Autor Cointelegraph by Amin Haqshanas

OpenAI and the Maltese government have announced a world-first partnership to roll out ChatGPT Plus to all Maltese citizens, marking the first time a government has struck such a deal with the AI company.Under the programme, citizens who complete a government-backed AI literacy course will receive free access to ChatGPT Plus for one year, OpenAI announced on Saturday. The course, developed by the University of Malta, covers what AI is, what it can and cannot do and how to use it responsibly at home and in the workplace.“Malta is the first country to launch a partnership of this scale because we refuse to let our citizens stay behind in the digital age,” Maltese minister for economy, enterprise and strategic projects Silvio Schembri said, adding that the goal is to turn AI “from an unfamiliar concept into practical assistance for our families, students, and workers.”The Malta Digital Innovation Authority will manage distribution to eligible participants when the first phase launches this month, with the programme set to expand as more residents and citizens abroad complete the course.Related: Robinhood Invests $75M in OpenAI to Provide Equity Tokens for UsersOpenAI partners with governments worldwideThe deal is the latest under OpenAI’s broader OpenAI for Countries initiative, through which the company works with governments to move from early AI interest to national-level adoption. Unlike a standardised model, the programme is tailored to each country’s priorities, including areas like education, workforce training and public services.Last year, OpenAI partnered with Estonia’s government to provide all secondary school students and teachers with access to ChatGPT Edu, a customized version of ChatGPT built for education systems. The firm has also launched “OpenAI for Greece” in partnership with the Greek government.As Cointelegraph reported, OpenAI has also struck a deal with the US Department of Defense to deploy its AI models on classified military networks.Magazine: AI-driven hacks could kill DeFi — unless projects act nowCointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

THORChain has confirmed a $10 million exploit and launched a recovery portal, giving affected users a self-custodial path to revoke malicious token approvals and submit refund claims backed by a treasury-provisioned refund pool of equal size.In a Saturday post on X, THORChain Foundation introduced the recovery portal, saying that “affected users are now able to check what they will be paid as compensation following the exploit.”The portal, citing a PeckShield post-mortem, claims that the attack was detected at 02:14 UTC on May 11, when node operators flagged anomalous outbound transactions. Trading and outbound signing were paused within eight minutes. In total, attackers drained 36.75 BTC, worth around $3 million, and approximately $7 million in tokens across BNB Chain, Ethereum and Base, hitting 12,847 wallets across four chains.THORChain’s recovery portal. Source: THORChainAffected users have 21 days to submit claims. The refund window closes on June 4, after which any unclaimed allocation rolls over to the protocol’s insurance fund.Related: Russia-linked crypto exchange Grinex halts trading after $14M hackHow THORChain was drainedIn an incident update, THORChain said the leading theory is that the attacker exploited a vulnerability in the GG20 threshold signature scheme (TSS) implementation, which allowed sensitive vault key material to leak gradually. By accumulating enough of this leaked data over time, the attacker was able to reconstruct the vault’s private key and authorize unauthorized outbound transactions.The protocol also noted that a newly churned node entered the network several days before the attack and is currently believed to be associated with it, with onchain links identified between the node’s bonding addresses and the wallets that received the stolen funds.“The Treasury is actively collecting forensic data and coordinating with Outrider Analytics and relevant law enforcement agencies in an effort to identify the attacker and pursue recovery of stolen funds where possible,” the protocol wrote.Related: Law enforcement freezes $41M connected to $150M crypto Ponzi collapseCrypto hack losses hit $630 million in AprilCrypto hacks surged in April, with total losses reaching $629.7 million, the worst month for the industry since February 2025, when $1.47 billion was stolen. KelpDAO’s $293 million exploit and Drift Protocol’s $280 million hack drove the bulk of the damage, together representing 82% of April’s losses and cementing DeFi as the most targeted sector.The pattern of attacks points to a shift in how protocols are being compromised, with bridges, privileged access and operational failures increasingly at the root of major incidents rather than straightforward smart contract bugs.Magazine: AI-driven hacks could kill DeFi — unless projects act now

Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded $1 billion in weekly net outflows, ending a six-week inflow streak that had drawn a combined $3.4 billion.The week started on a cautiously optimistic note, with Monday posting modest inflows of $27.29 million, according to data from SoSoValue. The tide turned sharply on Tuesday, when investors pulled $233.25 million from the funds. Selling pressure intensified on Wednesday, the worst single day of the week, with outflows reaching $635.23 million.A brief reprieve came on Thursday, as inflows of $131.31 million offered a momentary reversal. However, Friday erased that recovery as well, when a further $290.42 million exited the products, sealing the week in the red at exactly $1 billion in net outflows.Spot Bitcoin ETFs see weekly outflows. Source: SoSoValueThe weekly loss marks a reversal from the previous six weeks, during which spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted consistent net inflows, with the week of April 17 standing out as the strongest, pulling in $996.38 million. This week’s selling leaves total net assets sitting at $104.29 billion, with cumulative net inflows across all products at $58.34 billion.Related: Bitcoin ETFs Post Largest Outflows Since January as BTC SlipsCapital rotates toward AI, cryptoIn a recent note, analysts at Bitunix said capital is “aggressively” rotating toward both the “AI growth narrative” and the institutionalization of crypto assets. NVIDIA, Google and Apple pushed toward fresh all-time highs last week, while AI chipmaker Cerebras surged more than 70% intraday on its IPO debut.On the crypto front, the CLARITY Act, widely seen as one of the most consequential crypto market structure bills in the US, cleared the Senate Banking Committee. Coinbase shares rallied sharply subsequently as markets priced in the development, and Bitcoin climbed back toward the $82,000 mark.However, Bitcoin’s price structure points to a market on edge, Bitunix said. They noted that heavy short liquidity sits clustered between $82,400 and $82,600, with $80,000 serving as the key support level to watch. “Current price action suggests the market has clearly entered a high-leverage volatility structure, as capital waits for further direction from the three dominant macro themes: AI expansion, U.S.-China relations, and crypto regulation,” they wrote.Related: JPMorgan Boosts Bitcoin ETF Holdings in Q1 2026 FilingSpot Ether ETFs see consistent outflowsMeanwhile, spot Ether ETFs recorded outflows across all five trading days last week. Tuesday was the worst session, with $130.62 million exiting the products, followed by $65.65 million on Friday, $36.30 million on Wednesday, $16.89 million on Monday, and a relatively muted $5.65 million on Thursday.Combined, the five-day streak wiped $254.46 million from the funds, pulling total net assets down to $12.93 billion by week’s end.Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs — Mid-2026

