Today in crypto, major corporate Bitcoin buyers made headlines while a DeFi exploit forced a network halt. Strive acquired 1,800 Bitcoin for roughly $143 million, pushing itself into the top five publicly traded corporate Bitcoin holders. Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, resumed its Bitcoin purchases after a two-month pause with a $370 million acquisition. At the same time, Cronos stopped its blockchain after an exploit on the decentralized lending protocol Tectonic, with estimated losses near $75 million.
Strive joins top five corporate Bitcoin holders after $143 million purchase
Strive bought 1,800 Bitcoin for approximately $143 million last week, lifting its total holdings to 23,156 BTC. That made the asset manager the fifth-largest publicly traded corporate Bitcoin holder, according to data tracked by industry sources. The company acquired the Bitcoin at an average price of $79,431 per coin, including fees and expenses.
The purchase followed a 1,110 BTC acquisition the previous week for about $81.5 million. In just five business days, Strive expanded its Bitcoin holdings by roughly 8.4%, crossing a threshold that placed it ahead of crypto exchange Bullish in the ranking of corporate treasuries. Strive has positioned itself as a Bitcoin treasury company, a growing category of firms that hold BTC as a primary reserve asset.
The buying spree comes as Bitcoin rebounds from a recent downturn. Prices climbed more than 23% to above $81,000 after the US Treasury Department announced it would increase certain long-term bond buybacks. However, Bitcoin was back below $79,000 on Monday, showing that volatility remains a defining feature of the market. The price swings have not deterred corporate buyers, who continue to view Bitcoin as a long-term store of value and a hedge against inflation and currency debasement.
Strive’s rapid accumulation reflects a broader trend of public companies adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets. Since 2020, dozens of firms have followed the playbook popularized by Michael Saylor, using debt or equity offerings to buy Bitcoin. Strive’s move into the upper tier of corporate holders underscores how traditional asset managers are increasingly embracing digital assets as part of their treasury strategies.
The company’s decision to buy at prices near $79,000 also signals confidence in Bitcoin’s recovery potential. Despite recent drawdowns, many corporate treasurers see the current market as a buying opportunity. With institutional adoption continuing to expand, the presence of large public companies in the Bitcoin ecosystem provides a layer of validation that was absent in earlier market cycles.
Strategy buys $370 million Bitcoin in first corporate purchase since June
Michael Saylor’s Strategy acquired 4,603 Bitcoin for $370 million, marking its first corporate Bitcoin purchase in two months. The company bought the BTC at an average price of $80,318, pushing its total holdings to 845,050 BTC, according to a Monday 8-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Strategy has now spent $63.3 billion acquiring Bitcoin at an average price of $75,413 per coin. The latest purchase was funded by the net proceeds of a 602 million MSTR common stock sale. In addition to the Bitcoin acquisition, the company used $30 million of the proceeds to increase its USD Cash reserve and $151.8 million to repurchase its preferred STRC stock.
Nasdaq-traded MSTR was up less than 1% in Monday’s pre-market activity, after dropping more than 7% on Friday. The slight rebound suggests that investors are cautiously optimistic about the company’s continued Bitcoin accumulation strategy. Saylor has long argued that Bitcoin is the ultimate scarce asset and that converting corporate treasury reserves into BTC is a superior approach to holding cash or traditional fixed-income securities.
The move marks Strategy’s first corporate Bitcoin acquisition since mid-June, when the company last acquired 1,587 BTC for roughly $100 million. The two-month pause had led to speculation that the company might be changing course, but Monday’s filing put that to rest. Strategy remains the largest corporate Bitcoin holder by a significant margin, with a portfolio worth tens of billions of dollars depending on Bitcoin’s price.
Strategy’s aggressive accumulation has made it a proxy for Bitcoin exposure in traditional financial markets. Many institutional investors who cannot directly hold crypto buy MSTR shares as an alternative. This dynamic has created a feedback loop: as Bitcoin rises, Strategy’s holdings appreciate, potentially boosting its stock; as the stock rises, the company can sell more shares to buy more Bitcoin.
