Crypto giants Ripple and Circle are again in the spotlight, with rumors of a $20 billion deal surfacing after a $5 billion agreement failed to materialize. Experts are divided on whether Ripple will go all out to acquire the stablecoin issuer, with some considering the $20 billion deal too unrealistic.
This article examines the likelihood of Ripple’s $20 billion bid for Circle and its potential impact on the XRP ecosystem.
Will Ripple Buy Circle for $20B?
In the latest development within the XRP community, all eyes are on Ripple’s escalating efforts to acquire Circle, a move that could solidify its position in the stablecoin market. Ripple is said to be pushing forward with a new $20 billion proposal, following the collapse of its $5 billion Circle deal. While Ripple remains tight-lipped about its Circle acquisition plans, expert insights from Scott Melker (The Wolf Of All Streets) suggest CEO Brad Garlinghouse might be considering a substantial bid increase.
Community Questions the Alleged ‘Unrealistic’ Circle Bid
Despite increasing speculations of Ripple’s potential $20 billion Circle purchase, many question the viability of the deal. For instance, industry expert Dom Kwok suggested that the XRP platform’s final offer for Circle will likely fall within the range of $6 billion to $6.5 billion. His estimation is based on the typical acquisition premium, which is the amount a buyer pays above the target company’s valuation to incentivize the sale. This premium usually ranges from 20% to 30%.
Assuming that Circle’s valuation is around $5 billion, the expert asserted that a 20% premium would put the offer at $6 billion, while a 30% premium would put it at $6.5 billion. With this detailed analysis, the expert dismisses the rumors surrounding Ripple’s potential purchase of the USDT issuer for a whopping $20 billion.
Amidst these speculations, XRP lawyer John Deaton has brought up an interesting angle regarding the deal. The XRP attorney underscored the possibility of a “bidding war” between Ripple and Coinbase, a top crypto exchange, which already holds a minority stake in the stablecoin issuer.
However, if Ripple finally acquires Circle, one of the largest stablecoin issuers, it could be a game-changer for the former.
March 2025 is witnessing a significant wave of changes in how US states approach cryptocurrency. Several states are actively introducing and passing legislative initiatives to promote crypto adoption.
Recent developments over the past week indicate a clear shift. US lawmakers no longer see cryptocurrency solely as a speculative asset but as a strategic part of the financial future.
Kentucky: Protecting Bitcoin Rights and Crypto Mining
One of the most notable advances this month comes from Kentucky. On March 24, the state governor signed the “Blockchain Digital Asset Act” (HB701) into law after the state Senate passed it with an overwhelming 37-0 vote.
This law protects residents’ right to self-custody Bitcoin while also legalizing and incentivizing crypto mining. It signals that Kentucky aims to safeguard individual rights in the crypto space and position itself as a potential blockchain mining hub.
With abundant energy resources from coal and hydropower, the state has a competitive advantage in attracting crypto-mining companies. Data shows that Kentucky accounts for 11% of the US Bitcoin hashrate.
North Carolina: Crypto in Pension Funds and Strategic Reserves
North Carolina lawmakers are taking things a step further by proposing cryptocurrency integration into the public financial system.
According to Bitcoin Law, Bill H506, introduced on March 24, allows up to 5% of the state’s public funds to be invested in digital assets. Similarly, Bill S709, which also permits a 5% public fund allocation, was submitted to the Senate on Tuesday.
If passed, these initiatives would mark a major turning point. North Carolina could become one of the pioneering states using cryptocurrency to protect public funds from inflation and economic volatility. Lawmakers are accelerating discussions, with expectations of a decision in the coming weeks.
Arizona: Advancing Toward Digital Asset Reserves
Arizona is also joining the race. The state’s House Rules Committee recently approved two bills: The Digital Assets Strategic Reserve Fund Bill (SB1373) and The Arizona Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Act (SB1025).
SB1373 allows the creation of a digital asset reserve funded by assets seized in criminal cases managed by the state treasurer. The treasurer can invest up to 10% of the reserve annually and lend assets to generate additional revenue as long as financial risks remain controlled.
Meanwhile, SB1025 permits the Arizona state treasury and pension system to invest up to 10% of their funds in Bitcoin. If a federal Bitcoin reserve fund is established, Arizona’s Bitcoin reserves could be securely stored in a separate account within that fund.
Additionally, last week, the Oklahoma House passed the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Bill (HB1203).
