Microsoft said a new malware strain has been spreading through infected USB sticks since February, targeting Windows PCs and crypto wallets. Microsoft identifies it as Trojan:Win32/CryptoBandits and describes it as a crypto clipper with worm-like behavior. The attack starts with a malicious .lnk shortcut on a USB drive; once opened, the malware installs itself and runs in the background, monitoring the clipboard for seed phrases, private keys and recipient addresses, exfiltrating data over Tor and silently swapping in attacker-controlled wallet addresses (BTC, TRON, XMR). Microsoft recommends disabling AutoRun, blocking .lnk execution on USB media, and restricting script hosts (wscript.exe / cscript.exe).

Axelar confirmed an exploit impacting assets bridged to Secret Network via the IBC connection, resulting in approximately $4.67M in losses. The issue is isolated to the Secret-side ICS-20 smart contract within the Cosmos Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) framework, specifically affecting assets bridged from Axelar to Secret. No other IBC routes, Secret native assets, or Axelar integrations appear impacted. In response, the Axelar emergency committee disabled Secret and Secret-SNIP connections to contain the exploit. Teams are coordinating with exchanges and law enforcement while investigations continue. Axelar emphasized that its core protocol remains unaffected and that a detailed post-mortem will be released once the investigation is complete.

Perplexity AI unveiled Brain, a self-improving memory system for its Computer agent. Instead of only storing user preferences, Brain learns how tasks are executed — tracking what works, what fails, and how to improve outputs over time. It builds a context graph of all agent activity and continuously refines it, reviewing past sessions (often overnight) and updating its internal understanding. Early metrics: +25% task correctness on repeated tasks, +16% recall, −13% cost on context-heavy tasks. Rolling out to Max and Enterprise Max subscribers (Research Preview).

Coinbase's L2 Base is targeting a June 25 mainnet activation of Beryl, a hard fork that introduces B20 — a new native standard for permissioned tokens.

B20 lets transfers enforce on-chain allowlists and blocklists, making it suited for stablecoins, security tokens and other RWA.

Beryl deploys new precompiles — B20Factory, PolicyRegistry and ActivationRegistry — and has already landed on Base's Sepolia testnet ahead of mainnet.

Karta, a Miami fintech issuing US Visa credit cards to people without a US credit history, raised a $15M Series A co-led by Galaxy Ventures — part of a $140M round that includes a $125M credit facility.

Its cards offer credit lines up to $200K, zero FX fees and a 24/7 AI concierge run through WhatsApp.

Prediction-market platform Kalshi has crossed $2B in annualized revenue, roughly 3x since November, and has opened early, informal IPO talks with investment banks.

The surge was driven by traders betting on the World Cup, fresh off a $1B Series F that valued Kalshi at $22B.

It comes fresh off a $1 billion Series F that valued Kalshi at $22 billion, backed by Coatue, Sequoia, a16z and ARK — with any IPO still likely a year or more away amid state-level legal fights.

Fidelity has launched the Reserves Digital Fund, a money market fund built for stablecoin issuers to park their reserves — designed to meet the GENIUS Act's high-quality-liquid-asset rules.

It holds short-term US Treasuries, repos and cash, targets a $1.00 NAV at a 0.18% fee.

Fidelity joins BlackRock, State Street, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan in Wall Street's race to manage stablecoin reserves — TradFi capturing the backing layer.

APEC — a CFTC-regulated exchange for perpetual futures on equities and stock indices — has raised $30M at a $300M valuation. It was founded by Theodore Gillibrand, 22, son of pro-crypto Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

The round was led by Lux Capital, putting a politically charged twist on the race to bring regulated perps to US markets.

It rides the post-CFTC-approval wave of perp launches — even as the regulator faces a CME lawsuit over those very products.

Institutional conviction showed up in multiple forms this week, from a $60B tech M&A and a $7.4B AI funding round to traditional finance moving its core infrastructure directly onchain across credit ratings, settlement, and RWA distribution.

🔎 Recent Updates & Developments 

– SpaceX acquired Cursor’s maker Anysphere in a $60B merger for AI infrastructure

– DeepSeek closed a $7.4B round at $50B valuation, backed by Tencent and JD

– Ethereum’s Glamsterdam entered final testing with 60M→200M gas limit and 78% fee reduction

– Trace Finance raised $32M Series A led by CoinFund, with Coinbase Ventures and Paxos

– Moody’s brought its credit ratings onchain to Solana, a first for a major permissionless blockchain

– Re secured a strategic investment from Coinbase Ventures, having written $500M in reinsurance premiums

– Plume brought PIMCO-backed fixed-income vaults to Bybit users onchain

EarnOS has raised $6M in a pre-Series A led by 1kx to scale ero, an app that pays users for verified human engagement — and helps brands cut the AI bots draining their ad budgets.

ero uses zkTLS to prove a real person completed a real action without exposing their data. A separate $12.5M strategic deal brings total launch funding to $18.5M.