Bitcoin FOMO returns as AI scams surge and iTrust Capital faces data breach questions
A solo commentary episode from the Digital Asset News channel covering Bitcoin market sentiment, AI-powered crypto scams, and a reported data breach involving iTrust Capital and Bitcoin IRA.
Summary
The host of Digital Asset News opens with observations about renewed Bitcoin FOMO among everyday investors as the price approaches $80,000, referencing a Federal Reserve study from the Cleveland Fed that confirms investors' emotions track price movements — buying enthusiasm rises with price and falls with it. He then pivots to a detailed warning about AI-powered scams, citing a CryptoSlate report showing deepfake-related crypto fraud has already exceeded all of last year's totals in 2025, up 263%, and that AI use by scammers has risen roughly 13-fold since 2022. The most significant segment covers on-chain investigator ZachXBT's community alert claiming that both Bitcoin IRA and iTrust Capital experienced undisclosed data breaches, with one threat actor allegedly stealing $1.2 million from a Bitcoin IRA user using leaked data. The host reports that iTrust Capital denied the breach when he spoke with them directly for approximately 20 minutes, but advises viewers to test the withdrawal process themselves as a practical security check.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin FOMO Returns Among Everyday Investors
Hello everybody. Bitcoin FOMO is here. I'm hearing it from my normie friends. I'm hearing it from my investor friends. It looks like people are going to maybe potentially start piling back into Bitcoin as we reach roughly around $80,000 or so, but there's a bigger concern on the horizon, and that is scams — especially AI. We're going to take a look at a couple of those to protect you moving forward.
Today, of course, I think we all know where things are going. It's looking pretty good. I'm still under the impression that Q4 will be a little bit rough and bumpy. We'll see if we can go down below $60,000 again. As a reminder, I would prefer that, because I've been dollar-cost averaging every Monday on the Cash App and have been picking up Bitcoin quite cheap. I'm hoping it goes down again. Now, I am in the minority — a lot of people just want us to go to Valhalla and things like that, but that's always where it was going to go anyhow. So I'm just waiting for a little bit of a pullback, but we'll see.
I keep getting messages from friends and even some family asking, "Is this a good time to get into Bitcoin?" And this little one-minute clip pretty much sums up why people are so impressed and want to get into Bitcoin. Just take a listen to this.
News Clip: What's Driving Bitcoin's Momentum
News Anchor: Higher. That in turn is helping the crypto stocks. Is that right?
Reporter: Yeah. Bitcoin up $245.
News Anchor: I mean, this is after a massive three-day rally last week. You had shares of Coinbase, Robinhood, for example, all surging — 22% last week alone. So you're getting some stability to slightly higher today. There are a few things going on. You have the Treasury announcement of Operation Twist, yield curve control — that sort of helps push into risk assets. That weaker dollar — you're seeing Bitcoin as maybe a hedge to some of that dollar weakness. And again, we're waiting on a September 15th procedural vote for the Clarity Act. So all of those forces are helping Bitcoin.
News Anchor: The best thing going for Bitcoin for a long—
Reporter: Yeah, the best thing going for it is just the price. People follow price when it comes to Bitcoin. You need people to start talking about it again to get the excitement around it again, and then you get more buyers in. A lot of the folks in the crypto space I spoke with over the last couple of months, when it wasn't going anywhere, I said, "What's up with Bitcoin?" They said, "Just wait for it to start running."
News Anchor: Once it starts running and it gets back into that mainstream conversation, you get the appetite for it.
Reporter: It pops up 20% and it would have happened quick.
The Psychology of FOMO — Backed by the Federal Reserve
And that's pretty much it. The price goes up, everybody's impressed, everybody wants to get back in — and that's pretty much where we are probably going. This is why you've probably heard from friends, family, and loved ones saying, "Hey, maybe I should have gotten into Bitcoin."
And really it just comes down to — to be very technical about how this actually happens — we have to dive deep into the psyche of the individual investor. And if we really take a deep dive into this, we can see that it pretty much comes down to: "Boy, I wish I would have bought before," and you didn't, and now here you are going, "Ah, maybe I should buy some more." That is essentially what really happens.
