American In London: Drugged, Robbed, and Rugged 🤕
OVERVIEW
American In London: Drugged, Robbed, and Rugged 🤕
Before we dive in, here’s today’s crypto market heatmap:
Source: Santiment
And here’s a look at crypto’s total market and altcoin market cap charts:
Source: TradingView
NEWS
American In London: Drugged, Robbed, and Rugged
Here’s a crypto nightmare from MyLondon to go along with the Parisian crypto kidnappings – except this time, if it wasn’t obvious, this incident happened across the channel in the UK. 💂
Imagine waking up groggy, leg shredded, wallet (regular and crypto) emptied, and life savings completely vaporized overnight. That’s exactly what happened to Jacob Irwin-Cline, an American tourist staying at the Urbany Hostel in London.
I did look up the Urbany – and it has great reviews.
Urbany Hostel London. Looks like either prison or a barracks. Source: Booking.com
Personally, I learned all I need to know about hostels from the same place I learned about great white sharks: movies. 🎞️
And as a lifelong Midwesterner, I’ve lived a happy life not chumming the ocean’s waters for Jaws or staying in a communal sleeping place with complete strangers who want to see if I am an organ donor (I am, but just not in the way they probably want me to be).
Anyway.
After knocking back three whiskey sours at The Roxy (a bar) in Soho, Jacob, decided to Uber back to his hostel around 1:30 am. 🥃
A friendly driver calling out his alias flagged him down. Jacob hopped into a “dark sedan,” notably not the Prius he booked, unaware his new buddy was setting him up for a seriously bad trip, pun intended.
After being offered a cigarette, instead of pulling out the tried and true Just Say No Nancy Reagan card, Jacob accepted. Jacob now believes it was laced with something called Devil’s Breath. 👿
He drifted in and out of consciousness, willingly handing over passcodes to his digital life. When he finally snapped back to reality, he was dumped curbside and the fake Uber hit Jacob as it sped off.
In total, Jacob lost around $123,000 spread across Bitcoin, XRP, and a buffet of smaller altcoins – most of his life’s wealth wiped clean. 😱
Source: MyLondon
He’s been working with the FBI’s cybercrime unit but considering the pace at which authorities typically handle crypto crimes, let’s just say he’s not holding his breath. 🫁
It’s clear that after the Parisian kidnappings and this most recent shitestorm in Soho, crypto people need to add a few more maxims to their crypto sayings. Along with Not Your Keys, Not Your Crypto we should probably include something like crypto out of sight, safer at night or drinks and wallets don’t mix.
Be safe out there folks. 🛡️
POLL
Do You Trade Crypto Over The Weekend? 🤔
Crypto never takes a day off. 🗓️
Click here to take the poll.
And, according to responses made already, the majority of you don’t take a day off either.
A little under a day left on this poll, so go vote!
TECHNICAL ANALYSIS
Bitcoin: New All-Time Highs 🚀
And there it is, Bitcoin’s newest new all-time high: $109,786. Less than $300 bucks from the $110,000 level. 🎂
Let’s take a look at the intraday price action:
BTCUSD 5-minute Chart – Click to enlarge.
Depending on the exchange, Bitcoin made the latest new all-time high around 12:47 PM EST. From there, Bitcoin spent the next hour dropping -3.3% (-$3,625) to $106,200.
BTC has since returned to the $108,000 value area. As of 430 PM EST, bulls and bears are still fighting it out near $108. ⚔️
How Long Did It Take? 🤔
How long did it take BTC to make this new all-time high from the last one? 121-days (June 20, 2025).
Before that? A measly 34 days (December 17, 2024 to January 20, 2025).
But the longest, most recent stretch Bitcoin faced was the time it took to crack above $68,997 – which first occurred on November 10, 2021.
Bitcoin didn’t break that high until 846 days later – March 5, 2024. That’s 2.3 years. Nearly 28 months or 121 weeks. Either way you want to count it: ouch.
March 5, 2024 was just a bit over a year ago, and Bitcoin’s already surged +58% since then. Wild how quickly crypto moves. 🤯
TECHNICAL ANALYSIS
That Beautiful, Beautiful, Trendline 📈
There’s a trendline on Bitcoin’s chart that we’ve been looking at for over a year now. We first looked at it in the April 2, 2024 Litepaper:
April 2, 2024 BTCUSD Weekly Chart – Click to enlarge.
And the most recent time we checked it out was a little under two weeks ago, in the May 9, 2025 Litepaper:
May 9, 2024 BTCUSD Daily Chart – Click to enlarge.
Fast forward to today and between May 9 and today, that trendline has, again, proven to be a major source of support/resistance:
BTCUSD Daily Chart – Click to enlarge.
