Host of The Exit Manual, Julian Figueroa, has lost 14 BTC over the last eight years, worth around $1.6 million today. As if that figure wasn’t bad enough, what’s worse is that “90% of people buying Bitcoin today” are going to make one of the three mistakes in Bitcoin security that cost Figueroa his precious BTC.

If you aren’t paying attention by now, you should be. Figueroa’s experience highlights a deeper, more sobering reality: the road to financial sovereignty is crowded with pitfalls, and nearly every user will repeat at least one of these hard-learned mistakes about Bitcoin security.

Bitcoin Security Mistake #1: Day Trading Dreams, Market Realities

Figueroa’s biggest regret? Trying to outsmart the cycles by actively trading:

“I lost 4 BTC just because I thought I’d buy low and sell high. Turns out, it’s nearly impossible—nobody beats the market over time, not pros, not hedge funds, nobody. If you just buy and hold, you almost always outperform the traders.”

The psychological pitfalls of FOMO, misreading tops and bottoms, and emotional fire sales catch even pros in the jaws of volatility. Many lose sight of Bitcoin security when risking coins on risky short-term moves.

Mistake #2: The Altcoin Trap

Figueroa lost another 2 BTC chasing altcoin hype:

“I bought coins I thought would outperform Bitcoin. They didn’t.”

Altcoins offer wild upside stories, but, as Figueroa calls it, “altcoin logic in a suit” often ends up as a distraction.

Study after study shows most altcoins underperform Bitcoin dramatically in the long run; a hard lesson seasoned by endless ‘make it, lose it’ stories among crypto’s earliest adopters. Choosing solid Bitcoin security means resisting distractions from speculative alternatives.

Mistake #3: Self-Custody or Bust

Yet, his biggest loss came from keeping coins on centralized exchanges. He says:

“8 BTC—nearly $1 million—vanished when an exchange failed.”

Trusting custodians instead of taking full personal control is the most common error, yet even veterans fall victim to comfort and convenience. The lesson here?

Wall Street Doesn’t Want You to See This…

Get 5 days of high-level strategies the pros use to win in crypto. Limited seats available — claim yours now.

Brought to you by CryptoSlate

Nice Your first lesson is on the way.

Please add [email protected] to your email whitelist.

“Crypto exchanges are not banks, they’re casinos. Self-custody is the only real security.”

You’re Not Alone: Epic Bitcoin Losses from Around the World

Figueroa isn’t the first (or the biggest) Bitcoiner to learn these lessons the hard way:

James Howells accidentally threw away a hard drive holding 8,000 BTC, now worth more than $900 million. Stefan Thomas, a programmer, lost access to a wallet with 7,002 BTC (worth $777 million) after forgetting his IronKey password. He has only two guesses left before his fortune is gone forever.

During the infamous Mt. Gox exchange collapse in 2014, over 850,000 BTC were lost or stolen, leaving countless users permanently locked out and sparking industry-wide debates on Bitcoin security.

When QuadrigaCX’s founder died, he took the private keys to over $200 million with him, leaving thousands of users locked out of their funds. The list goes on and on—reminding investors that Bitcoin security starts and ends with personal accountability.

Figueroa’s story is a living lesson for both newbies and seasoned Bitcoiners alike. So how do you avoid joining the haunted ranks of the 2 million club?

Don’t try to trade “the bottom or the top.” Long-term holding historically outperforms almost every day-trader; just ask the 99% who’ve tried.

Ignore the siren song of altcoins promising outsized gains and stick to the fundamentals. And most importantly, hold your own private keys. Learn self-custody and take full responsibility for your digital assets. Because in Bitcoin, “not your keys, not your coins” is the cold, hard truth. Don’t let your story become another cautionary tale about Bitcoin security.

A Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into missing text messages from former chair Gary Gensler’s phone between October 2022 and September 2023 has concluded that “avoidable errors” led to their loss. 

The SEC Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigated how nearly a year’s worth of text messages from Gary Gensler were permanently lost between October 2022 and September 2023, during the height of the agency’s crypto enforcement action campaign.

In a report released on Wednesday, the OIG revealed that the SEC’s IT department “implemented a poorly understood and automated policy that caused an enterprise wipe of Gensler’s government-issued mobile device,” which deleted stored text messages and operating system logs.  

The loss was worsened by poor change management, lack of proper backups, ignored system alerts and unaddressed vendor software flaws.

The IT department failed to collect or maintain necessary log data, which is why the commission could not determine why Gensler’s smartphone stopped communicating with the SEC’s mobile device management system.