Now, it's not just me saying that it's FOMO that grips investors. It is actually the Federal Reserve. You cannot make this up. This is from the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Cleveland. They did a survey of a number of people, asking what they thought about Bitcoin over a time continuum. The whole paper comes down to this: when the price goes up, everybody thought they missed the boat. When the price went down, they pretty much said, "I'm glad I didn't buy that." And that's pretty much how things are going — and that is why, as I've always thought, things will probably do quite well, because the price will go up and that's pretty much it.
AI Scams: The Biggest Threat to Your Crypto
The bigger news is this: it's not how much you make, it's how much you keep. We knew this was inevitable — moving in this direction. And I know you're all doing a great job of staving off all these different actors and scammers and all the different problems that plague us in this industry. Because the best investor out there is not the day trader. The best investor out there is not the dollar-cost averager. The best investor isn't even the dynamic dollar-cost averager. The best investor out there is the scammers. They don't have to put any money into it. All they have to do is just convince you to send them your hard-earned crypto.
And this is on the rise. This was from a great article from CryptoSlate. AI scammers no longer need to hack your wallet — all they have to do is just convince you to use it for them and send them the crypto.
Reported losses from deepfake scams — that's where you get a video that looks like somebody you know, or somebody famous, or somebody in your circle, and they ask you, "Hey, I just need a little bit of funds." And people fall for it. I know — you're probably saying to yourself, "That would never happen to me." Trust me, I get an email once every couple of weeks from people who said the exact same thing: "I didn't think it could happen to me."
These deepfake scams have already exceeded last year's total in 2025, and they're up 263%. A blockchain intelligence firm's new AI in Crime Adoption Index classifies scams as the only crypto crime category where artificial intelligence has reached a mature level of adoption. That's because when you're a scammer, all you have to do is put your best foot forward, use artificial intelligence, make deepfakes, and there is a massive incentive to use it, learn it, and actually defraud people — because you're making a boatload of money.
TRM said reports involving scammer-side use of AI — including deepfakes, chatbots, and AI-powered lures — have risen roughly 13-fold since 2022.
And there was this one last piece that I thought was quite interesting. I hope this doesn't happen, but it definitely could. Think about how stressed you are in life in general. Think about how many different things are going on — it's hard to put everything into place, it's hard to be there for your work, it's hard to be there for your interests, it's tough to do everything with the family and the kids and get everything ready, and then also manage all the investments. Now think about that, and you've got your boss yelling at you, maybe you get sidetracked. And this is what could happen:
"Corporate treasuries face a similar risk. A synthetic voice or video of an executive can pressure an employee to approve a transfer, alter a signer, or add a new payment address."
This has already actually happened. Hardware wallets can confirm that the correct private key signed the transaction, but they cannot determine whether the human controlling that key was deceived.
So what do you do? It's very simple. You go to the source. If someone sends you a message, an email, something, or a video, you need to go on your phone, your computer, whatever you have, and reach out to that person, that individual, that exchange, and go right back to the source and say, "Did you send me this?" Because I didn't think you would be asking me for money out of nowhere. Just go to the source. It's very simple.
As time goes on, you'll learn all about these scams and it'll just become another well-known thing. But right now it's all about what's out there and what we don't yet know.
ZachXBT Alert: iTrust Capital and Bitcoin IRA Data Breach Claims
This will lead me to the iTrust issue. Yesterday in the live stream, Jimmy said, "Hey, watch out — looks like there's an issue going on with a data breach at iTrust." This was from ZachXBT. I had actually seen it right before the video started and thought I'd bring it up at some point. I wanted to get more information first, but here's what we have.
ZachXBT — if you don't know — is one of these cyber sleuths out there helping the average person try to not get hacked and recover funds that have been stolen. This is what was on his personal Telegram account:
"Community alert: I've reviewed evidence that two US-based investment platforms, Bitcoin IRA and iTrust Capital, allegedly had data breaches this year, but appear to have not disclosed the incidents publicly."
This means, if true, leaked information could include personal details, portfolio holdings, banking details, custody details, and verification status. He backs this up by saying there was a threat actor named Tiffany who targeted a Bitcoin IRA user and stole $1.2 million using the database in June 2025. He reached out to both companies for comment on August 1st but had not heard back yet.
