Writer, Crypto & Privacy
Digital money and staying private online, with a hard bias toward things she has run herself. Skeptical of anything promising to make you rich or invisible.
On 30 August, validators froze the Crypto.com-linked Cronos chain and rolled it back about two hours to reverse a lending exploit. The headline says $75M, but only $6.3M actually left. The bigger story is a chain choosing to rewrite settled history, and the argument that restarts every time one does.
An amended complaint against Meta and Luxottica adds a proposed class for bystanders it says were recorded by Ray-Ban smart glasses without consent, on top of the original false-advertising claims from buyers. Everything is an unproven allegation, and Meta says captured media stays on your device unless you share it. Here is what the case actually claims.
A little-known medical-data vendor, Aesto Health, has disclosed a breach affecting 9,540,683 people, the second-largest confirmed US healthcare breach of 2026 so far by HHS-reported totals. The intrusion happened in December 2025; the public disclosure is what is new now. Here is the timeline, why patients who never heard of Aesto are affected, and the standard steps to take.
On 25 August, Pennsylvania's attorney general sued Snap, accusing Snapchat of addictive design for minors and hiding how much adult content is on the app. It is one state's complaint that opens a case, not a ruling or a fine. Snap says the claims misrepresent its platform.
Grayscale filed to convert its Zcash Trust into a spot ETF on NYSE Arca under ticker ZCSH, expected to trade around 25 August. It would be one of the first US spot ETFs tied to a privacy coin. It charges 2.5 percent a year, and the token has been sharply volatile.
The US Justice Department said on 21 August that TikTok and ByteDance will pay up to $400 million to resolve a 2024 lawsuit accusing them of letting under-13s make accounts and collecting kids' data without consent, breaching COPPA. The deal adds age checks and requires no admission of wrongdoing.
Between 13 and 16 August, SafePal, Trezor's shipping partner ShipMonk, and Israel's Bits of Gold each disclosed breaches, exposing about a quarter-million customers' names, phones and shipping addresses. No wallets were drained, but the leaked addresses fuel targeted phishing and, for large holders, the physical 'wrench attacks' researchers say are rising.
Opening statements in the 29-state case against Meta began on 18 August in Oakland. After months of only Meta's $1.4 trillion worst-case figure, the states signalled they could seek around $200 billion, about three years of its profit. Meta calls the claims unsubstantiated; nothing is decided yet.
After cancelling a public meeting, the SEC approved a crypto-offering proposal on 18 August by seriatim vote. The text is now public: a tiered fundraising exemption up to $75 million, a $5 million startup path, and a safe harbour that turns on ceasing 'essential managerial efforts.' A proposal, not law, unlikely before 2027.
A cyberattack on MyDr, whose software is used by more than 12,000 Polish medical facilities, may have exposed the personal and medical data of nearly 19 million people, one of the country's largest ever incidents. Here is what officials have confirmed, what is still only claimed, and why one vendor breach reaches so many.
Riot Platforms, a major listed Bitcoin miner, signed a 20-year lease worth about $9.1 billion to host a frontier AI lab at its Texas campus; the filing does not name the tenant, but reports say Anthropic. It is among the clearest signs miners are pivoting to AI as mining margins collapse.
On 12 August an attacker exploited a consensus-verification flaw on the Harmony blockchain to mint roughly 4 billion ONE tokens, inflating supply about 26 percent and crashing the price by a third. The realised haul was only a few million dollars, but tokens minted from nothing is the real alarm.
A coalition of 29 US states has taken Meta to federal court in California, with opening statements set for 18 August. Four states lead a case alleging the company engineered Instagram and Facebook to hook young users and played down the risks. Meta strongly denies the claims, which an advisory jury will weigh.
Michael Saylor's Strategy, which turned 'never sell your Bitcoin' into a creed, has sold Bitcoin repeatedly in 2026, some below cost. That is a real regime change, but it is discretionary, not a forced fire sale, and the deeper story is the collapse of the premium that made the model work.
More than 100 crypto projects have shut down, gone bankrupt or gone dark this year, and in one late-July week four big names fell at once, capped by BitMEX saying it will close. Not just a price crash but a shakeout, clearing the speculative wave and leaving the projects that earn real money.
