US authorities are seeking to return $7 million to victims of a social engineering scam that tricked them into sending money to fake cryptocurrency investment platforms. 

The scam involved the fraudsters contacting victims and earning trust before directing them to websites masquerading as legitimate crypto investment platforms, Virginia’s Eastern District US Attorney’s Office said in a March 21 statement.

Once victims made a deposit, the funds were funneled through over 75 bank accounts under the names of shell companies, then sent abroad “deceptively characterized” as domestic wires, despite being transferred to a bank outside the US.

“The sites falsely represented to the victims that their investments were making sizeable gains,” Virginia’s US Attorney’s Office added in its statement.

“When victims would attempt to make withdrawals, the perpetrators would coerce the victims to send even more money using tactics such as claiming the victims owed taxes on their purported profits.”

The United States Secret Service seized some of the stolen funds from a foreign bank in 2023 and began the civil forfeiture action by filing a claim in a US District Court.

However, the bank also made a claim against the cash, and the US authorities eventually reached a settlement agreement for $7 million of the seized funds. 

Victims of the scam have been urged to contact the Secret Service to petition to recover their losses. 

Related: Web3 businesses can outsmart crypto scams before they strike — Here’s how

In its 2025 Crypto Crime Report, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis said crypto crime has entered a professionalized era dominated by efficient cyber syndicates. 

Australian federal police said on March 21 they had to alert 130 people of a message scam aimed at crypto users that spoofed the same “sender ID” as legitimate crypto exchanges such as Binance. 

Another similar string of scam messages reported by X users on March 14, spoofed Coinbase and Gemini and attempted to trick users into setting up a new wallet using pre-generated recovery phrases controlled by the fraudsters. 

Cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes sent a warning on March 18 about a syndicate using a new form of crypto-stealing malware hidden inside a “cracked” version of TradingView Premium. 

Microsoft’s Incident Response Team said on March 17 that it had discovered cyber scammers were using a new remote access trojan (RAT) that targets crypto held in 20 cryptocurrency wallet extensions for the Google Chrome browser. 

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The following is a guest post from Brendon Sedo, Initial Contributor at Core DAO. Satoshi didn’t invent Bitcoin to be a generalist network — a jack of all trades, master of none. Bitcoin deliberately trades speed and scalability for decentralization and security. But contrary to popular myths, this isn’t an obstacle to building new Bitcoin-based […]

The post Bitcoin’s slowness is a feature, not a bug appeared first on CryptoSlate.

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Learn MoreBitcoin’s slowness is a feature, not a bug

Prosecutors charged Carl Erik Rinsch with wire fraud and money laundering for allegedly diverting $11M from Netflix to crypto and luxury. …

Learn MoreNetflix Director Accused of $11M Scam: Funds Diverted to Crypto Trades, Luxury Splurges

Cathie Wood, founder of the Ark Invest investment firm, will give the inaugural lecture for El Salvador’s new Urban Centers for Welfare and Opportunities (CUBO) AI program, a public education initiative spearheaded by the government of El Salvador.

According to El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office, the program will bring university-level AI courses to students and professionals and follows the country’s highly successful CUBO Bitcoin (BTC) and Lightning Network developer program.

The program will leverage industry experts to provide AI education to the public. El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office wrote in a March 23 X post:

“As El Salvador turbocharges its transformation into the ultimate tech and financial powerhouse of the region, CUBO AI will arm students and professionals in the country with the tools to dominate the AI frontier.”

El Salvador continues to attract crypto businesses and foreign direct investment as the Central American country positions itself as a regional tech and digital finance hub.

Related: El Salvador acquired over 13 BTC since March 1, despite IMF deal

El Salvador becoming a regional tech hub amid education and investment push

El Salvador has taken several steps to establish itself as a regional hub for innovation, including integrating Bitcoin classes into public education, leveraging geothermal energy to mine BTC, and passing pro-crypto and AI policies.

Cathie Wood met with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele in May 2024 to discuss the future of digital assets and AI policy in the Central American country, including potential education initiatives tailored by Ark Invest.

Wood left the meeting confident that El Salvador could increase its gross domestic product (GDP) tenfold over the next five years if it continues pursuing its tech-focused agenda.

“The President could scale El Salvador’s GDP 10-fold during his next 5-year term,” Wood wrote in a May 2024 X post and praised Bukele as forward-thinking.

Bukele also met with Elon Musk in September 2024 to discuss artificial intelligence and other 21st-century technologies, including crypto.

Musk likewise praised Bukele as “an amazing leader,” and the two continue to build rapport that could potentially lead to collaboration between the businessman and the government of El Salvador.

Magazine: El Salvador’s national Bitcoin chief has been orange-pilling Argentina

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Learn MoreCathie Wood to kick off El Salvador's AI public education program

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The memecoin craze that started off two years ago on the Solana blockchain appeared to be organic. However, since then, the blockchain has drawn high-profile individuals, including U.S. President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, as well as Argentina President Javier Milei. These high-profile individuals have fuelled rapid growth of memecoins on Solana. This […]

The post Solana has become a breeding ground for pump and dump memecoin ‘cabals’: Bloomberg appeared first on CryptoSlate.

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The Open House Group, a prominent Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed real estate firm, has expanded its crypto payment options to include XRP, SOL, and DOGE. This addition brings the total number of accepted digital currencies on the company’s platform to five, complementing the previously supported Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). As Japan’s fifth-largest real estate company […]

The post Japan’s Open House to accept DOGE, SOL and XRP for real estate amid friendlier regulatory climate appeared first on CryptoSlate.

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The Bitcoin (BTC) mining hashprice — a miner’s daily revenue per unit of hashing power expended to mine blocks — has remained constant at around $48 per petahash per second (PH/s), despite a slight 1.4% uptick in Bitcoin difficulty.

Data from CoinWarz shows that the Bitcoin difficulty climbed to 113.76 trillion at block 889,081 on March 23, up from the 112.1 trillion difficulty in the previous epoch.

According to TheMinerMag, a hashprice below $50 places financial stress on miners running older hardware such as the Antminer S19 XP and S19 Pro.

The older hardware coupled with declining network transaction fees risks pushing some miners into unprofitable territory — forcing them to turn off their hardware until they upgrade their application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) or network conditions change.

Mining firms have been struggling since the April 2024 Bitcoin halving event, which slashed the block subsidy to 3.125 BTC per block mined, generally increasing network difficulty, and the recent downturn in the crypto markets due to macroeconomic uncertainty.

Related: SEC says proof-of-work mining does not constitute securities dealing

Miners have a rough start to 2025

Research from financial services firm JPMorgan shows that publicly listed Bitcoin mining companies collectively lost 22% of their share value in February 2025.

Even miners who diversified operations into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing data centers, to shore up revenue lost through mining activities, are facing financial pressures, the JPMorgan report found.

The financial services firm cited the release of DeepSeek R1, an open-source AI model trained for a fraction of the cost as the leading models and performs on par with closed-source AI products, as a strain on large AI data centers.

A steadily rising network hashrate, which is the sum total computing power in the Bitcoin network, is also creating increased competition among miners, who must expend greater computing resources to remain profitable.

Fears of a prolonged trade war between the United States and Canada, alongside constant tariff headlines, have put miners on edge.

Threats from Canadian officials to levy tariffs on energy exports to the United States place even more pressure on the already struggling industry.

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