Key communications about crypto enforcement actions were lost 

The OIG found that some of Gensler’s deleted texts involved SEC enforcement actions against crypto companies and their founders, meaning that key communications about how and when the SEC pursued cases may never be fully known, even to courts, Congress or the public.

Related: Judge has ‘strong views’ about Coinbase inquiry into Gensler’s private msgs

Investigators reviewed about 1,500 messages recovered from colleagues and other records. They determined that the majority were federal records, with around 38% of the recovered text conversations “mission related” concerning matters directly involving SEC senior staff at the time, such as: 

“A May 2023 conversation involving Gensler, his staff, and the Director of the Division of Enforcement about when the SEC would be filing an action against certain crypto asset trading platforms and their founder.”

LATEST: The SEC’s Inspector General released a report on the loss of text messages from former Chair Gary Gensler due to avoidable errors by the agency’s IT office between October 2022 and September 2023. pic.twitter.com/3iWixftGKR

— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) September 5, 2025

SEC crackdown on recordkeeping 

Around the same time that Gensler’s messages were disappearing into a black hole, the SEC cracked down on the use of messaging apps. Several global investment banking and financial institutions were charged with violating record-keeping and books-and-records laws under the 1934 Securities and Exchange Act. 

“Finance, ultimately, depends on trust. By failing to honor their recordkeeping and books-and-records obligations, the market participants we have charged today have failed to maintain that trust,” said Gensler at the time. 

Undermining transparency in crypto decisions

The SEC has since disabled text messaging on most devices, notified the National Archives and Records Administration of lost records, introduced Capstone-specific records training for senior officials, and started improving backup practices for senior officials’ devices.

“The loss of Gensler’s text messages may impact the SEC’s response to certain Freedom of Information Act requests,” it stated. 

Gensler, who stepped down in January, was infamous in the crypto community for his bait-and-switch offer to “come in and get registered,” which pre-empted multiple SEC actions against companies that claimed they tried to do exactly that. Enforcement actions against crypto companies reached a 10-year high in 2023.  

“Think about everything that happened in crypto during this time. Basically, FTX collapse through the Grayscale spot BTC ETF lawsuit,” observed NovaDius Wealth Management President Nate Geraci, who added“makes you think.”

“So Gary Gensler’s text messages from his tenure as SEC chairman are forever lost in a mysterious ‘boating accident’ ???,” quipped Custodia Bank founder Caitlin Long. 

Magazine: Korean bill to legalize ICOs, Chinese firm’s Ethereum RWAs mystery: Asia Express

In April 2023, a Bitcoiner going by the name of Breadman purchased a property for $496,000, which was equivalent to 22.5 BTC at the time. Fast forward to August 2025, and the property is now valued at $570,000, a respectable 15% gain in dollar terms. But here’s the kicker: priced in Bitcoin, his home is now worth just 4.85 BTC, a staggering 78% loss when measured against the world’s hardest money, and highlighting real estate’s quiet crash as a store-of-value asset.

Breadman’s painful personal anecdote uncovers the silent crisis rippling across global real estate markets, disguised by rising fiat prices but blast wide open when viewed through a Bitcoin lens.

Real estate’s quiet crash is more pronounced in the US

While Mediterranean countries like Spain have posted annual price growth of 7–8%, and even double-digit jumps in appraised values in Portugal, the wider global picture is more uncertain.

In North America, the United Kingdom, and much of the rest of Europe, the pace of property appreciation has slowed sharply. A UBS global forecast for 2025 notes that, after declines in 2022 and a muted recovery, capital values are expected to be “pretty flat” this year, with the residential sector showing only “modest uplift”.

The erosion of fiat: why real gains aren’t what they seem

On paper, a 15% gain in two years sounds solid. But inflation eats into those fiat profits relentlessly. Revised forecasts have pegged U.S. inflation for 2025 as running above 4%; add in local volatility from tariffs and changing global policy, and the real return on property is often much less than the headline figure.

It gets worse in many emerging markets, where high inflation rates (sometimes triple digits) wipe out nominal gains and even erode real wealth. For instance, Argentina’s annual inflation exceeded 200% in 2023, meaning property owners often saw their increases in local currency values completely overshadowed by the dramatic loss of purchasing power.

Bitcoin: the ultimate measuring stick

Now zoom out. Since April 2023, Bitcoin has surged from ~$22,000 to above $118,000, outpacing every major asset class on earth, and dwarfing the dollar gains made in real estate. While homes may be getting more expensive in fiat, they’re becoming vastly cheaper in BTC terms.

