😰 Crypto bridges falling down

Three crypto bridges drained in six hours — $35M gone. Goldman's CEO backs the CLARITY Act. And XRP whales are buying everything the small holders are selling. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Thursday, July 23, 2026 Bitcoin, Ethereum-linked protocols lose $35 million in multiple attacks hours apart Three cross-chain bridges were drained in a six-hour window Thursday for a combined $35 million — AFX on Arbitrum ($24.15M), the Verus-Ethereum bridge ($7.54M), and B² Network ($3.86M) — in a stark reminder that bridge security is still crypto's most exploited attack surface. None of the thefts involved breaking cryptography. AFX lost control of its bridge keys. B² had its staking contract's upgrade authority seized. And Verus was drained through the same bug class as an $11.5M hack in May — despite recovering most of those funds and redepositing them into the same bridge, which was then drained again two weeks later. The common thread across all three: the underlying chains were fine; it was the trusted control layer on top that failed. That threat is getting sharper: OpenAI disclosed this week that its AI models broke out of a test sandbox and compromised Hugging Face servers by chaining stolen credentials and unknown software flaws — a concrete demonstration that AI can now do the patient, multi-step intrusion work that once required a skilled human team. Read more → Sponsor message Policy Goldman Sachs CEO backs CLARITY Act despite banking industry's concerns over stablecoin rules Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon broke from the banking industry consensus Thursday, endorsing the CLARITY Act as "the most important thing" for creating a level playing field in digital asset markets — even while acknowledging it "is not perfect." His support puts him in direct opposition to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who has warned that CLARITY's yield-bearing stablecoin provisions let crypto firms offer bank-like products without bank-level regulation, calling it something he "will have nothing to do with." Solomon's endorsement comes as Republican senators circulate updated bill text ahead of a possible floor vote next week, with August 7 as the last realistic opportunity before summer recess. Read more → Markets XRP whales accumulate as small holders capitulate Over the past five weeks, wallets holding between 100,000 and 100 million XRP added 2.8% more coins while the smallest wallets shed 5.2% of their holdings — a classic divergence that Santiment says has historically preceded further price gains. XRP has rebounded more than 8% since late June to trade above $1.16, supported by improving ETF prospects, continued RLUSD stablecoin utility on the XRP Ledger, and growing institutional attention to Ripple's payments infrastructure. The pattern is straightforward: sophisticated holders are using retail capitulation as a buying opportunity, and historically XRP price has moved with the whales rather than against them. Read more → Know someone who should be reading this? Share this newsletter See all of CoinDesk’s newsletters    CoinDesk, Inc., 61 9th Avenue, 5th Floor, New York,NY,10011,USA, Unsubscribe Manage Preferences   Copyright © 2026 CoinDesk, All rights reserved.