Here’s what happened in crypto today

Today in crypto, affluent investors are allocating roughly 10% of their portfolios to digital assets, Ethereum’s Economic Zone tested an atomic transaction between mainnet and a layer 2 and ZachXBT linked a Chinese crime network to more than $1 billion in crypto laundering for North Korea’s Lazarus Group.

Crypto is becoming a 10% portfolio bet for wealthy investors

Digital assets now account for roughly 10% of the average portfolio among affluent investors surveyed by CoinShares, and most existing holders plan to increase their exposure this year.

The survey covered 2,230 investors with at least $500,000 in investable assets across the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland. Digital asset ownership exceeded 50% in every market and reached roughly 70% in four.

The bigger shift may be how investors view crypto. Long-term appreciation and diversification ranked as the leading reasons for owning digital assets, while speculation came last. Just 6% of respondents primarily identified as short-term traders.

February’s market downturn also failed to reverse those plans. In every country surveyed, more investors said the sell-off increased their interest in crypto than reduced it. At least 85% of existing holders in five countries plan to add to their positions this year.

Bitcoin remains the main entry point, with 80% of crypto investors holding BTC. But it is rarely their only exposure: 89% of Bitcoin investors also owned other digital assets.

EEZ tests atomic L1-to-L2 transaction in push to unify Ethereum

The EEZ has tested an atomic transaction between Ethereum mainnet and a layer-2 network, according to a project contributor.

On Tuesday, EEZ contributor Eduardo Antuña Díez shared the transaction and called it the “first atomic cross-chain” L1-to-L2 transaction. The transaction’s logs record a cross-chain call carrying 0.001 Ether (ETH) and a state update for a rollup.

In an atomic transaction, linked actions across networks either all succeed or are all reversed if any part fails.

In March, developers behind the EEZ said the framework was designed to let rollups interact with each other and Ethereum mainnet within a single transaction, without relying on bridges. The project aims to reconnect liquidity and applications spread across separate L2 networks.

Gnosis co-founder Friederike Ernst previously told Cointelegraph that the lack of synchronous composability forces protocols to maintain separate deployments across L2s, fragmenting liquidity into multiple markets.

Chinese crime network laundered over $1B for Lazarus: ZachXBT

A Chinese organized crime syndicate laundered more than $1 billion stolen in multiple crypto exploits for North Korea’s Lazarus Group, according to blockchain investigator ZachXBT. 

In an Oct. 5 thread on X, pseudonymous blockchain investigator ZachXBT said he posed as a paying client to infiltrate the money laundering network in February 2025, just days after the Bybit hack. He put up $349,700 in stablecoins and took a 5% loss on each order to build trust with one of the network’s operators, known as “Jimmy Green.”

ZachXBT said the operations spanned Hong Kong and mainland China, and information supplied by the launderer helped him identify a cluster of more than $12 million in Bybit-linked funds, with Tether later freezing $442,000 in associated USDt (USDT). 

The investigation offers rare insight into the alleged intermediaries handling North Korea’s stolen crypto. Hackers linked to the country have stolen at least $6.75 billion in digital assets through 2025, according to Chainalysis.