The Merkle
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Asia Adds $500 Billion in a Single Session as Wall Street's AI Takes a $680 Billion Gut Punch
As markets in Asia soared while Wall Street's AI trade took a steep plunge, two of the world's biggest markets moved in almost opposite directions today and if you only looked at one of them, you'd walk away with completely the wrong read on how investors are actually feeling right now. On one side of the Pacific, more than half a trillion dollars just poure…
A $25.6M Deepfake Fraud Triggered the EU’s Boldest AI Law Yet
A finance employee at engineering firm Arup once sat through an entire video call with AI-generated deepfakes of his company's CFO and colleagues, watched their faces move, heard their voices, and authorized a $25.6 million transfer. None of it was real and the fraud only unraveled after the money was already gone.Cases like Arup's prove that AI regulation i…
5 Signs Users Missed in the AscendEX Collapse (Crypto Exchange Red Flags To Watch)
I've read enough shutdown notices, like the recent one from AscendEX, to recognize the shape of a collapsing exchange before I finish the first paragraph. They arrive dressed as routine compliance updates, citing "regulatory considerations" or "market conditions," but by the time you reach the part where they can't guarantee your withdrawal, the platform has…
Bitkey, Ledger, Trezor, And Jade Reports Safe From $38 Million Coldcard Disaster
I think it says something when an entire industry of competing hardware wallet makers, including Ledger, companies that rarely coordinate on anything publicly, all rush to say the exact same thing within hours of each other: not us, not our devices, not our problem. That's exactly what happened today. Bitkey, Ledger, Trezor, Jade, and Tangem all moved quickl…
Arbitrum Tops Solana with 11.3M Stablecoin Holders
Everyone's been glued to Arbitrum competitors like Solana and their meme coin charts, as well as Base's retail app growth, and it's easy to see why those make for flashier headlines. But a quieter number just flipped in Arbitrum's favor, and the more I dug into it, the more I think it matters more than either of those stories.Arbitrum has pulled ahead of Sol…
Blockaid Flags $8.2M Exploit On Pro Token - H1 Report Indicates Nobody's Safe From Attacks
If you're holding Pro token right now, you already know the feeling: refreshing the chart, refreshing X, waiting for the team to say literally anything. Somewhere on Ethereum, an exploiter is sitting on roughly $8.2 million in USDT while the project behind the drained token stays completely silent. It's a scene that's become almost routine in 2026, a year th…