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Here’s What Happened in the Cryptocurrency Industry Today — TradingView News
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has released an indictment alleging that two brothers stole $25 million in cryptocurrency through an elaborate scheme targeting Ethereum protocols. Meanwhile, hackers have stolen over $20 million after draining lending protocol Sonne Finance Since the beginning of April, over a million new cryptocurrencies have been created. Meanwhile, the state of Wisconsin has disclosed a large investment in spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
The Justice Department indictment involves a $25 million cryptocurrency theft
US Department of Justice authorities say two brothers stole $25 million worth of cryptocurrencies in a scheme that exploited the Ethereum blockchain.
In a May 15 notice, the Justice Department charged Anton Peraire-Bueno and James Pepaire-Bueno with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The brothers allegedly stole the funds using a scheme that lasted about 12 seconds.
“These brothers allegedly committed a first-of-its-kind manipulation of the Ethereum blockchain by fraudulently gaining access to pending transactions, altering the movement of electronic currency, and ultimately stealing $25 million in cryptocurrency from their victims,” he said. said Thomas Fattorusso, a special agent with the IRS criminal investigations unit.Cointelegraph
The indictment alleged that the brothers manipulated the maximum mineable value (MEV) in the Ethereum network, implementing several proof-of-concept transactions that tricked the blockchain into “releasing it prematurely[ing] the entire contents of a proposed block” before stealing resources.
A $20 million exploit cripples Sonne Finance, a hacker with no sense of negotiation
Lending protocol Sonne Finance has been forced to suspend operations after suffering a cyber attack that wiped $20 million worth of cryptocurrencies from the market.
On May 14, around 10:30 PM UTC, security firm Web3 Cyvers detected an ongoing attack on Sonne Finance’s USD Coin (USDC) and Wrapped Ether (WETH) contracts.
However, when Sonne Finance became aware of the situation 25 minutes later, the hacker had already stolen $20 million in WETH, Velo (VELO), soVELO and Wrapped USDC (USDC.e).
Sonne is currently exploring all options to recover the stolen funds, including negotiating a reward for the hacker. In such situations, the hacker returns most of the stolen funds and keeps around 10% of the loot as a reward for finding a security flaw.
However, the hacker doesn’t seem to be in the mood to negotiate. According to blockchain investigator PeckShield, the exploiter has already moved a large chunk of the loot ($7.8 million) to a new wallet address.
More than 1 million new tokens launched since April
Since the beginning of April, more than 1 million new cryptocurrencies have been created. Over 370,000 tokens popped up on Ethereum and 640,000 new tokens – mostly memecoins – launched on Solana.
The Ethereum Base layer 2 network has become a hotspot for memecoin developers looking to take advantage of the network’s low fees to launch new tokens at minimal cost: 88% of tokens launched on Ethereum came via Base. 
Coinbase director Conor Grogan noted that the number of tokens recently launched on Ethereum is double the number of tokens ever created on the blockchain between 2015 and 2023.
The new Solana tokens were largely memecoins launched through the low-cost development platform pump.fun.
Additional reporting by Geraint Price, Sam Bourgi and Felix Ng.