This bill allows the Oklahoma State Treasurer to invest public funds from the State General Fund, Revenue Stabilization Fund, and Constitutional Reserve Fund in Bitcoin and other large-market digital assets (those with a market cap exceeding $500 billion), as well as stablecoins.
Half of the US States Have Introduced Bitcoin Reserve Bills
According to Bitcoin Law, 23 out of 50 US states have introduced Bitcoin reserve bills. Matthew Sigel, Head of Digital Assets Research at VanEck, believes that if enacted, these bills could drive significant Bitcoin purchases.
States Have Introduced Bitcoin Reserve Bills. Source: Bitcoin Law
“We analyzed 20 state-level Bitcoin reserve bills. If enacted, they could drive $23 billion in buying, or 247,000 BTC. This sum is independent of any pension fund allocations, likely to rise if legislators move forward,” Sigel predicted.
Donald Trump has completed his first 100 days at the White House with a bullish note for his TRUMP memecoin price performance. Starting with a bunch of crypto promises before becoming the 47th U.S. President, these few days brought complete turmoil in the crypto market. The election win resulted in a highly bullish rally, turning into a meme coin launch, and the crypto market crash. A lot happened, but what’s coming next? Let’s discuss.
Trump’s First 100 Days & Crypto Moves Affected TRUMP Memecoin Price
Donald Trump has now completed his 100 days, marked by extreme crypto moves. This includes the launch of the TRUMP memecoin with a massive price rally, insider claims, a Trump dinner offer, and controversies.
However, there were many more, including a $500B AI initiative (backed by OpenAI and other AI firms), Pardoning Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, a CBDC ban, and the formation of a pro-crypto working group.
The introduction of the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, a crypto stockpile, and crypto-friendly Paul Atkins becoming SEC Chair. Amid these positive catalysts, some, such as the US-China trade war after implementing serious tariffs, also took shape. It resulted in the crypto and the rest of the financial markets crashing.
The US economy also felt tremors as the supply chain got disrupted, increasing the odds of recession in the US. Amid this, the Trump coin price went through massive ups and downs, but the end of 100 days left a bullish note, as the Trump dinner invite increased the token’s demand.
Donald Trump Dinner Fuels TRUMP Memecoin Price, What’s Next?
Trump’s dinner announcement resulted in a more than 60% rally for his cryptocurrency. However, controversy followed as critics like Senators Adam Schiff and Elizabeth Warren have called for an investigation, as this enriched Trump-linked wallets by $100 million.
Also, on-chain analytics revealed the Trump team dumped $20M in tokens ahead of the dinner event, making profits as the coin price was high. As a result, the TRUMP memecoin price declined, losing 7% of its value in the last 24 hours.
The meme coin has shifted from a bullish rally to significant contraction, but the experts’ Official Trump price predictions are still bullish.
TRUMP Coin Price to Hit $45 Next
After a shallow contraction, TRUMP coin currently trades at $13.13, with a market capitalization of $2.62B. Additionally, the trading volume stands at $1.11B, showcasing investors’ rising demand. Though the rally halted today, experts claim the bullish trajectory is still confirmed.
According to the CryptoElites’ X post, the technical setup of the coin is highly bullish under the cup and handle formation, with the next potential targets as $25, $35, and $45
Another added that as long as the $13 support stands, the bullish structure would stay intact. A breakout above $15 would confirm a bullish rally. Interestingly, these are just short-term targets, and the long-term sees the TRUMP memecoin price at $60 or higher.
Social engineering scams are on the rise, and these exploits have particularly targeted Coinbase users throughout the first quarter of 2025. According to a series of investigations by ZachXBT, users have lost over $100 million in funds since December 2024, while annual losses reached $300 million.
After sorting through the complaints made by different users, BeInCrypto spoke with Coinbase Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Jeff Lunglhofer to understand what makes users vulnerable to these kinds of attacks, how they happen, and what’s being done to stop them.
Gauging the Seriousness of Scams Affecting Coinbase Users
Throughout the first quarter of 2025, several Coinbase users fell victim to social engineering scams. As the leading centralized exchange in a sector where hacks are becoming more sophisticated with time, this reality is no surprise.
In a recent investigation, Web3 researcher ZachXBT reported on several messages he received from different X users who had suffered major withdrawals from their Coinbase accounts.
1/ Over the past few months I imagine you have seen many Coinbase users complain on X about their accounts suddenly being restricted.
