Here’s what happened in crypto today

Today in crypto, Anthropic’s release of Claude Mythos put some crypto users on edge, unverified smart contracts were linked to at least $36.7 million in losses across four DeFi exploits since January and a MiCA architect said that the European Union should prioritize tokenization rules over decentralized finance.

Crypto wary as Anthropic releases Claude Mythos

Anthropic on Tuesday released the first public version of its powerful Claude Mythos model that uncovered thousands of major vulnerabilities last month, with some crypto users worried it could be used for malicious purposes despite embedded guardrails. 

The company said the model, called Fable 5, was “made safe for general use,” and reroutes some topics, such as cybersecurity, to a different model as “without safeguards, Fable 5’s capabilities in areas like cybersecurity could be misused to cause serious damage.”

Source: Claude

That did little to reassure crypto users, such as Moonrock Capital founder Simon Dedic, who said the “cost and skill required to find exploitable flaws in smart contracts is about to drop to basically zero.” He also urged crypto users to revoke wallet approvals and move crypto to fresh hardware wallets to protect themselves.

Curve Finance co-founder Michael Egorov, however, said that the threat Claude Mythos posed to crypto was likely overblown as its success in finding bugs in other software might not translate to funding smart contract vulnerabilities in crypto due to differences in coding.

Unverified DeFi contracts linked to $36.7M in losses: Chainalysis

Unverified smart contracts were linked to at least $36.7 million in losses across four DeFi exploits over the past six months, as attackers increasingly target protocols whose source code is not publicly available, according to Chainalysis.

The largest incident involved Truebit, which lost $26.2 million after an attacker exploited an integer overflow vulnerability in a contract that had remained unverified on Ethereum since 2021. The other incidents involved Trusted Volumes, Aperture Finance and Ekubo, according to the report.

In each case, the exploited contract had not been verified on a blockchain explorer, meaning its source code was not publicly available for review. According to Chainalysis, that limited scrutiny from security researchers and excluded the contracts from many bug bounty programs despite controlling user funds.

Chainalysis attributed the trend in part to advances in decompilation tools and artificial intelligence, which can help attackers reverse-engineer smart contract bytecode and identify vulnerabilities even when source code is not publicly available.

Five protocols saw exploits on unverified smart contracts since January.
Source: Chainalysis

MiCA architect says EU should prioritize tokenization over DeFi rules

The European Union should focus on a broader digital asset framework covering real-world assets and tokenization instead of regulating DeFi through a second version of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), an adviser at the European Commission said.

The European Commission launched a public consultation on MiCA in May, seeking feedback through Aug. 31.

An excerpt from the public consultation on the MiCA review.
Source: European Commission

"I do not believe that [MiCA] is outdated now. That’s my personal opinion, but it does not matter. That’s why we have this consultation,” Peter Kerstens told Cointelegraph during a fireside chat at WAIB Summit Monaco 2026.

Kerstens, one of MiCA's architects, said that the feedback received during the European Commission's current review period will help shape the bloc's next regulatory steps.

MiCA is approaching the end of its transitional period on July 1, after which crypto asset service providers will be required to hold a MiCA license or stop servicing EU clients.