The investigation points to $71.9 million taken from 1,539 victims through a mix of storefront operations, fraudulent claims, and cash collection machines.

Prosecutors requested the seizure of NT$1.275 billion (about $39.8 million), along with 640,000 USDT
USDT


$0.9883

Did you know?

Want to get smarter & wealthier with crypto?

Subscribe – We publish new crypto explainer videos every week!

What is NEO in Crypto? Chinese Ethereum Explained (ANIMATED)

About $3.13 million in bank deposits has already been frozen, with more recoveries expected.

According to investigators, the accused collected money in cash, converted it into foreign currency, and used it to purchase USDT through BiXiang Technology, a local exchange.

The main suspect, Shi Qiren, was arrested in April together with thirteen associates. Reports indicate Shi could face up to 25 years in prison for leading the operation and for refusing to plead guilty. Prosecutors alleged that starting in 2024, Shi, his wife, and a business partner named Yang opened forty outlets under the names “CoinW” and “CoinThink Technology Co., Ltd”.

Officials claimed the group pretended to be the only company approved by Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission, which helped them attract more than 1,500 customers. By combining franchise fees and machine collections, they allegedly gathered nearly $72 million.

On August 11, police in Phú Thọ Province, Vietnam, shut down the largest cryptocurrency scam recorded in the country. How? Read the full story.

Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure

Saifedean Ammous—best known in the Bitcoin community as the author of The Bitcoin Standard—has attacked Argentine President Javier Milei’s stabilization program as a bond-fueled “fiat fraud,” arguing that the policy mix flatters official statistics while deepening the country’s dependence on multilateral lenders and peso-denominated carry trades.

In a lengthy X post on August 20, Ammous framed last week’s bond rollover as a reality check: “Argentina’s Javier Milei regime tried to roll over bonds by offering investors an insane 69% interest rate, and only succeeded in rolling over 61% of them. Even a 69% annual interest rate isn’t enough to tempt investors to risk lending to the Milei ponzi.” He punctuated the thread with a line he says Milei himself used after a memecoin debacle: “No Crying in the Casino!”

Bitcoin Vs. Fiat: Milei Picks His Side

Ammous’ critique is explicitly Bitcoin-versus-fiat. He claims the administration “reneged on [its] campaign promise to shut down the central bank,” chose to expand money-supply measures instead of “stop[ping] creating money,” and raised taxes while seeking an IMF rescue—moves he calls “the same old fiat banksterism.” The Bitcoin author’s monetary prescription is unambiguous: “After almost two years in office, it would have been absolutely trivial for Milei to bring price inflation down to close to zero with the one simple trick… stop creating money.” In Ammous’ telling, anything short of extinguishing discretionary money creation cannot be sold to Bitcoiners as sound policy.

On debt and multilateral financing, Ammous alleges that the latest arrangements amount to record-breaking exposure to official creditors and a mortgaging of future fiscal space. “With this new $20b in IMF loans, Argentina now has the highest outstanding debt to the IMF in IMF history… borrowing is now at 1,352% of its IMF quota,” he writes, adding that the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank “also” committed roughly $12 billion and $10 billion, respectively, bringing “a total of $42 billion borrowed from international institutions.” He characterizes the show of support, celebrated by local officials, as a pyrrhic victory for fiat: “Point 5 is not a win, it is an L.”

The Bitcoin-versus-fiat framing extends to prices, exchange rates, and data quality. Ammous argues that government statistics understate the erosion of purchasing power, but says even the official numbers are damning. “After year-on-year price inflation rates rose to almost 300% in the first few months of his presidency, it has declined to the 30–40% range in recent months, and the cumulative price inflation since Milei has taken office is 155%,” he writes. He underscores pressure on the peso by citing both the black-market and official rates: “The black market peso exchange rate has dropped 30% against the dollar in just 21 months… The official rate… has dropped by around 70%, from 400 pesos per dollar to 1,300 pesos per dollar. Just in the last month of July, both rates dropped around 13%.”

Bitcoin Doesn’t Default—Fiat Always Does

Ammous, speaking from a hard-money and Bitcoin perspective, insists that free markets cannot coexist with monetary discretion: “All talk of a free market is empty rhetoric as long as the government manipulates the money.” He links this to the high-yield peso bond complex—what he dubs a “shitcoin casino”—arguing that “the central bank is imposing an interest rate of 65%, making speculation on the government’s bonds the only possibly profitable industry.” In Bitcoin circles, that argument resonates with a longstanding critique: fiat incentives manufacture yield-chasing behavior that collapses when confidence wobbles, while Bitcoin’s fixed issuance schedule avoids that cycle by design.