This is the result of aggressive risk models and Coinbase’s failure to stop its users losing $300M+ per year to social engineering scams. pic.twitter.com/PjtX7vmjqc
On March 28, ZachXBT revealed a significant social engineering exploit that cost one individual close to $35 million. The crypto sleuth’s further investigations during that period uncovered additional victims of the same exploit, pushing the total stolen in March alone to more than $46 million.
In a separate investigation concluded a month earlier, ZachXBT revealed that $65 million was stolen from Coinbase users between December 2024 and January 2025. He also reported that Coinbase has been quietly grappling with a social engineering scam issue costing its users $300 million a year.
While Coinbase users have been particularly vulnerable to social engineering scams, centralized exchanges, in general, have also been significantly impacted by these increasingly sophisticated attacks.
How Does The Broader Context Reflect This Situation?
Public data regarding the evolution of social engineering scams in recent years is limited and somewhat outdated. Yet, the numbers in the available reports are staggering.
In 2023, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) under the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released its first-ever cryptocurrency report. Investment fraud constituted the largest category of cryptocurrency-related complaints, representing 46% of the nearly 69,500 complaints received, or approximately 33,000 cases.
The FBI’s IC3 reported an increase in crypto-related scams in 2023. Source: IC3.
Investment fraud, or pig butchering, involves false promises of high returns with low risk to lure investors, especially crypto newcomers driven by a fear of missing out on significant gains.
According to the IC3 report, these schemes rely on social engineering and building trust. Criminals use platforms like social media, dating apps, professional networks, or encrypted messaging to connect with their targets.
In 2023, these investment scams resulted in losses of $3.96 billion for users, representing a 53% increase from the previous year. Other social engineering scams, like phishing and spoofing, further constituted $9.6 million in losses.
Coinbase scammers tend to create fake emails that appear legitimate using cloned website images and false Case IDs. They then contact users through spoofed calls, leveraging private information to build trust before sending them these deceptive emails.
Once scammers have convinced users of the interaction’s legitimacy, they exploit the situation to persuade them to transfer funds.
The increasing sophistication of these scams illustrates both the emotional manipulation involved and the particular vulnerability of the victims. They demonstrate that centralized exchanges are often the primary platforms for these exploitations.
ZackXBT’s investigations and user reports on X reveal a gap between the extent of social engineering scams and Coinbase’s apparent management effectiveness.
Public discussions indicate that Coinbase has not flagged theft addresses in common compliance tools.
Victims of scams and users whose funds were frozen are urging Coinbase to take stronger action against this growing and costly issue. Understanding how these scams take place is essential to effectively addressing them.
How Are Coinbase Users Made Victims?
In January, a victim contacted the investigator after losing $850,000. In that instance, the scammer contacted the victim from a spoofed phone number, using personal information likely obtained from private databases to gain their trust.
5/ They then sent a spoofed email which appeared to be from Coinbase with a fake Case ID further gaining trust.
They instructed the victim to transfer funds to a Coinbase Wallet and whitelist an address while “support” verified their accounts security. pic.twitter.com/pOTQpnMfCz
The scammer convinced the victim that their account had suffered multiple unauthorized login attempts by sending them a spoofed email with a fake Case ID. The scammer then instructed the victim to safelist an address and transfer funds to another Coinbase wallet as part of a routine security procedure.
Last October, another Coinbase user lost $6.5 million after receiving a call from a spoofed number impersonating Coinbase support.
The victim was coerced into using a phishing site. Eight months earlier, another victim lost $4 million after a scammer convinced them to reset their Coinbase login.
ZachXBT raised concerns about Coinbase’s lack of reporting the theft addresses in common compliance resources and their perceived inadequate handling of the escalating social engineering issue.
In a conversation with BeInCrypto, Jeff Lunglhofer, Coinbase’s Chief Information Security Officer, shared his version of the events.
Coinbase CISO Addresses Social Engineering Scams
Despite Coinbase’s clear understanding of the widespread harm caused by social engineering scams affecting its users, Lunglhofer stressed that the broader crypto community should address this problem collectively rather than entrusting the responsibility to a single entity.
“In the context of the broader social engineering challenge that’s out there, of course, Coinbase customers are impacted. We’re keenly aware of it. We’ve been rolling [out] a number of control improvements to help protect our users, and, I think more importantly, we are working with the broader industry to bring these ideas and these control uplifts across the industry, across all crypto exchanges, across everything,” Lunglhofer told BeInCrypto.
Coinbase’s CISO referenced the exchange’s collaborative efforts with other platforms to combat this problem in his reply.