The company’s use of equity sales to fund Bitcoin purchases has drawn both praise and criticism. Supporters say it creates shareholder value by accumulating a deflationary asset. Critics warn that it increases leverage and volatility, especially if Bitcoin enters a prolonged bear market. Nevertheless, Saylor has remained steadfast, often saying that Bitcoin is the exit strategy.
Strategy’s latest purchase also comes at a time when Bitcoin is showing signs of recovery. The asset climbed above $81,000 after the US Treasury’s bond buyback announcement, though it subsequently fell back below $79,000. The continuing price swings have not stopped Strategy from executing its plan, which suggests a long-term conviction that many traditional investors lack.
Cronos halts network after Tectonic exploit involving estimated $75 million
Cronos halted its blockchain after an exploit targeting decentralized lending protocol Tectonic involved an estimated $75 million. Most of the affected funds remain on the Cronos network at the time of writing. On Sunday, Cronos said it identified an exploit in Tectonic and halted the network, promising updates. Tectonic separately warned users not to interact with the protocol while it investigated.
Neither project has confirmed the exact cause or final loss amount, and no restart timeline had been announced at publication. The halt is a significant event for the Cronos ecosystem, which is closely associated with Crypto.com and its native CRO token. A network halt is an extreme measure, but it can prevent attackers from moving funds off-chain or laundering them through other protocols.
Researcher Weilin Li said the attacker exploited TONIC’s 20% collateral factor and thin liquidity. According to Li, the attacker pumped the governance token’s price 100-fold within 20 minutes before borrowing other assets. Li described the incident as a “Mango-market style” pump-and-borrow attack, referring to a similar exploit on Solana in 2022.
In a Mango-style attack, an attacker uses a token with low liquidity as collateral, artificially inflates its price through large trades, and then borrows other assets against that inflated collateral. When the price collapses, the borrowed assets remain undercollateralized, leaving the protocol with bad debt. This type of attack exploits the manipulation of price oracles and the collateral factor assigned to certain tokens.
Li initially estimated that $66 million was affected. He said the attacker bridged about $6 million to Ethereum before the halt, leaving $60 million on Cronos. Li later identified another attacker-controlled address holding about $8 million, bringing his estimated loss to roughly $75 million. The discrepancy highlights the difficulty of quantifying losses in real time during an active exploit.
Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek said the company’s app and exchange were unaffected and operating normally, adding that funds there were safe. Cronos is a separate blockchain, but it is closely integrated with the Crypto.com ecosystem. The reassurance from the CEO may help calm users who feared that the exploit could affect the broader platform.
The Tectonic exploit raises questions about the security of decentralized lending protocols, especially those that rely on governance tokens with low liquidity. While DeFi has grown rapidly, it remains a fertile ground for attackers who understand how to manipulate price oracles and collateral mechanisms. The Cronos halt also underscores the trade-offs between decentralization and security: a network can pause operations to mitigate damage, but doing so contradicts the principle of censorship resistance.
Cronos and Tectonic have not said whether they will restrict the attacker’s addresses, recover the assets, or compensate affected users. These decisions will be critical for restoring trust in the ecosystem. In past exploits, some protocols have negotiated with attackers to return funds in exchange for bounties, while others have pursued legal action.
The incident is part of a broader pattern of DeFi exploits that have drained hundreds of millions of dollars from protocols over the past few years. Lending platforms are particularly vulnerable because they hold large pools of assets and rely on complex pricing mechanisms. Audits and bug bounties can reduce risk, but they cannot eliminate it entirely.
For the Cronos network, the halt is a serious challenge. The blockchain was designed to offer fast and low-cost transactions, with a growing ecosystem of DeFi applications. Recovering from an exploit of this scale requires not only technical fixes but also communication with users and partners. The lack of a restart timeline may create uncertainty, but it also indicates that the team is taking time to ensure the network is safe.
The estimated $75 million loss would make the Tectonic exploit one of the larger DeFi hacks of the year. It also serves as a reminder that even networks with strong institutional backing are not immune to attacks. As the investigation continues, the crypto community will be watching to see how Cronos and Tectonic respond.
Source:Cointelegraph News