Want to set up a new business or pay a Bureau of Motor Vehicles fee? You might soon be able to pay in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency
Trump signs order establishing strategic Bitcoin reserve
President Trump signed an order Thursday to create a federal Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, signaling new federal support for cryptocurrency in general and Bitcoin in particular.
Scripps News
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Ohio may accept cryptocurrency for state fees and services as early as this fall.
Businesses and individuals would pay a transaction fee, similar to credit card transactions, for cryptocurrency conversion.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose aims to be the first adopter, accepting Bitcoin for business filings.
This move follows increased cryptocurrency popularity and aligns with other proposed Ohio legislation regarding digital assets.
Want to set up a new business or pay another fee? You might be able to pay in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency as soon as this fall.
Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose will ask a state panel next month to approve the use of cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, to pay for state fees and services.
If approved, the state would find a company to convert cryptocurrency into cash that the state can use. Customers would pay a fee for the transaction, similar to when they use a credit card.
Then, each agency and department would decide whether to accept cryptocurrency. That process could take months, but LaRose wants to be the state’s first adopter, accepting Bitcoin to pay for business filing fees.
“I don’t anticipate that there will be hundreds of thousands of Ohioans that are immediately starting to pay their fees on the Ohio Secretary of State’s website in Bitcoin, but there will be some,” said LaRose, who said he owns about $10,000 in Bitcoin. “What this does is signal that Ohio is near the forefront of embracing this financial technology.”
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The move comes as the popularity of cryptocurrency, especially among Republicans, is increasing.
During Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential bid, the Ohio governor candidate was bullish on cryptocurrency, introducing a policy to curb the overregulation of it. Both Sprague and LaRose have endorsed Ramaswamy’s 2026 bid to replace Gov. Mike DeWine.
Meanwhile, Ohio lawmakers are pitching the Ohio Blockchain Basics Act, also known as House Bill 116. The proposed law would prevent state and local governments from charging additional taxes and fees on cryptocurrency, among other changes.
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Another proposal, Senate Bill 56, would allow Ohioans to pay taxes and fees with Bitcoin. And House Bill 713 would create a cryptocurrency reserve − an idea that Sprague said he still has questions about.
Former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate, was an early adopter of Bitcoin. He wanted Ohioans to be able to pay their taxes in cryptocurrency, setting up OhioCrypto.com.
But Sprague canned the idea, and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost later said that Mandel hadn’t set it up properly.
Sprague said this new idea is different because it follows the right process. He also added that the federal government is much more supportive of cryptocurrency and limiting its regulation than it once was.
“This has come and if you don’t go out in front of it, you’ll get dragged behind the bus,” Sprague said.
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State government reporter Jessie Balmert can be reached at jbalmert@gannett.com or @jbalmert on X.
What do you think about the state accepting cryptocurrency?
The Anti-Money Laundering Authority has taken a significant step in a complex investigation involving stolen cryptocurrency, marking the first time in Greece that crypto assets have been frozen and identified as proceeds of crime.
The case has drawn international attention, with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issuing a public alert confirming the freezing of suspicious digital assets.
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The investigation began last month when the Authority received information about a suspicious transaction involving a registered user on a Greek-based cryptocurrency exchange platform.
Further checks revealed that the user’s Ethereum wallet had received a large amount of digital currency, which was later traced back to a major international theft.
The funds originated from the Bybit hack, disclosed in February, in which hackers stole approximately $1.5 billion worth of Ethereum – the largest theft of its kind to date. This incident surpassed the 2022 Ronin Network breach, in which $620 million in Ethereum and USD Coin were stolen.
Following the analysis, the Authority issued a Seizure Order for the wallet and the crypto assets it contained. The relevant documentation has been forwarded to the Prosecutorial Authority for further investigation.
Bitget, the leading cryptocurrency exchange and Web3 company, has announced the upcoming listing of DeLorean (DMC) on its Launchpool platform, with a total reward pool of 66,176,000 DMC tokens. Participants will have the opportunity to lock BGB or DMC tokens to earn a share of the reward allocation. The locking period will begin on June 24, 2025, at 11:00 UTC and conclude on June 26, 2025, at 11:00 UTC.
CoinMarketCap, the popular cryptocurrency price tracking site, suffered a website supply chain attack that exposed site visitors to a wallet drainer campaign to steal visitors’ crypto.
On Friday evening, January 20, CoinMarketCap visitors began seeing Web3 popups asking them to connect their wallets to the site. However, when visitors connected their wallets, a malicious script drained cryptocurrency from them.
The company later confirmed threat actors utilized a vulnerability in the site’s homepage “doodle” image to inject malicious JavaScript into the site.
“On June 20, 2025, our security team identified a vulnerability related to a doodle image displayed on our homepage. This doodle image contained a link that triggered malicious code through an API call, resulting in an unexpected popup for some users when visited our homepage,” reads a statement posted on X.
“Upon discovery, We acted immediately to remove the problematic content, identified the root cause, and comprehensive measures have been implemented to isolate and mitigate the issue.”
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“We can confirm all systems are now fully operational, and CoinMarketCap is safe and secure for all users.”
Cybersecurity firm c/side explained that the attack worked by the threat actors somehow modifying the API used by the site to retrieve a doodle image to display on the homepage. This tampered JSON payload now included a malicious script tag that injected a wallet drainer script into CoinMarketCap from an external site named “static.cdnkit[.]io”.
When someone visited the page, the script would execute and display a fake wallet connect popup showing CoinMarketCap branding and mimicking a legitimate Web3 transaction request. However, this script was actually a wallet drainer designed to steal connected wallets’ assets.
“This was a supply chain attack, meaning the breach didn’ target CMC’s own servers but a third-party tool or resource used by CMC,” explains c/side.
“Such attacks are hard to detect because they exploit trusted elements of a platform.”
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More details about the attack came later from a threat actor known as Rey, who said that the attackers behind the CoinMarketCap supply chain attack shared a screenshot of the drainer panel on a Telegram channel.
This panel indicated that $43,266 was stolen from 110 victims as part of this supply chain attack, with the threat actors speaking in French on the Telegram channel.
Screenshot of drainer panel shared on Telegram Source: Rey
As the popularity of cryptocurrency has boomed, so has the threat from wallet drainers, which are commonly used in attacks.
Unlike traditional phishing, these types of attacks are more often promoted through social media posts, advertisements, spoofed sites, and malicious browser extensions that include malicious wallet-draining scripts.
Reports indicate that wallet drainers stole almost $500 million in 2024 through attacks targeting more than 300,000 wallet addresses.
The problem has become so pervasive that Mozilla recently introduced a new system to detect wallet drainers in browser add-ons uploaded to the Firefox Add-on repository.
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