Macro investor and bitcoin advocate, James Lavish, called global real estate the largest addressable asset class for wealth seeking inflation protection. He highlighted the $998 trillion of capital parked in real estate and other global assets, all of which is steadily losing ground to Bitcoin’s scarcity-driven, deflationary model.

While houses look like good investments on a nominal chart, their real purchasing power collapses when measured against truly hard money.

The ‘Bitcoin pizza’ effect: when value goes parabolic

Exchanging your Bitcoin for other assets has proven extremely costly over the years. Just ask Laszlo Hanyecz, who famously traded 10,000 BTC for two pizzas in 2010. At the time, the coins were worth about $41. Today, those pizzas would fetch over $1.1 billion. What seemed reasonable in fiat terms became a legendary loss in Bitcoin value and a cautionary tale for anyone measuring wealth in dollars alone.

While global headlines tout resilient or even climbing real estate prices, a new reality is emerging for those with a Bitcoin perspective: real estate’s quite crash in BTC terms, and inflation further eroding fiat gains.

BitMine has become the first corporate treasury to surpass 1 million Ethereum (ETH) in holdings after its stash climbed to 1.17 million ETH on Aug. 15, valued at over $5 billion.

The firm added 317,126 tokens worth approximately $2 billion in a single week. BitMine chairman Tom Lee said on August 4 that the firm intends to move with “lightning speed” in its pursuit to acquire 5% of ETH’s total supply.

Notably, the company launched its treasury strategy on June 30, growing from zero to over 1 million ETH in a little over a month.

Treasury competition accelerates

BitMine now leads the Ethereum treasury sector, surpassing SharpLink Gaming’s 728,804 ETH holdings. 

SharpLink reported on August 15 that it raised over $2.6 billion in capital for ETH acquisitions and has staked nearly 100% of its holdings, generating cumulative rewards of approximately 1,326 ETH.

Data from the Strategic ETH Reserve lists 71 ETH-focused treasury firms collectively holding 3.7 million ETH valued at $16.3 billion, representing 3.06% of the total supply. 

These companies indicate plans to allocate roughly $27 billion toward additional ETH acquisitions, which could push corporate holdings to 10% of total supply.

BitMine filed an amendment to expand its at-the-market equity program by $20 billion to fund continued acquisitions. 

The aggressive strategy has driven significant stock performance, with shares surging up to over 1,100% and an average daily trading volume of $2.2 billion, ranking it 25th among all US-listed stocks.

Institutional adoption context

The rapid accumulation could be a sign of growing institutional recognition of Ethereum as foundational infrastructure for future financial systems. 

The corporate broad view could align with BitMine’s understanding that staking ETH secures the network and generates yield while aligning firms with Ethereum’s long-term success. 

On July 21, Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest shifted approximately $175 million from traditional crypto stocks like Coinbase and Robinhood into BitMine. The move demonstrates institutional confidence in Ethereum treasury strategies. 

BitMine’s achievement positions it as the third-largest crypto treasury globally behind Bitcoin-focused Strategy and MARA Holdings.

Mentioned in this article

The following is a guest post and analysis from Shane Neagle, Editor In Chief fromThe Tokenist.

On June 23rd, Midnight Foundation released its first tokenomics paper. Earlier in June, Charles Hoskinson, the co-founder of Ethereum (ETH) and founder of Cardano (ADA), pegged Midnight as “the single biggest event in the history of Cardano,” with a caveat: “if it is successful.”

Although the altcoin season had a pullback this week, and the crypto market is more diluted than ever with tens of thousands of tokens, it is worth investigating new projects. After all, the exit of the Biden administration represents the departure of a hostile force that used many underhanded tactics to debank crypto projects.

In that light, what is the merit behind Midnight?

Cardano’s Need for Midnight

It is no secret that the Cardano blockchain is generally perceived as lagging behind other networks such as Ethereum or Solana. By total value locked (TVL), Cardano ranks 20th according to DefiLlama, with $360 million in capital across ~50 dApps. For comparison, Solana has a TVL of $10 billion across ~240 dApps, which is again 8x lower than Ethereum.

This lack of significant market share is largely attributed to Cardano’s robust academic approach to smart contract development and blockchain frameworks, ensuring that the network has all its ducks in a row to avoid reputation-disabling vulnerabilities down the line.