Specifically, Lunglhofer pointed to the “Tech Against Scams” initiative, a partnership with industry players like Match Group, Meta, Kraken, Ripple, and Gemini to fight online fraud and financial schemes.
Lunglhofer also added that Coinbase takes a similar approach when flagging theft addresses.
Why Coinbase Handles Theft Addresses Differently
When BeInCrypto asked Coinbase why it doesn’t publish theft addresses across popular compliance tools, Lunglhofer explained that the exchange has a different procedure for these scenarios.
“We will communicate with other exchanges directly [and] let them know the addresses that we’ve seen where assets have been withdrawn,” he said, adding that “when we see that there’s, in fact, fraudulent [activity], we will pull back all the wallets that are associated with the fraud and we’ll push those out to the other exchanges that we have communications with,” he said.
Lunglhofer also mentioned Crypto ISAC, an intelligence and information-sharing group established by Coinbase in collaboration with various other crypto exchanges and organizations to distribute information related to scams.
Coinbase’s Struggle Against the Flood of Spoofed Content
Lunglhofer admitted that the number of spoofed emails Coinbase identifies or receives in the form of reports far exceeds the exchange’s capacity to take them down.
“Regrettably, they’re a dime a dozen. I can open ten of them in five minutes. It’s super easy to do. So there’s not a lot we can do about that. But, when we identify them [or when] a customer reports them, we do have them taken down,” he said.
Coinbase uses vendors to eliminate circulating spoofs or phishing campaigns in those instances.
“We have several vendors that we use to do takedowns. So anytime we see a fraudulent phone number pop up, anytime we see a fraudulent URL [or] a fraudulent website get established, we will issue those for takedown. We’ll use our vendors to work with the DNS providers and others to bring those down as quickly as possible,” Lunglhofer told BeInCrypto.
Although these preventative measures are essential for the future, they provide minimal recourse for users who have already lost millions of dollars to scams.
Whose Responsibility Is It? User vs. Exchange
Coinbase did not respond to BeInCrypto’s inquiry about developing an insurance policy for users who lost savings to social engineering scams, leaving their approach in this area unclear.
Yet, social engineering scams are complex, relying on significant emotional manipulation to build trust. This complexity raises questions about the degree of responsibility that falls on user vulnerability versus potential shortcomings in the centralized exchange’s user protection measures.
The broader cryptocurrency community generally agrees that more educational materials are necessary to help users distinguish between legitimate communications and scam attempts.
Regarding this issue, Lunglhofer clarified that Coinbase will never call users out of the blue. He also noted that Coinbase has recently implemented different features that act as warnings for users potentially interacting with a scam.
Furthermore, the CISO cited a ‘scam quiz,’ an educational tool that appears as a real-time banner when a user is about to undertake a transaction flagged as suspicious by the exchange.
Though this feature is an advantage, its ability to protect users is hard to quantify, especially regarding how efficiently it flags suspicious activity. Coinbase did not respond when BeInCrypto asked if the exchange internally tracked data related to social engineering scams.
A similar issue arises with Coinbase’s ‘allow lists.’
The $850,000 Coinbase Loss
Coinbase offers a feature that enables users to create a safelist of approved recipient addresses to help prevent transactions to unfamiliar or unverified addresses. Lunglhofer strongly urges Coinbase users to adopt this measure.
“We offer every retail customer the ability to create ‘allow lists’ for wallets that they’re permitted to transfer assets to. On my personal account on Coinbase, I have ‘allow listing’ turned on, and I only have three wallets that are allowed,” Lunglhofer detailed.
However, the $850,000 scam loss suffered by a Coinbase user in January, as revealed by ZachXBT, shows a critical limitation of safelists.
Even after a victim adds a theft address, manipulation leading to this addition can still occur, thereby neutralizing the intended protection.
Can Coinbase Do More to Protect Users?
Sophisticated social engineering scams are a growing threat, creating significant challenges for crypto users. Coinbase users and centralized exchanges in general are particularly affected.
Despite Coinbase’s outlined efforts, the significant financial losses highlight the limitations of current industry-standard measures against determined scammers.
While cooperation is crucial across the board, Coinbase, as a leading platform, must also put more proactive efforts and resources into educating its users.
Social engineering is predominantly a user-driven issue, not a security failure for any exchange. Yet, platforms like Coinbase have the critical responsibility to lead industry-wide initiatives to address these threats.
The millions lost are a stark reminder that vigilance and collective action are paramount in safeguarding users against these increasingly refined and frequent attacks.
