Anthropic says its Mythos-class model could be opened to all customers within weeks. At nearly the same time, OpenZeppelin co-founder Manuel Araoz said all DeFi, including Aave and MakerDAO, is unsafe and that he has personally advised friends and family to leave their DeFi positions. Security risk, market confidence, and liquidity are being tested at once.
DeFi losses keep mounting after a brutal stretch of exploits
The warning lands after a severe run of attacks. According to the source material, DeFi suffered one of its harshest months in April: Drift Protocol lost $285 million, while KelpDAO was hit for $293 million. Combined, the two incidents reached $577 million, accounting for 76% of global crypto hacking losses in 2026. The damage did not stop in May. THORChain, StakeDAO, and a Polymarket-related contract were all tied to fresh security incidents, and more than 25 cases had already been recorded by mid-month.
Capital has moved with the headlines. DeFi total value locked fell from $172 billion in mid-April to $148 billion, a 14% drop, while more than 40 protocols have shut down or entered liquidation this year. That is why Araoz’s message cut through so sharply. He was not calling for caution. He was calling for a full exit. Two days earlier, Bankless co-founder David Hoffman had also sold his entire ETH position.
Mythos raises the stakes for open-source smart contract risk
Anthropic confirmed this week that the Mythos tier is nearing broader release. The model was introduced in April under Project Glasswing and is currently available only to about 50 defensive security partners. Anthropic says Mythos can autonomously scan open-source code and identify zero-day vulnerabilities. In internal testing, it found 271 high-severity vulnerabilities in one Firefox product and also detected critical weaknesses in TLS, AES-GCM, and SSH cryptographic libraries.
The company’s own warning is what stands out most: “No company, including Anthropic, has developed safeguards strong enough to prevent misuse of models like this.” In DeFi, that lands differently. Smart contract code is public, many systems are hard to change after deployment, and protocols run around the clock. Attackers do not need to steal Mythos itself. A model with similar capability may be enough to compress review time from months to minutes, while defenders are still working through conventional audit cycles.
The source also notes that in February, a Discord group linked to a third-party vendor gained access to Mythos, triggering a drop in both cybersecurity stocks and crypto prices. That episode was described as an accidental leak. The next phase is not a leak at all, but a planned customer rollout.
Strategy has not sold BTC, but the market heard a shift
On May 5, during Strategy’s first-quarter earnings call, Michael Saylor said the company could not rule out selling some Bitcoin before year-end. For a market used to his “never sell” stance, the wording mattered on its own. The quarter was difficult on paper: Strategy posted a net loss of $12.54 billion, carries $1.5 billion in annual preferred dividend obligations, and saw cash reserves fall from $2.24 billion to $871 million after repurchasing $1.5 billion in convertible debt.
Saylor added that for every 1 BTC sold, the company could buy back 10 to 20 BTC, meaning Strategy would still be a net buyer. That did little to settle traders. Polymarket pricing now implies an 85% chance that Strategy sells any Bitcoin before year-end and a 56% chance before the end of June.
Still, the filings do not show an actual sale. As of the latest 8-K dated May 25, Strategy held 843,738 BTC and had not sold any. It even bought another 535 BTC in mid-May. A previously flagged transfer of 47,000 BTC was also denied by Saylor as an internal wallet movement. So the coins remain in place for now. What changed is the narrative surrounding them.
Korean retail flow has cooled as speculation shifts elsewhere
A separate signal comes from South Korea. At the peak of the Trump rally in December 2024, Korean crypto trading volume reached 323% of KOSPI turnover. Eighteen months later, the ratio had dropped to 8%. That does not mean retail traders stopped chasing volatility. The source describes a rotation into AI semiconductor stocks after KOSPI fell 20% in four months, triggered two trading curbs, and then rebounded to record highs. Samsung, SK Hynix, and LG became the new focus.
Exchange-related numbers reflect the same shift. Upbit parent Dunamu reported first-quarter revenue down 55% year over year, while operating profit fell 78%. The Korea premium has remained negative since March, a pattern previously seen only during the Terra-Luna collapse and the FTX failure. Yield comparisons have also turned less favorable for crypto: ETH staking returns sit near 2.5%, while the US 10-year Treasury yield is above 4.6%.
The source also says more than seven core members have left or taken leave from the Ethereum Foundation since February. None of these developments alone defines the market. Taken together, they show pressure arriving from several directions at once: protocol risk is rising, AI-driven vulnerability discovery is accelerating, and some of crypto’s familiar sources of conviction and liquidity are no longer as firm as before.