Charles Hoskinson also noted the lack of stablecoins as a contributing factor, having floated the idea of converting around $100 million worth of ADA tokens into USDM stablecoins, which are issued by the regulated Moneta Digital LLC service.

Moreover, if scaling of Cardano goes as planned, in addition to the inflow of stablecoins post-Genius and Clarity Acts, Hoskinson boldly forecasted that the altcoin market will see trillions of value—and that Cardano is expected to play a major role in it. But what is Midnight’s role?

Midnight’s Background and Pitch

Midnight is closely tied to Cardano’s IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong), later rebranded as Input Output Global (IOG). While the Swiss-based Cardano Foundation is in charge of developing the blockchain ecosystem, such as adoption and community-building, IOG is the software engineering organization behind Cardano’s core tech and roadmap.

As the current president of the Midnight Foundation launched in May, Fahmi Syed served within IOG to push the project, in addition to contributing to Polkadot and Kusama via Parity Technologies. Prior to Syed’s crypto involvement, he was the chief operating officer (COO) at UK-based Fifthdelta, which emerged as a startup from Citadel money managers in 2021.

Midnight Foundation pitches the network as a “fourth-generation blockchain built for secure, compliant, and private decentralised applications.” What does that mean exactly?

1. TradFi has been notoriously cautious to adopt blockchain because the default one is too transparent. Both Ethereum and Bitcoin have transactions publicly visible, which doesn’t lend itself to safeguarding customer data and financial privacy.
2. Midnight aims to step into this gap by providing programmable privacy, utilizing zero-knowledge proof cryptography. This tech enables data/transaction verification without revealing identity, making it regulatory-compliant in the process.

Specifically, Midnight Network uses ZK-SNARKs (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge) with its own smart contract programming language, Compact. Although zero-knowledge proof is more computationally intensive off-chain, this tech reduces on-chain load without requiring a trusted setup (depending on the variant used).

Per transaction, this approach exerts higher fees due to higher computational costs, but ZK-rollups turn this around by bundling many transactions into a single cryptographic proof. Ultimately, this reduces on-chain load and transaction costs.

In short, the purpose of Midnight is to act as a bridge between private and public ledgers, eliminating the exposure of on-chain transactions. The key to furthering that goal is Midnight’s Zswap ledger, which facilitates atomic token swaps.

After all, atomicity is crucial for cross-chain transfers between multiple token types and privacy layers. Overall, this makes Midnight Network a promising project. It is worth remembering that the ideal scenario for the crypto market to thrive is to create a cohesive blockchain ecosystem in which users seamlessly transact between different parts.

Midnight’s Ecosystem Rollout

At press time, Midnight listed 52 dApps across infrastructure, DAO, DeFi, wallets, NFTs, prediction markets, gaming, AI, and other areas that benefit from programmable privacy. As with many other crypto projects, Midnight is unrolling two types of tokens:

• NIGHT – native utility token for on-chain governance and ecosystem incentives, distributed to network participants securing the network. NIGHT is native to both Cardano and Midnight.
• DUST – unlike ETH, which pays for transactions across Ethereum dApps, NIGHT doesn’t serve that function. Instead, NIGHT tokens generate DUST, a renewable resource.
• As long as Midnight participants hold NIGHT tokens, they can use the generated DUST to execute free transactions, which is itself an incentive mechanism. DUST decays after generation (designating DUST address by NIGHT token holders), which prevents it from serving as a store of value.

The decision to go that route was driven by Midnight’s privacy focus, as DUST doesn’t leave a metadata trail like other single-token ecosystems. This also includes resistance to MEV manipulation.

In the Midnight tokenomics and incentives whitepaper released in June 2025, NIGHT token supply is limited to 24 billion, minted on Cardano and mirrored on the Midnight network.

This supply is hard-capped, which means greater demand for transactions will not expand it. Under the umbrella of Midnight Foundation, the subsidiary Midnight TGE is in charge of this tokenomics model, in addition to Treasury and Reserve.

Reserve serves to issue NIGHT tokens to the network’s block producers, marking them as uncirculated supply.

Ongoing Midnight Token Airdrop

Dubbed “Glacier Drop” for phase 1 rollout, the airdrop will run from July through August, delivering 50% (12 billion NIGHT tokens) to Cardano (ADA), 20% to Bitcoin (BTC), and 30% across Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), BNB Chain (BNB), and Brave (BAT).

