Today's Top Crypto Headlines:

Tourist Drugged and Robbed for Crypto | $220M Cetus Hack | Hacker Trolls Coinbase | $1.1B BTC Bet and more...

King Fatrick Gil Añasco
May 23, 2025

Good Morning Crypto Enthusiasts!

Glad to have you back for another edition of the UseTheBitcoin.com newsletter.

Tourist Drugged and Robbed for Crypto: An American tourist in London lost $123,000 in Bitcoin after being drugged by a fake Uber driver and robbed of his phone containing private keys.
$220M Cetus Hack Partially Frozen: Hackers exploited Cetus on the Sui blockchain, stealing $220M—$162M of which has since been frozen.
Coinbase Hacker Mocks Investigators: The hacker behind a major Coinbase breach laundered $42.5M via THORChain and taunted investigator ZachXBT with an on-chain message.
💡Feature of the Day - $1.1B Bitcoin Leverage Bet: A trader known as “James Wynn” placed a 40x leveraged Bitcoin bet worth $1.1B on Hyperliquid, netting $36M in unrealized gains as BTC surged.

All this and more in today’s headlines!

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📰 News Highlights:

Tourist Drugged, Robbed [Source][Source]

An American tourist in London was robbed of $123,000 worth of Bitcoin after allegedly being drugged by a fake Uber driver.

Jacob Irwin-Cline accepted a cigarette from the impostor, which he believes was laced with the sedative scopolamine.

After passing out in the car, he was ejected and struck by the vehicle as the driver fled with his phone—containing his private crypto keys.

EXC - American tourist in London loses $123k in crypto after 'drug-enabled abduction by fake Uber driver'
mylondon.news/news/zone-1-ne…
— MyLondon (@myldn)
9:14 AM • May 21, 2025

Cline doubts he will ever recover his life savings.

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$220M Hack Frozen [Source][Source][Source][Source][Source]

Cetus, a decentralized exchange on the Sui blockchain, confirmed that $162 million of the $220 million stolen in a recent hack has been frozen.

🚨ANNOUNCEMENT
As of earlier today, we have confirmed that an attacker has stolen approximately $223M from Cetus Protocol. We have took immediate action to lock our contract preventing further theft of funds.
$162M of the compromised funds have been successfully paused. We are
— Cetus🐳 (@CetusProtocol)
3:00 PM • May 22, 2025

The attack, believed to have stemmed from a smart contract exploit, saw funds bridged to Ethereum and laundered via wallets, including one holding 20,000 ETH.

We’ve learned that a Cetus smart contract was hacked this morning for approximately $223M and Cetus subsequently paused their smart contracts to prevent further theft.
Cetus worked together with the other DeFi protocols, the Sui Foundation, and the Sui validators to
— Sui (@SuiNetwork)
3:19 PM • May 22, 2025

Sui validators have since coordinated to block any transactions from these flagged addresses, halting the movement of the stolen funds.

Good news for the victims, but If validators (114 only in total) can freeze wallets when they want, that raises a major question about the network's censorship resistance.
$SUI is anything but decentralized.
— Ⱥlex | france.algo 🇫🇷 (@algerstmehn)
3:28 PM • May 22, 2025

This massive breach has raised fresh concerns about decentralization and censorship resistance, as critics question the validators’ ability to freeze funds.

Hacker Trolls Coinbase [Source][Source][Source][Source]

The hacker responsible for a breach affecting over 69,000 Coinbase users mocked blockchain sleuth ZachXBT on-chain after swapping $42.5 million from Bitcoin to Ethereum via THORChain.

The message, “L bozo,” was embedded in a transaction, followed by a meme of NBA star James Worthy.

Investigations by ZachXBT

The threat actor who stole $300M+ from Coinbase users by paying customer support just began trolling me onchain with this message after swapping $42.5M+ from BTC -> ETH via Thorchain today. Transaction hash 0x18c909a8438d94e88a434521ee9fc143c8777452fbecb09b034b8fd049d6477f

t.me/investigations/252

Blockchain firms confirmed the same hacker moved ETH into DAI, continuing to shuffle funds across networks.

#PeckShieldAlert The threat actor who stole $300M+ from #Coinbase users by bribing customer support and sending #ZachXBT on-chain msg has swapped 8,697 $ETH for 22M DAI.
Another highly relevant address, which received 9,081 $ETH from #THORChain, has swapped them for 23M DAI.
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert)
3:35 AM • May 22, 2025

The breach, first discovered in May 2025, stemmed from a December 2024 incident.

The #Bybit hacker is laundering funds via #THORChain!
So far, the #Bybit hacker has laundered 270K $ETH($605M, 54% of the stolen funds) and still holds 229,395 $ETH($514M).
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain)
2:25 AM • Feb 28, 2025

It compromised personal data and triggered a $20 million ransom demand, which Coinbase rejected.

💡 Feature of the Day:

$1.1B BTC Bet [Source][Source][Source]

A crypto whale shocked the market by growing a 40x leverage Bitcoin long bet to $1.1 billion on Hyperliquid, raking in $36 million in unrealized gains as BTC neared $112,000.

He did it fellas, first position ever to exceed 1B$
— sigma^2 (@SigmaSquared_)
3:56 PM • May 21, 2025

The position, linked to a trader using the alias “James Wynn,” involved a $28.4 million margin and has become the largest on the platform.

From +$18M uPnL
To -$15M uPnL
And now +$23M uPnL
Say what you want about James Wynn, but that mfer has nerves of steel
$BTC
— フォリス (@follis_)
11:35 PM • May 21, 2025

Despite an earlier loss, the position turned profitable as Bitcoin surged past its average entry point.

Update on my little $BTC long position.

Reduced position size today, took some profits around $110k -$111k.

Seemed like a nice spot to TP, and seems others are doing the same right now.

In my opinion bitcoin is dying to breakout higher. My target remains the same of
— James Wynn 🐳 (@JamesWynnReal)
5:58 PM • May 22, 2025

😂 Crypto Meme of the Day:

Meme of the day provided by @Gate_io

And that’s it for this today.

See you all tomorrow’s edition!

Jonathan Gibson
UseTheBitcoin.com