Week in review: record hacks and rising activity on Ethereum

Bitcoin holds near $78k; Ethereum activity hits highs; $500m loss at American Bitcoin.

Bitcoin held around $78,000; activity on Ethereum jumped to peak levels; investors’ losses at American Bitcoin were put at $500m; and other events of the week.

A fragile market structure

Although bitcoin stayed above $78,000, the past seven days made investors question the durability of the rally.

As is now customary, the coin opened Monday lower, slipping from a local peak near $79,500 to $76,500. Tuesday brought a mild consolidation to $76,000.

By Wednesday morning, April 29, the cryptocurrency had clawed back some ground, but reversed sharply near $79,000 after the US Federal Reserve’s policy-rate decision. Within hours it slumped to $75,000.

The regulator kept the rate in a 3.5–3.75% range for the third consecutive meeting. The Fed cited inflationary pressure from rising global energy prices and warned that the situation in the Middle East creates “a high degree of uncertainty” for forecasts.

Even so, several analysts reckon the rate decision is not the key driver of the “digital gold” price at present. Market attention is fixed on the US CLARITY Act bill.

Through Thursday bitcoin recovered slowly and by Friday it had settled near $78,000. Over the weekend it traded in a narrow $78,000–79,000 range.

At press time the cryptocurrency changes hands around $78,800 (+1.3% on the week).

A psychological salve for investors may have been April’s positive close. For the first time in a year bitcoin posted a notable monthly gain, up 11.8%.

Yet CryptoQuant analysts noted the speculative nature of April’s rally. In their view, perpetual futures drove the rebound from $66,000 to $79,000, while spot demand stayed negative.

They compared today’s demand structure with the start of 2022’s bear phase: then, growth in derivatives volumes likewise coincided with shrinking spot activity, followed by a months-long correction.

Other top-10 coins broadly tracked the bellwether. Ethereum still hovers around $2300, Solana near $85.

In US spot bitcoin-ETFs, inflows have persisted for a fifth consecutive week, though volumes are fading. From April 27 to May 1 investors added a net $153m.

Ethereum funds broke a three-week run, shedding $82m.

The crypto fear and greed index returned to neutral for the first time since mid-January, at 47.

Total crypto market capitalisation is $2.69trn. BTC dominance stands at 58.5%, ETH at 10.4%.

Record activity

The number of active addresses on Ethereum reached an all-time high—the 100‑day moving average crossed 587,000.

A CryptoQuant analyst under the pseudonym CryptoOnchain flagged a record divergence between the asset’s market price and the protocol’s fundamentals. Historically, growth in active addresses has correlated with price increases.

Today’s set-up is a rare exception to that pattern.

CryptoOnchain added that an influx of new users and robust blockchain demand point to Ethereum being undervalued. The analyst called this “a hidden bullish signal”.

At the same time, other researchers recorded anomalous readings in derivatives on the second-largest cryptocurrency. An analyst known as Arab Chain noted a drop in Ethereum open interest on Binance.

The metric fell to $4.99bn versus an average $5.31bn.

A negative MVRV Z-Score (−0.91) corroborates the outflow of liquidity. It suggests traders are unwilling to open new positions—the market does not believe in a quick rally.

Analyst Darkfost pointed to signs of a possible short squeeze: since the local low on February 6 the price of Ethereum has risen by more than 30%; at the trough the asset had lost about 65% of its value; and altcoin market capitalisation halved.

Meanwhile, the exit queue from staking has swelled. On May 2 the metric hit a local high above 530,000 ETH.

What to discuss with friends?

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• Elon Musk called most cryptocurrencies scams.
• ZetaChain revealed details of a $334,000 cross-chain attack.

The Trump model

Forbes journalists estimated investors’ losses at mining company American Bitcoin at $500m. The firm belongs to the US president’s son—Eric Trump.

Since the company’s Nasdaq debut in September 2025 at a $13.2bn valuation, Trump’s wealth has risen from roughly $190m to $280m—he did not invest his own funds to build the business. Meanwhile, American Bitcoin’s shares have fallen by 92%.

Forbes highlighted the miner’s unprofitability. Its all-in cost to produce 1 BTC is about $90,000.

Reporters also pointed to the terms of a deal with Hut 8. American Bitcoin obtained access to mining equipment, while the other side retained data centres, real estate, operational control and part of the leadership. According to the annual report, American Bitcoin had only two full-time employees.

In August–September 2025, the company bought ASIC miners for about $330m—not for cash, but by pledging bitcoins with an option on how to settle. If the price rose it could pay cash and keep the coins; if it fell it would hand them to the supplier.

After the deal, digital gold fell by roughly 30%. Forbes believes that if the current trend persists American Bitcoin will lose the 3,090 BTC it pledged—even though the company has mined only 1,800 BTC.

Moreover, about 70% of American Bitcoin’s cryptocurrency came not from mining but from selling shares and then buying coins on the market.

From inception to end-March the firm spent about $525m on cryptocurrency now valued at roughly $390m. By Forbes’s calculations, the company has “burned” about $135m of shareholders’ funds.

Eric Trump called the publication “a political weapon” and “a disgrace to journalism”.

“Just a year ago American Bitcoin did not exist. […] Today we own 9,000 BTC and are the 16th largest public bitcoin company in the world, backed by a fleet of 90,000 miners,” wrote the president’s son. 

Hacks hit a record

Last month set a record for hacks in crypto—DefiLlama analysts recorded more than 20 incidents in April.

By CertiK’s estimate, total losses from attacks reached $651m. In dollar terms the figure was not a record, but the number of separate breaches exceeded historical levels.

Analyst Stacy Moor counted 24 thefts in total. The biggest included:

• Kelp — $292m;
• Drift Protocol — $280m;
• Rhea Lend — $18.4m.

According to CertiK, April’s losses were the largest since March 2022, excluding the incident with the Bybit exchange. About $3.5m of the total was due to phishing.

Also on ForkLog:

• Paul Tudor Jones called bitcoin the best hedge against inflation.
• The Pentagon signed AI contracts with Nvidia, Microsoft and AWS after a conflict with Anthropic.
• Bitcoin mining difficulty decreased by 2.3%.
• L2 project MegaETH held a TGE.

A wayward AI agent

Cursor chief Jer Crane said their Opus 4.6-based assistant independently deleted the main database and all backups of the PocketOS startup in nine seconds, with no way to recover them.

The affected project positioned itself as a provider for rental services, mostly car hire. Some clients had worked with the company for more than five years. They use the software for booking, payments, management, vehicle tracking and other tasks.

When asked to explain its actions, the AI agent listed the security rules it had violated. While performing a task in a test environment, it ran into credential mismatches. To fix the issue, it deleted the persistent data store on the Railway platform.

The assistant began searching for an API token and found it in a file unrelated to the current task. The token had been created to add and remove user domains via the Railway CLI.

The agent executed the delete command without asking for confirmation. Because Railway keeps backups in the same storage, they disappeared too.

“I did not check. I did not make sure whether the identifier is used in all environments. I did not read Railway’s documentation on how storage works across environments before running the command,” the agent explained.

According to it, system rules forbid running destructive and irreversible commands without an explicit user request. The AI also admitted it had violated all safety protocols.

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