Every three months, 25% of NIGHT token supply is unlocked, with the total unlock reached after 360 days. Initially, NIGHT tokens are locked, becoming tradable gradually to avoid supply shocks. To encourage adoption, any crypto holders with a minimum of $100 across the aforementioned chains are eligible to claim NIGHT tokens.

After the Glacier Drop, two more claim phases will follow—Scavenger Mine and Lost-and-Found. Readers interested in this project should visit the official website and follow claim instructions via the NIGHT Claim portal.

The Bottom Line

Features such as atomic swaps, privacy, and cross-chain functionality have been pillars of the crypto space since the early days. Case in point: Komodo launched open-source AtomicDEX in mid-2019. However, Midnight Network appears to be a more comprehensive project by combining all three aspects.

More importantly, Midnight is tied to Cardano, which is still well-capitalized. Likewise, the legacy blockchain network is known to form relationships with various government entities and organizations. In early 2025, asset manager Grayscale filed to turn Grayscale Cardano Trust into a publicly traded spot ETF.

Without a hostile SEC with Gary Gensler gone, this makes for a more fertile ground for Cardano and its associated projects. In turn, both ADA and NIGHT enthusiasts should proceed with cautious optimism, aware of the risks, but not blind to the opportunity—especially when paired with insights from the highly-rated investment newsletters that help decode emerging trends.

Mentioned in this article

Arthur Hayes, co-founder of crypto exchange BitMEX, appears to have reversed course on a major ether (ETH) trade just days after warning of a market downturn.

Last week, data from Arkham Intelligence showed that Hayes sold 2,373 ETH worth around $8.32 million, when the second-largest cryptocurrency was trading near $3,500 and moved into stablecoins.

This weekend, however, he seems to have a change of heart.

Hours ago, data first spotted by Lookonchain showed an address linked to Hayes moved out of $10.5 million in USDC to buy back ether, with the price of the cryptocurrency now hovering around $4,200.

The move comes after Hayes liquidated over $13 million in crypto holdings last week, including ethena

and meme token pepe .

At the time, he cited U.S. tariffs and weaker-than-expected jobs data as headwinds for crypto, predicting bitcoin could test $100,000 and ether could revisit $3,000.

Yet Hayes’ quick buyback suggests he may see renewed upside in ether. Hayes seemingly confirmed the acquisition of ETH in a post on X, saying he “had to buy it all back” while sharing an ether price chart.

A large number of token unlocks are expected to hit the altcoin market this week, and Dogecoin is one of those with the most notable unlocks happening this week. With the uncertainty in the market, token unlocks like these could affect the Dogecoin price. However, with deep liquidity, there is a high possibility that the meme coin is able to absorb this massive unlock without much effect.

Large Dogecoin Unlock To Hit The Market

In an X post, Wu Blockchain reported that there are a number of single token unlocks that are set to go live in the altcoin market over seven days. However, the ones of concern are the linear unlocks that will continue into the first week of August, putting hundreds of millions of dollars into the market.

Related Reading

One of the major unlocks shown was for Dogecoin, which is supposed to see approximately 95.5 million DOGE tokens added to its supply. Going by the current supply, this would be an additional 0.06% added to the circulating supply. At the current market price, this would be around $22.9 million worth of tokens being added.

Naturally, token unlocks can impact the price of a digital asset, and Dogecoin is no different. However, looking at the daily trading volume of the cryptocurrency, which is in the billions of dollars, as well as the deep liquidity across major crypto exchanges, it is likely that the DOGE market will absorb this new supply without much fuss.

Additionally, not all of the 95 million tokens will be sent into circulation at once. Given that it’s a linear unlock, meaning the coins will be released into circulation in smaller batches, it is much easier for the market to absorb the supply without any negative impact to the Dogecoin price.

Other Tokens Being Unlocked

While the Dogecoin token unlock is significant, it is not the largest token unlock expected to happen this week. The crown goes to Solana, which is expected to see 465,770 tokens unlocked. This stash is worth a staggering $87 million and translates to 0.09% of the total supply.

Related Reading

Next on the list is the TRUMP token at 4.89 million tokens worth $50.13 million. This accounts for 1.67% of the total supply. Then, it is followed by Worldcoin (WLD), with an expected 37.23 million tokens to be unlocked, worth $44.67 million, and translates to 2.16% of the total supply.

Other major unlocks include TAO with 50,400 tokens worth $21.49 million. There’s also Avalanche (AVAX) with 700,000 tokens worth $18.07 million, and Celestia (TIA) with 6.96 million tokens worth $14.20 million.

Featured image from Dall.E, chart from TradingView.com