Rug Pull: An address lost $24 million in a "rug pull" attack with aEthUSDC

On March 5, approximately $24 million worth of aEthUSDC was stolen in a supply chain attack. User @sillytuna claims the theft involved violence, weapons, kidnapping, and rape threats. They stated they were beaten, threatened with an axe to their limbs, but ultimately kept all their limbs. BlockBeats Note: @sillytuna’s account of the incident is questionable. Per PeckShield’s monitoring this morning, the attack was actually a supply chain poisoning. The wallet linked to @sillytuna lost roughly $24 million in aEthUSDC. Around 20 million DAI is currently held in two attacker-controlled intermediate wallets and hasn’t been mixed yet. The attacker has begun bridging small amounts of funds to Arbitrum. @sillytuna has now launched a bounty: 10% of any recovered funds will be awarded as a reward.

March 5 — Cryptocurrency API firm Crossmint has partnered with remittance giant Western Union to support the USD Digital Points Token (USDPT) stablecoin and its associated digital asset network. Western Union’s global network lets users convert digital dollars into local currency via its 360,000+ payout locations worldwide.

On March 5th, Virtuals Protocol—the Base Ecological AI Agent Platform—announced the launch of **Base Batches 003: Robotics**, a project led by Virtuals to advance AI agents in the robotics field. Virtuals officials noted the team has been building infrastructure to let AI agents perform real-world work, earn compensation, and generate compound interest via an open marketplace. The next technological frontier? Embodied artificial intelligence. While robot technology is highly capable, it currently lacks a structural integration of identity, permissions, and payments to scale beyond closed deployments. Moving forward, Base will enable on-chain builders to create robot agents, manage fleet operations, build robot data pipelines, or design workflows connecting robots to agents via ACP. Applications for "Base Batches 003: Robotics" are now open. Successful participants will receive mentorship, up to $50,000 in funding, and a path to the San Francisco Demo Day. Base officials ret

Dan Romero said on March 5 that a new project focused on escrow payments and stablecoins is in development. “If you’re working on a related project and want to continue building on Tempo, please reach out to me.” Dan Romero, founder of Farcaster, announced Feb. 9 that he’s joined Tempo — a stablecoin chain backed by Stripe and Paradigm.

March 5 — Hong Kong police have cracked a money laundering case involving shell accounts and crypto exchange outlets, per a Hong Kong 01 report. Two mainland Chinese individuals (one man, one woman) traveled to Hong Kong to open shell accounts, which were used to receive proceeds linked to 34 separate fraud cases across 43 local bank accounts. They then bought cryptocurrency at virtual asset exchange shops to launder roughly HK$17.3 million in criminal proceeds. A fund flow analysis revealed the criminal group used local bank accounts for crypto transactions, laundering up to HK$230 million in illicit funds. Hong Kong police charged the pair with three and 10 counts of money laundering, respectively. After reviewing the case, the court approved heavier sentences, handing down prison terms of 28 months and 43 months to the two.

March 5 – Per data from Coinbob Popular Address Monitor, the largest long whale (address 0x629) holding the cash:EWY (iShares Korea ETF synthetic asset) on Hyperliquid has reportedly flipped from a loss to profit, with unrealized gains swelling to $310,000 (115%). The whale currently holds a 20x leveraged long position valued at $6.42 million, with an average entry price of $126. The position was opened at 11 PM ET on March 3. Data from the EWY/USDC trading pair on Hyperliquid shows the asset rebounded after touching $122 yesterday afternoon, hitting a morning high of $140. It is currently trading at $134, marking a 6% intraday gain.