When crypto money disappears, who is legally on the hook? An Argentine judge answered that for the LIBRA memecoin, an Ethereum project learned its own governance rules authorized its looting, and a hardware wallet maker lost its customer list.
An Argentine Judge Ends the Criminal Case Over LIBRA
Federal judge Marcelo Martinez de Giorgi dismissed the criminal investigation into President Javier Milei and his sister Karina Milei on Friday, October 23, over the collapse of $LIBRA, the memecoin Milei promoted in a February 2025 post he later deleted. The judge wrote that the reported events do not constitute a criminal offense, and that investor losses alone were not enough to establish fraud. The same order cleared Hayden Davis, a self-described launch adviser who acknowledges holding close to $100 million after the crash and denies wrongdoing.
Promotion and fraud are different legal animals. Criminal fraud generally requires a misrepresentation plus intent to deceive, and posting about a token that later collapses supplies neither by itself. The dismissal resolves nothing about civil claims elsewhere.
Attackers Bought a DAO's Senate and Voted Its Treasury Away
On October 24 at 14:11 UTC, an attacker took a flash loan of roughly 1.94 million USDT from Aave, bought X tokens, froze them to qualify for seats in X100's three-member Senate, then created, voted on, and executed a governance proposal inside the same transaction. The proposal told the project's Freezer contract to sell 400,000 X into a pool the attacker had just built; the treasury received $35.68 for them. A second transaction stripped another 550,000 X from a Uniswap V3 position. Losses reached about $4.85 million and the token fell roughly 96 percent.
No code was broken. Senate eligibility keyed off frozen balances at the instant of the call, and proposals could be created and executed in one transaction with no snapshot, holding period, or timelock. The attacker followed the rules the project published, which makes conventional theft theories awkward to plead. Governance parameters are a legal instrument, not just an engineering choice.
Keystone's Customer List Becomes a Phishing Kit
Hardware wallet maker Keystone disclosed on October 24 that an unauthorized third party reached the e-commerce infrastructure behind its website. It detected suspicious access on October 20 and confirmed the theft on October 23 after reviewing Shopify API activity. Names, contact details, shipping addresses, and purchase records were exposed. Keystone says card data, recovery phrases, and private keys were not taken, and the devices are unaffected.
A verified list of hardware wallet buyers with home addresses is close to the most valuable targeting data in this industry: every name on it is known to hold crypto offline. Notification clocks under state breach statutes and, for European buyers, GDPR are already running, and a security vendor faces a steeper regulatory path here than a typical retailer.
Bitcoin ETFs Give Back $773 Million in Two Sessions
US spot Bitcoin ETFs took in $1.07 billion over October 19 to 21, then shed $635.6 million on October 22 and $137.9 million on October 23, per Farside Investors. Bitcoin touched $79,280 on October 24, with more than $400 million in crypto liquidations in four hours.
How to Protect Yourself
If you have ever bought a Keystone device, treat any inbound message about your order as hostile. Legitimate vendors do not offer replacement devices that need your recovery phrase, and they never ask for private keys. Anyone who has already shared a seed phrase should move funds to a new wallet today. If you hold a governance token, check whether proposals face a snapshot, a delay, and a timelock.
Recourse is narrower than most victims expect, but it is not nothing. Breach victims may have claims under state data breach and consumer protection statutes, with GDPR adding routes in Europe. Exploit losses can support claims against developers, promoters, and sometimes auditors, depending on what they represented. Preserve transaction hashes, wallet addresses, and screenshots now; tracing windows close fast.
At Coin Counsel, we work with individuals and businesses navigating the legal fallout of crypto fraud — whether you're a victim seeking recovery, a company facing regulatory scrutiny, or a project working to stay compliant in an increasingly complex legal landscape. The rules are evolving fast, and the cost of getting it wrong has never been higher. Contact us at coin-counsel.com to speak with a crypto-focused attorney today.
Disclaimer
This blog post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Reading this content does not create an attorney-client relationship between you and Coin Counsel or Franco Law PLLC. The legal landscape surrounding cryptocurrency is rapidly evolving and varies by jurisdiction. Do not act or refrain from acting based on information in this post without first consulting a qualified attorney. If you believe you have been the victim of crypto fraud, contact us at coin-counsel.com for a consultation.
