analytics company that has worked with major institutions in tracking crypto hacks and money laundering.

Lido investigating discrepancy in stETH reward rebasing calculation

Lido said it is investigating a calculation discrepancy that occurred during the stETH reward rebasing process. It said the issue is not related to validator slashing and that user assets are not at risk.

According to Odaily, the Lido development team identified an anomaly in the stETH reward rebase reported by the protocol’s accounting oracle and is investigating the cause. The annualized yield in this rebase was recorded at 2.04%, compared with an expected 2.15%.

Lido said the discrepancy stemmed from 32 ETH of validator staking deposits that were pending confirmation and were not reflected in the oracle statistics. The team rechecked the total consensus-layer balances of Lido validators and said it found no signs of asset risk.

Lido added that users do not need to take any action, and the omitted assets will be reflected together in the next reward rebase after the fix is applied.