His post also alleges problematic asset management and bank risk. “Milei shipped off the little that remained of Argentina’s once significant gold reserves to London in search for a quick yield buck,” Ammous claims, before warning that new regulations could again funnel household savings into sovereign risk: “Milei and Caputo are currently trying to force the banks to buy more government bonds, yet again using the savings of Argentinians to prop up the government’s unsustainable debt… bringing back painful memories of the Corralón of 2001.” The Bitcoin author’s broader contention is that fiat systems externalize crisis risk onto depositors and domestic savers, while Bitcoin self-custody avoids those channels.

The administration’s supporters—some of them Bitcoiners—push back. Fernando Nikolić, founder of Perception responded point-by-point that “inflation has dramatically declined,” “GDP growth is projected at 5.5%,” “currency controls were successfully eliminated without crisis,” and “the budget achieved [a] historic surplus.” He framed the outcome as proof that markets and institutions “rewarded Milei’s more gradual approach,” even if it falls short of an immediate central-bank shutdown favored by Austrian economists and many Bitcoin advocates. Ammous dismissed the rebuttal: “You either didn’t read what I wrote or you’re incapable of comprehending what you read… Point 5 is not a win, it is an L. Muted for wasting my time with stupidity.”

Beyond the clash of tone, the substantive disagreement is philosophical and monetary. Ammous’ benchmark is Bitcoin-standard discipline: close the central bank, anchor money supply, let relative prices reset, and rebuild on hard money—painful initially, in his view, but durable.

The government’s approach is classic fiat stabilization: disinflate with tight policy, widen financing buffers with IMF/WB/IDB lines, normalize the FX regime, and nurse domestic markets back to depth—politically survivable if growth returns, but reliant on confidence, rollover capacity, and high local-currency rates that Bitcoiners see as the hallmark of fiat fragility.

For now, both narratives point to the same hinge variables: peso rollover capacity at “insane” yields, the pace of disinflation, the behavior of parallel exchange rates, and whether multilateral support remains politically and financially sustainable. If those levers tighten simultaneously, Bitcoin’s critique will look prescient; if they hold, the case for a fiat stabilization hardens. In Ammous’ words, however, Bitcoin is the only durable exit: “It would have been absolutely trivial… stop creating money.”

At press time, Bitcoin traded at $113,612.

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Editorial Process for bitcoinist is centered on delivering thoroughly researched, accurate, and unbiased content. We uphold strict sourcing standards, and each page undergoes diligent review by our team of top technology experts and seasoned editors. This process ensures the integrity, relevance, and value of our content for our readers.

The source code for version 3 of the ERMAC Android banking trojan has been leaked online, exposing the internals of the malware-as-a-service platform and the operator’s infrastructure.

The code base was discovered in an open directory by Hunt.io researchers while scanning for exposed resources in March 2024.

They located an archive named Ermac 3.0.zip, which contained the malware’s code, including backend, frontend (panel), exfiltration server, deployment configurations, and the trojan’s builder and obfuscator.

The researchers analyzed the code, finding that it significantly expanded the targeting capabilities compared to previous versions, with more than 700 banking, shopping, and cryptocurrency apps.

ERMAC was first documented in September 2021  by ThreatFabric – a provider of online payment fraud solutions and intelligence for the financial services sector, as an evolution of the Cerberus banking trojan operated by a threat actor known as ‘BlackRock.’

ERMAC v2.0 was spotted by ESET in May 2022, rented to cybercriminals for a monthly fee of $5,000, and targeting 467 apps, up from 378 in the previous version.

In January 2023, ThreatFabric observed BlackRock promoting a new Android malware tool named Hook, which appeared to be an evolution of ERMAC.

ERMAC v3.0 capabilities

Hunt.io found and analyzed ERMAC’s PHP command-and-control (C2) backend, React front-end panel, Go-based exfiltration server, Kotlin backdoor, and the builder panel for generating custom trojanized APKs.

According to the researchers, ERMAC v3.0 now targets sensitive user information in more than 700 apps.

Additionally, the latest version expands on previously documented form-injection techniques, uses AES-CBC for encrypted communications, features an overhauled operator panel, and enhances data theft and device control.

Specifically, Hunt.io has documented the following capabilities for the latest ERMAC release:

• Theft of SMS, contacts, and registered accounts
• Extraction of Gmail subjects and messages
• File access via ‘list’ and ‘download’ commands
• SMS sending and call forwarding for communication abuse
• Photo capturing via the front camera
• Full app management (launch, uninstall, clear cache)
• Displaying fake push notifications for deception
• Uninstalls remotely (killme) for evasion

Infrastructure exposed

Hunt.io analysts used SQL queries to identify live, exposed infrastructure currently used by the threat actors, identifying C2 endpoints, panels, exfiltration servers, and builder deployments.