US spot Ethereum funds can finally stake the ETH they hold, paying investors a reported yield of roughly 3%, something Bitcoin funds structurally cannot do. Meanwhile the 'ETH is flipping Bitcoin' headlines are mostly hype: Ethereum has actually fallen further than Bitcoin this year. Here is what is real, what is narrow, and what is just narrative.
'Chat Control,' the EU push to scan private messages for child-abuse material, comes in two versions: a voluntary one survived a July vote, and a far-reaching mandatory one returns for a decisive autumn negotiation. At its heart is a hard question: can you scan everyone's messages without breaking the encryption that protects them?
Flock Safety's license-plate readers scan billions of cars a month into one searchable database used by thousands of police departments. In 2026 it emerged that federal immigration agents were tapping it without a contract or, critics say, a warrant. Here is how the network works, and why cities are now revolting against it.
From 3 August 2026, Google began using the IP addresses of users in the UK, EEA and Switzerland to identify their devices for ad targeting. A quiet but significant reversal: Google once said this tracking was wrong because, unlike a cookie, you cannot clear it. Here is what changed and what you can do.
On Friday the SEC votes on whether to propose 'Regulation Crypto,' a set of token-fundraising rules it has been sketching since 2025, now arriving as the CLARITY Act sits stalled in the Senate. Here is what tomorrow's vote actually decides (less than the headlines suggest), what the rules would do, and why nothing changes on Friday.
In August 2026, Wells Fargo became the latest giant to say it will tokenise customer deposits, joining JPMorgan, Citi and Bank of America in a shared network due in 2027. Wall Street calls it 'tokenisation,' but a tokenised deposit is not a stablecoin, and the change is smaller than the word suggests.
Roughly half of US states and the UK now demand you prove your age, often with a government ID or a face scan, to reach legal content. Sign-ups for VPNs that sidestep the checks have surged. Here is what changed, why privacy experts are alarmed, and whether any of it actually works.
For a year and a half the British government has been trying to force its way into end-to-end-encrypted iCloud data. Apple is now challenging a second, quieter version of that order, and UK users have already lost their strongest protection in the process. Here is the honest state of the most important encryption fight in the world.
The Coldcard hack of July 2026 emptied cold-storage wallets that never went online. The culprit was not a phishing link or a stolen device, but a randomness flaw that quietly sat in the firmware since 2021. Here is exactly what happened, who is affected, and what it does and does not mean for self-custody.
Bitcoin has fallen from a $126,000 record to the low $60,000s, and $2 trillion has been wiped off the crypto market. It feels like a crash. It is also, by Bitcoin's own brutal history, the mildest big drawdown it has ever had. Here is what actually drove it, and the honest case on both sides.
AI plus crypto is the hottest narrative in the market, and most of it is nonsense. A handful of projects solve a genuine problem, the rest borrowed the letters A and I to pump a token. Here is how to tell the difference, with no hype and no financial advice.
We ran the major providers as our only connection for six weeks and measured what matters: sustained speed, leak safety, and whether the no-log audits hold up. NordVPN won overall, Proton VPN is the value and free pick, Mullvad is the one for real anonymity.
In Venezuela, Argentina, Nigeria and Turkey, dollar-pegged crypto has quietly become everyday money for salaries, savings and groceries. Here is where it is happening, the real numbers, and the catch nobody advertises.
Buying crypto is easy. Buying it without getting robbed is the part that trips people up, and in 2025 that cost Americans over $11 billion. This is the safe way to do it, step by step, plus the scams that actually get people. It is a how-to, not investment advice.
Wallet-drainer phishing still stole $83.85 million from 106,000 people in 2025, and almost all of it was signed away, not hacked. We tested the popular self-custody wallets on the moment that decides everything: the signature.
The right exchange depends on two things above all: where you live, and what you want to do. We compare the five that matter on fees, safety and regulation, and say plainly which is not available where. This is a tool comparison, not investment advice.
The single most useful security tool you can install costs nothing, and the best one is open-source. Here are the free password managers worth trusting, the paid ones you can skip, and the big name to avoid outright.
A VPN does two genuinely useful things and gets sold as if it does ten. Here is the honest version: what it really hides, why it does not make you anonymous, and the tracking it cannot touch.
We ran the major VPNs against Netflix, Disney+ and BBC iPlayer to see which actually unblock, hold 4K without buffering, and keep working when the streaming services fight back. NordVPN won overall; ExpressVPN is the most consistent unblocker.