Every once in a while the crypto market throws a week so bizarre that you almost can’t believe it all happened in just seven days. This was one of those weeks.
A lone hobbyist miner beat odds that make lottery jackpots look reasonable, Cardano actually suffered a brief chain split (yes, really), and authorities across the pond keep turning the screws on sanctions-dodging crypto flows. Throw in exchange acquisitions, billion-dollar valuations, and a sentencing that has privacy advocates furious, and you’ve got the kind of recap that writes itself.
Let’s dive in.
The Week Crypto Refused to Be Boring
Cardano’s Unexpected Fork Drama
Picture this: you submit what you think is a perfectly normal delegation transaction on Cardano, and suddenly the entire chain disagrees with itself. That’s exactly what unfolded earlier this week.
A malformed transaction exploited a subtle difference in how newer and older node versions validated certain delegation certificates. Newer nodes said “cool, valid,” older nodes said “absolutely not,” and for a brief moment Cardano had two competing versions of the truth. In blockchain terms, that’s about as close to a heart attack as it gets.
The price reacted exactly how you’d expect — it didn’t love the uncertainty. ADA dropped noticeably while engineers scrambled. Intersect, the member-based organization steering Cardano governance these days, confirmed the divergence was real but short-lived. Blocks kept producing, no rollbacks needed, and the network healed itself once nodes caught up.
“I never intended to cause any disruption. I’m deeply sorry to the community.”
– The user who submitted the problematic transaction
Credit where it’s due — the person responsible came forward publicly with an apology instead of vanishing into the shadows. That kind of accountability is still rare in crypto, and honestly refreshing.
The Solo Miner Who Beat 1-in-a-Trillion Odds
If you ever needed proof that Bitcoin still has a touch of magic left, here it is.
A solo miner running the CKPool pool — with a grand total of six terahashes per second — managed to solve block 871,347. For context, the network hash rate sits north of 700 exahashes right now. That’s a difference of roughly nine orders of magnitude. The probability of this happening is so small that most calculators just round it down to zero.
Reward? A cool 3.146 BTC block reward plus fees — roughly $265,000 at current prices. The miner’s rig probably paid for itself several thousand times over in a single moment.
I’ve been around crypto long enough to have seen a handful of these fairy-tale solo blocks, but they never get less surreal. Somewhere out there is a person who plugged in some old hardware “just because,” went to bed, and woke up a quarter-million dollars richer.
- Hashrate used: ~6 TH/s
- Network hashrate: ~700 EH/s
- Odds: Effectively one in hundreds of trillions
- Payout: ~$265,000
It’s the kind of story that keeps bedroom miners from unplugging their machines entirely.
UK Keeps Turning Up the Heat on Crypto Sanctions Evasion
Operation Destabilise, the UK-led task force targeting Russian sanctions circumvention, just hit another grim milestone: 128 arrests and over $32.6 million seized in cash and cryptocurrency.
The numbers keep climbing fast. When the operation first went public late last year they were at 84 arrests and about $25 million. Less than twelve months later they’ve added dozens more collars and another $7 million-plus in seized assets.
Whether you view this as necessary enforcement or regulatory overreach probably depends on where you sit, but the trend is unmistakable: authorities are getting better at following crypto flows, and they’re not shy about making examples.
Coinbase Snaps Up a Meme-Coin Trading App
In a move that surprised exactly no one who’s been paying attention to on-chain summer, Coinbase announced it’s acquiring Vector — a slick little social trading platform built almost entirely around meme coins.
The plan is to fold Vector’s community-driven features into Coinbase’s own decentralized exchange offerings. Translation: expect a much more “degens welcome” vibe on Base in the not-too-distant future.
Kalshi Hits an $11 Billion Valuation Overnight
Prediction markets are having a moment, and Kalshi is riding the wave harder than anyone. The platform reportedly closed a $1 billion round that takes its valuation to roughly $11 billion — more than double what it was worth just a few weeks ago.
Between election betting volumes that shattered every record and the sudden mainstream comfort with putting money on real-world outcomes, Kalshi has become the poster child for regulated event contracts. Eleven billion feels aggressive, sure, but the growth curve is undeniable.
Metaplanet Issues “Mars” and “Mercury” Shares
Japan’s most Bitcoin-obsessed public company just got creative with capital raises. Metaplanet introduced two new classes of preferred shares charmingly named “Mars” and “Mercury.” The goal is straightforward: give investors flexible ways to get exposure while the company keeps stacking sats.
It’s another reminder that corporate Bitcoin treasury strategies are evolving far beyond simply buying and holding.
A Leveraged Dogecoin ETF Actually Exists Now
Yes, you read that right. 21Shares launched the 2x Long Dogecoin Daily ETF (ticker TXXD) on Nasdaq. It’s designed to deliver twice the daily move of DOGE, for better or worse.
Somewhere in 2021 a time traveler is nodding approvingly.
Samourai Wallet Co-Founder Heads to Prison
On a far more somber note, William Lonergan Hill — one of the developers behind the privacy-focused Samourai Wallet — was sentenced to four years in federal prison. Prosecutors framed the case as money-laundering facilitation; privacy advocates call it a dangerous precedent for open-source code.
Whatever side of that debate you fall on, the outcome sends a clear message: writing privacy tools can come with serious personal risk in 2025.
Other Quick Hits You Shouldn’t Miss
- Dar Global plans to tokenize up to 70% of a Trump-branded Maldives resort — because of course they do.
- Kraken closed an $800 million raise ahead of its rumored 2026 IPO.
- Revolut has already pushed nearly $700 million in volume across Polygon since integrating stablecoin payments.
- DappRadar announced it’s shutting down — a sad reminder that even well-known analytics platforms can run out of runway.
- Strategy (the public company formerly known as MicroStrategy) bought another 8,178 BTC, pushing holdings past 649,000 coins.
And just like that, another week in crypto draws to a close.
We had network forks, impossible mining wins, billion-dollar valuations, prison sentences, and leveraged meme ETFs — sometimes all before lunch.
If you’re still here reading recaps like this one, congratulations. You’ve officially survived another lap around the crypto circus. See you next week — assuming the blockchain doesn’t fork itself in half again before then.
Stay safe out there there.