Apart from exposing the malware’s source code, the ERMAC operators had several other major opsec failures, including hardcoded JWT tokens, default root credentials, and no registration protections on the admin panel, allowing anyone to access, manipulate, or disrupt ERMAC panels.

Finally, the panel names, headers, package names, and various other operational fingerprints left little doubt about attribution and made discovery and mapping of the infrastructure a lot easier.

The ERMAC V3.0 source code leak weakens the malware operation, first by eroding customer trust in the MaaS in its ability to protect information from law enforcement or allow running campaigns with low detection risk.

Threat detection solutions are also likely to get better at spotting ERMAC. However, if the source code falls into the hands of other threat actors, it is possible to observe in the future modified variants of ERMAC that are more difficult to detect.

Crypto Journalist

Anas Hassan

Crypto Journalist

Anas Hassan

About Author

Anas is a crypto native journalist and SEO writer with over five years of writing experience covering blockchain, crypto, DeFi, and emerging tech.

Share

Last updated: 

June 17, 2025

Prominent blockchain investigator ZachXBT has uncovered evidence linking WhiteRock Finance project to the notorious $33 million ZKasino exit scam, exposing what appears to be an elaborate money laundering operation.

This scheme was designed to legitimize stolen funds through a seemingly legitimate real-world asset tokenization platform.

The investigation reveals direct on-chain connections between WhiteRock’s marketing wallets, ZKasino’s stolen presale funds, and a personal email address that ties key team members from both projects together.

What is ZKasino?

The ZKasino scandal originally erupted in April 2024 when the blockchain gambling project abruptly diverted $33 million worth of investor funds to Lido’s staking protocol instead of returning them as promised to presale participants.

The scheme led to the arrest of team member Elham Nourzai by Dutch financial crime authorities, while alleged co-conspirators Ildar Ilham and Lior Ben Zakan reportedly fled to the Middle East.

Following Nourzai’s release in late 2024, the stolen funds began moving through a sophisticated laundering network that employed chain-hopping across ZkSync, Starknet, EVM, and Solana networks.

Proceeds were converted to Monero through instant exchanges, cashed out via OTC brokers, and traded on perpetual platforms like Hyperliquid.

ZachXBT’s investigation reveals that WhiteRock emerged in late 2024 with immediate red flags, including an anonymous team without verifiable history, fabricated partnership claims, and funding sources linked to instant exchanges commonly used for money laundering.

The investigator traced funds from ZKasino’s stolen treasury directly to WhiteRock’s marketing wallet, which was subsequently used to pay influencers for promotional content.

Most damning, ZachXBT discovered that a personal email address associated with WhiteRock’s deployer wallet belongs to an account named “IldarTheGrandMaster” on Chess.com.

This directly links the project to Ildar Ilham, one of ZKasino’s alleged masterminds, who operates under the alias “Prometheus.”

From Presale Scam to RWA Revolution: The ZKasino Money Laundering Scheme

The ZKasino exit scam represents one of the most brazen betrayals of investor trust in recent crypto history. It began as a promising blockchain gambling platform that raised over $30 million through presales before revealing its true nature.

The project initially promised participants that their bridged Ethereum would be returnable, but when launch day arrived on April 20, 2024, ZKasino dramatically altered the terms.

Instead of honoring withdrawal requests, the team converted all 10,515 ETH to ZKAS tokens at a heavily discounted rate of $0.055, subject to a punitive 15-month vesting schedule that effectively trapped investor funds.

The deception deepened when investigators discovered that ZKasino’s supposed revolutionary blockchain was merely an Arbitrum Nitro chain lacking the zero-knowledge technology that formed the core of its marketing promises.

Following the collapse and subsequent arrests, the stolen funds underwent sophisticated laundering through multiple blockchain networks and financial instruments.

This multi-vector laundering strategy, explained by ZachXBT, mirrors tactics seen in other major crypto crimes.

Recent cases include Australian authorities uncovering a $190 million laundering network that mixed illicit crypto with legitimate business income and European investigations into OKX’s alleged role in laundering $100 million from the Bybit hack.

How Stolen Millions Funded WhiteRock’s Success Story

WhiteRock, launched on December 24, 2024, positioned itself as a revolutionary platform that would bring traditional markets onto the blockchain.

The platform quickly gained traction by promising to democratize access to traditionally exclusive wealth-building opportunities through its native WHITE token and USDX stablecoin.

However, ZachXBT’s investigation reveals that WhiteRock’s impressive growth metrics and partnership claims were built on fraudulent foundations.

The project’s marketing campaigns, funded directly through wallets containing ZKasino’s stolen funds, promoted fake partnerships with major financial institutions.

StoneX publicly denied WhiteRock’s partnership claims, while supposed collaborations with BlackRock and First Citizens Bank lacked any verifiable evidence.