So we know this is connected to Bitcoin IRA based on this Tiffany person — some kind of threat actor. But the question then is: how does iTrust come into this? Because I use iTrust. You use iTrust. A lot of you use iTrust.
This was from iTrust. They said: "Reports that iTrust experienced a recent undisclosed data breach are not true. We would have notified clients directly if a data breach ever occurred." And so on and so forth. They also said they routinely send email notifications to all clients reminding them of account security, and that iTrust is secured closely to mitigate risk.
That's great. But here's the thing. Remember Voyager and Celsius? Good times — when everything collapsed. Alex Mashinsky — I reached out to him and he lied right to my face. Stephen Ehrlich, same thing. That's why we have the rules. And the rules are there to protect us wholeheartedly.
So I reached out to iTrust personally and said, "Look, what's going on with this? Because if this is true, we need to reach out to everybody." And they said, "No, it's not true. We don't know where it's coming from. We don't know what's happening." And then Ryan and I went over this for quite a long time — about a 20-minute conversation.
Now, does that mean we have to trust everybody just because they say so? No, it's not. So here's what I want you to do. Everybody who has iTrust — I want you to take your money out. And what I mean by that is not everything. But if you've never taken any funds out of iTrust, you're going to see what a pain it is to do it. So I would like everybody to take $50 or $100 out and just see how long it takes. See how interesting the hoops and loops are that you have to go through to get that money out — and tell me then, after that, if a hacker could do it. I'll just leave it at that.
Live Q&A
Host: All right, let's get into a little Q&A and answer your questions to the best of my abilities.
Congrats — Trump Iran, just — I don't know what "cabed" means. I'm guessing that's some kind of issue. Interesting.
Mullet says: "Price goes up, people want down. Price goes up, people want down. Never fails." Yeah, that's true. I've been fairly consistent saying this — I didn't really think we would rally up for quite some time. I thought we would be here until October or November, but we didn't. It's nice. The portfolio is up and it's good. Actually, the stock portfolio is up even more. Things are great. I just would like to optimize, but you can't be greedy, right? That's pretty much it.
Dark says: "What if iTrust holds ETFs on cold storage?" I think they would be smart enough not to do that. And we know that iTrust uses the same custody as BlackRock and Coinbase — or, excuse me, Strategy — which is Coinbase Prime. And if Coinbase Prime goes down, then this whole house of cards falls pretty dramatically.
Someone says: "Who's that nice little companion?" I found a stray cat outside my door today, so I've got to take it to the vet. See what's wrong with it. Big problem. Cats.
Someone else says: "Many exchanges let you set a maximum withdrawal each day. I of course have set mine to $10 million — just to be sure scammers can't steal everything at once." Nice.
"At least all my money is still on iTrust, because all my money on Coinbase I gambled away on this stupid addiction of trying to guess the price of Bitcoin in 50 minutes." Yeah, those prediction markets are not what they seem. That is for sure. People like to gamble. I did see a report about how much gambling is going on with prediction markets, and I would like people to stop gambling in that sector and actually come in and get a real-world asset, which should be Bitcoin. But what are you going to do?
Stace says: "Haven't seen you for a while. I still have some Polkadot — would you sell?" I don't really have any. I don't know what's going on with the community. I don't know what's going on with Gavin, the founder. I don't know what's going on with Polkadot at all. So I really can't say to sell or not. Maybe there's something really fantastic going on in the background that I don't even know about. So I can't say.
"Is it time to FOMO and leverage my mortgage yet?" Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Mostly people will be FOMOing in once we hit like $130,000 and they're saying, "Wow, I could have got it at $58,000 and now it's $130,000?" And meanwhile, again.
And lastly: "Looks like Q4 might be a macro higher low for Bitcoin." That could be it. We'll see if Scott Bessent can pull it off as they tap the Treasury account. I think they started with two to four billion. Now they're saying up to one trillion, but they won't — they can't use the whole thing. It's impossible. We'll see if they can prop it up. Everything'll be happy. We'll see how it goes.