After spending the past couple weeks battling to move and close above that trendline, it’s clear the bull’s fight isn’t quite over yet. 🥊
ON-CHAIN ANALYSIS
Burnt Bag Briefing 🔥
Want to know whether the bulls or bears are feeling the most pain today? Well, this is the place to look. 👀
24-Hour Liquidation Heat Map – Source: coinglass – Click to enlarge.
In the past 24 hours, 122,233 traders were liquidated, with total liquidations reaching nearly $426.66 million.
The largest single liquidation occurred on Bybit, a BTCUSD pair valued at $2.79 million.
Longs lost $191.52 million, while shorts were hit for $235.13 million. 🤕
NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
AI, Stablecoins, & Privacy News 🕵️
🥊 Dash Sidesteps Bitcoin Drama Yet Again
Bitcoin Core devs are arguing (again), this time over OP_RETURN field size limits – riveting stuff. Dash, meanwhile, smugly points out it solved this kind of drama ages ago with its built-in DAO governance. You know, a voting system that actually settles debates without GitHub meltdowns? Plus they’ve got separate chains for payments and data, and a decentralized API so users don’t even have to worry about any of this mess. Dash.
💰 Unity Launches on Avalanche
XSY launched Unity on Avalanche, a synthetic dollar designed to give your AVAX some actual use besides mooning (or crashing, depending on your luck). Basically, you get stable dollar exposure while still riding AVAX, avoiding selling or bridging off-chain. Avalanche.
NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Metaverse, NFT, & Gaming News 🎮️
🗡️ Broly Lets Starknet Users Create Bitcoin Inscriptions
Broly on Starknet lets you inscribe data onto Bitcoin without even holding BTC. It’s supposed to be a “trust-minimized” way of doing Bitcoin inscriptions from Starknet wallets, which sounds pretty clever. But let’s be real, trusting Bitcoin data on another network feels like buying an NFT from Craigslist: might be fine, but probably sketchy. Starknet.
⚔️ Katana Shutting Down Liquidity Mining Program
One of crypto’s biggest gaming chains, Ronin, is sunsetting its Katana liquidity mining rewards (bye-bye, free RON tokens) and pushing everyone toward Katana v3; promising smarter liquidity and better yields. It’s probably good news long-term, but saying goodbye to free tokens always stings a bit. Hooray progress. Ronin Network.
NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
DeFi, DEX, & Lending Protocol News 🏦
🚧 NEAR Killing Off Free Public RPCs
NEAR is pulling the plug on their free RPC endpoints starting June 1, telling devs to basically cough up cash or run their own nodes. This is supposed to make things “more decentralized,” which is true, but it also sounds like a fancy way of saying “we don’t wanna pay your AWS bill anymore.” Near Protocol.
⚡️ Instant Finality Coming to eCash
eCash is finally launching their “instant finality” upgrade – basically, transactions will settle, um, instantly-ish. This is assuming it actually works and doesn’t blow up the blockchain somehow. Sure, this removes settlement risks and greedy intermediaries (I’m looking at you, Visa), but experience and reality have taught me crypto promising ‘instant’ anything usually means ‘instant headache.’ eCash.
OLD NEWS
Last Years News, Today 👴
From the May 21, 2024 Litepaper:
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Gala Games Hacked, Hacker Returns Funds:
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Hacker minted 5 billion GALA tokens, sold 600 million for 6,000 ETH (~$23M), then inexplicably returned all the funds.
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Incident triggered a 19% drop in GALA price; investor DWF Labs stepped in to stabilize the market.
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Ethereum Devs Face Conflict-of-Interest Drama:
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Ethereum Foundation researchers Justin Drake and Dankrad Feist under scrutiny for advisory roles at EigenLayer’s EigenFoundation.
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Web3 Gaming Highlights:
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Immutable launches BADMAD ROBOTS, a multiplayer shooter backed by esports pros, launching Q2 2024 with NFT gear customization.
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BAYC and basedVC introduce APES Capital, allowing Bored Ape holders to invest in blockchain startups using staked $APE tokens.
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Quick Crypto Headlines:
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MAGA insider dump causes token drop; market still active.
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UK judge dismisses Craig Wright’s Satoshi Nakamoto claim as fraudulent.
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Bitcoin halving significantly cuts miner earnings, raising centralization fears.
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Ripple-SEC lawsuit nears climax; court decision imminent on critical transparency issue.
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LINKS
Links That Don’t Suck 🔗
🕵️ $400M Coinbase Hack: The Case for zkTLS & Decentralized ID
🖥️ Bloomberg terminal back up after outage affects European bond sales
🖼️ TezCon 2025: Get Ready for the Ultimate Tezos Fan Experience
🤖 Elon Musk gushes over Optimus robot as Tesla shows off its ability to learn from humans
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