The recent $293 million hack of Kelp DAO has knocked $20 billion off of the total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance, according to JPMorgan. DeFi was the unintended victim of the Kelp DAO hack, with some $230 million worth of fake tokens used to borrow on the Aave lending platform. That bad debt saw Aave lose $10 billion in total value locked, referring to the value of tokens deposited in Aave’s lending pools. But the damage isn’t limited to Aave, said JPMorgan analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou in an April 23 report. In the days following the April 18 exploit of Kelp DAO, another $10 billion has moved off…
-
-
Web3 Gaming is Dead: Report
$11B of $12B Investments Lost
The Web3 gaming sector is all but dead, with $11 billion of the more than $12 billion deployed from 2020 to 2026 “practically gone.” That’s according to market-making and trading firm Caladan, which said in a April 22 report that 93% of all GameFi projects are “effectively dead.” The average gaming token is down 95% from its all-time high. And even Animoica Brands, the biggest player in the Web3 gaming space, has reduced gaming from its core thesis to 25% of its portfolio, pivoting to stablecoins, Caladan said. “The funding arc tells the story,” the report said. “From $70 million in 2020 to a $4 billion peak in 2022, then…
-
Latest Hack Pushes April Crypto Losses Over $600M
More than a dozen thefts this month alone
Just days after the Kelp DAO bridge was hit with a massive $293 million exploit, yet another protocol has been hacked. While the amount stolen was comparatively small — just $3.5 million — there have been more than a dozen reported hacks/exploits this month alone. And it pushed the amount stolen over $600 million, with another eight days to go. Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Volo said on April 22 that three of its vaults had been robbed, but that another $28 million in other vaults is safe. All funds have been frozen until Volo figures out what happened and how to prevent a recurrence. “We want to be clear,” Volo…
-
One-Third of the 2025 Tax Forms Kraken Filed Were Below $1
Capital gains taxes must be paid on all of them
Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken filed 56 million crypto tax forms in 2025. Half were for amounts below $10 and three quarters below $50. One third were below a single dollar. That’s a big problem for crypto owners when it comes to filing taxes, as each of those transactions requires them to fill out a capital gains report. “These forms were not sent to sophisticated traders who made big returns from crypto,” Kraken said in an April 22 report. “The vast majority of the forms are for staking rewards measured in fractions of a cent, small purchases, and routine activity. Every single one generates a form that a real person is now…