A group of 20 victims from five countries or jurisdictions has filed a $525 million lawsuit against Fenwick & West LLP, one of Silicon Valley’s top tech law firms, accusing it of helping conceal the FTX fraud.The complaint, filed Wednesday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, names the firm alongside six individual defendants. The plaintiffs say they lost their life savings when FTX collapsed, claiming that Fenwick’s involvement gave the exchange a false air of legitimacy that kept them from pulling their money out.At the center of the case is testimony from Nishad Singh, FTX’s former director of engineering, who pleaded guilty to fraud charges and testified at Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial. Singh said he personally told Fenwick attorneys that customer funds were being misused, and instead of walking away, the firm advised on how to hide it.The complaint goes further. It says Fenwick attorneys set up North Dimension Inc., a Delaware shell company that posed as an electronics retailer but funneled over $3 billion in stolen customer funds. The firm also allegedly implemented FTX’s Signal auto-delete messaging policy, the same system federal prosecutors said helped the fraud go undetected by regulators and investigators.Related: FTX estate misses out on $3B Cursor stake value after $200K sale in 2023Examiner found Fenwick “intertwined” in FTX’s wrongdoingA court-appointed bankruptcy examiner, whose report came out in 2024 after reviewing more than 200,000 documents, found that Fenwick created the corporate structures for both FTX and Alameda Research, formed shell entities to obscure money movements, and drafted backdated agreements to cover illicit transfers, the complaint states. The examiner concluded the firm was “deeply intertwined in nearly every aspect of FTX Group’s wrongdoing,” the lawsuit reads.“These findings are those of a court-appointed officer based on documentary evidence in federal bankruptcy proceedings to which Fenwick was a party,” the lawsuit added.FTX victims file lawsuit against Fenwick. Source: CourtListenerAfter FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, Fenwick scrubbed all mentions of the exchange from its website. The firm also quietly hired top-tier law firm defense lawyers at Gibson Dunn before any civil lawsuit was filed against it, per the lawsuit.The plaintiffs are bringing seven claims against Fenwick, including malpractice, fraud and gross negligence. They are seeking compensatory damages exceeding $525 million, return of all legal fees Fenwick earned from FTX and punitive damages against partners Tyler Newby and Daniel Friedberg for “deliberate and reckless individual professional conduct.”Related: Sam Bankman-Fried withdraws motion for a new trial, still asks for new judgeJudge denies SBF’s bid for new trialLast month, a federal judge denied Bankman-Fried’s bid for a new trial, calling his claims of new evidence baseless. Judge Lewis Kaplan, who sentenced the former FTX CEO to 25 years in prison in 2024, said Bankman-Fried’s argument that three former FTX executives could counter the government’s case was without merit, noting that he knew all three witnesses well before the trial.Bankman-Fried had argued that Ryan Salame and Daniel Chapsky could challenge the government’s claims about FTX’s insolvency, and that Nishad Singh changed his testimony under pressure from prosecutors. Kaplan dismissed those claims as “wildly conspiratorial and entirely contradicted by the record.”Magazine: How crypto laws changed in 2025 — and how they’ll change in 2026

Digital asset infrastructure company BitGo reported a wider first-quarter net loss as Bitcoin treasury mark-to-market losses and IPO-related expenses outweighed stronger client growth and a year-over-year jump in revenue.Revenue for the quarter ended March 31 was $3.8 billion, up from $1.8 billion a year earlier, driven by higher digital asset trading activity and growing contributions from its stablecoin business, the company announced Wednesday. Revenue fell 38.7% from Q4 2025’s $6.2 billion, partly due to a shift in client trading from spot to derivatives, a product BitGo launched at the start of the quarter that generated roughly $3 billion in notional volume.However, net loss widened to $60.7 million from $25.7 million in Q1 2025, hit by a $53.7 million non-cash loss tied to the declining value of the company’s Bitcoin treasury, as well as stock-based compensation from its recent IPO. BitGo said stock compensation costs are expected to normalize going forward.Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) swung to a loss of $1.7 million from a gain of $3.9 million a year ago, partly due to a $3 million in one-time legal and professional costs tied to the IPO.Related: Circle to launch cirBTC wrapped Bitcoin, challenging BitGo and CoinbaseBitGo client base surges 42%On the platform side, client count grew 42% year-over-year to 5,569. These are institutions like hedge funds, exchanges, fintech companies and other businesses that plug into BitGo’s infrastructure. Users on the platform also grew to 1.2 million, up 7.3% year-over-year.BitGo KPIs. Source: BusinessWireStablecoin-as-a-service revenue jumped 43.6% to $38.2 million, while staking revenue dropped 66.2% to $49.4 million amid lower token prices.BitGo ended the quarter with $186.6 million in cash and held 2,449 Bitcoin valued at approximately $167.1 million.BTGO shares slipped 1.09% in overnight trading to $11.78 after the earnings release, according to Yahoo! Finance. Related: BitGo launches portfolio-based crypto lending platform for institutionsCrypto companies post widening losses in Q1A string of crypto companies reported deepening losses in the first quarter of 2026 amid the market decline. Coinbase swung to a $394.1 million net loss, missing revenue estimates of $1.5 billion with $1.41 billion. Exodus Movement more than doubled its losses to $32.1 million as revenue dropped 36.8% and active users slid.Bitcoin miners, including Riot Platforms, Core Scientific, CleanSpark and TeraWulf, all posted widening losses in Q1 2026, with MARA topping the group at a $1.3 billion net loss, roughly $1 billion of which stemmed from non-cash mark-to-market adjustments on Bitcoin holdings.Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs — Mid-2026