The project’s most audacious claim involved rumors of a partnership with Saudi Aramco through Ripple to tokenize oil supply chains, which drove WHITE token prices up 110% on May 30 despite having no factual basis.

ZachXBT has called for major exchanges, including MEXC and Gate.io, to delist WHITE token and conduct enhanced due diligence.

A US bank is warning thousands of customers that their sensitive information may be at risk following an “administrative error.”

In a new filing with the Office of the Maine Attorney General, Bluestone Bank says an error in late February led to the unauthorized disclosure of personal data belonging to 7,605 customers.

According to the Bridgewater, Massachusetts-headquartered bank, personal and confidential information belonging to its customers was inadvertently sent to an unintended recipient on February 28th of this year.

“The personal information that may have been accessed includes the data we have on file for you, such as your name, address, social security number, and account number(s).”

Bluestone Bank says it has taken various steps to minimize the risk of potential harm to customers.

“The individual who received the information has signed a Certificate of Destruction, confirming that all information was promptly and securely destroyed and no information was retained…

We have further addressed this incident by reinforcing proper data handling procedures and mandating retraining on the appropriate management of customer data. In addition, we have evaluated and enhanced our existing protocols and controls to ensure this will not happen again.”

To prevent possible misuse of personal information following the incident, Bluestone Bank is offering its customers a complimentary membership to an identity-monitoring service for one and a half years.

Customers also have the choice of closing and reopening their bank accounts as a safety precaution.

Bluestone Bank had $1.5 billion in total assets as of November of 2024.

Follow us on X, Facebook and Telegram

Don’t Miss a Beat – Subscribe to get email alerts delivered directly to your inbox

Check Price Action

Surf The Daily Hodl Mix

&nbsp

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any losses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.

Generated Image: Midjourney

The benchmark was designed to evaluate vision-language models like GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet 3.7, and Gemini 2.5 Pro using a set of 20 popular games, including Doom, Prince of Persia, and Warcraft II.

Instead of relying on code or special inputs, these models were only given the visual game screen to decide their next move. The AI takes a screenshot, analyzes it, suggests an action, and then tries to carry it out.

Did you know?

Want to get smarter & wealthier with crypto?

Subscribe – We publish new crypto explainer videos every week!

What is a Crypto Wallet? (Explained With Animation)

This delay is especially noticeable in fast-paced games like Doom, where quick reactions are key. If the AI takes too long to respond, the situation on the screen has already changed, which makes its decision outdated. For example, an enemy might have moved, or the player may already be in danger before the model responds.

According to the research team, current models are not only slow to react but also struggle with basic tasks. They often miss items, fail to interact with the environment properly, or keep repeating the same actions without making progress.

The team used older Game Boy and MS-DOS games because their simple graphics and variety of control types provide a good way to test how well models understand space and timing.

The benchmark was developed by computer scientist Alex Zhang, who explained that these games help reveal how much work is still needed before AI can play games reliably in real-time.

Meanwhile, on April 14, Meta received approval from the EU’s data regulator to use public posts from its platforms to train its AI systems. What does this mean? Read the full story.

A cybersecurity incident has reportedly exposed the personal, financial and health records of nearly half a million Americans.

The mobility and assistive solutions provider Numotion says 494,000 customers are affected by a data breach witnessed between September 2nd, 2024, and November 18th, 2024, reports Security Week.

Numotion says an unknown entity managed to access the email accounts of the firm’s employees without authorization several times.

The firm says that after an extensive review, it determined that the emails in question contain sensitive customer information.

“The type of information that may have been viewed varied for each individual, but could have included names, dates of birth, product information, payment and financial account information, health insurance information, medical information, and for a minority of individuals, Social security numbers and driver’s license numbers.”

Numotion says it’s sending letters to all impacted customers to shed light on the data breach while offering identity theft protection services for users whose Social Security numbers were stolen

The firm says that for now, it hasn’t learned of any incident where a customer’s sensitive data has been misused for fraud or identity theft. But Numotion says affected customers should stay vigilant and report any strange activity related to identity theft, healthcare fraud or financial fraud.

“If individuals detect any suspicious activity, they should notify the entity with which the account is maintained, and promptly report any fraudulent activity to proper law enforcement authorities, including the police and their state attorney general.”

Numotion focuses on serving people with disabilities by providing customized assistive equipment such as wheelchairs, seating and positioning gear, as well as home accessibility and medical supplies.

Follow us on X, Facebook and Telegram

Don’t Miss a Beat – Subscribe to get email alerts delivered directly to your inbox

Check Price Action

Surf The Daily Hodl Mix

&nbsp

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any losses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.

Generated Image: Midjourney