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Bitcoin, Ether, XRP Slide as December Begins With 'Yearn Incident'
Major cryptocurrencies traded lower in early Asia as DeFi platform Yearn noted at "incident" in its yETH pool.
Updated Dec 1, 2025, 2:41 a.m. Published Dec 1, 2025, 1:17 a.m.
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What to know:
- Major cryptocurrencies fell early Monday, continuing the November downtrend.
- The decline happened as an incident at DeFi platform Yearn Finance affected its yETH liquidity pool.
Bitcoin , ether and other major tokens slipped early Monday, extending a bruising November close amid fresh panic from DeFi platform Yearn Finance.
BTC, the leading cryptocurrency by market value, fell over 3% to nearly $87,000 during the early Asian trading hours. Ethereum's native token ETH fell 5% while SOL, DOGE, XRP fell over 4%, according to CoinDesk data.
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The sell-off accelerated hours after Yearn's X alert flagged an "incident" in the yETH liquidity pool while mentioning that its V2 and V3 Vaults remain secure and unaffected.
Social media chatter suggested that the attacker exploited a vulnerability to mint vast amounts of yETH in a single transaction, draining the liquidity pool and making off with around 1,000 ETH ($3 million), which was routed through mixers. YETH is a user-governed liquidity pool token consisting of various Ethereum Liquid Staking Derivatives (LSTs).
The protocol lost $9 million in the exploit, with 1,000 ETH transferred to mixer Tornado Cash. The attacker's address (0xa80d...c822) retained approximately $6 million in tokens, per blockchain security firm PeckShield.
Yearn's issue comes days after leading Korean exchange Upbit suffered a multi-million dollar hack and underscores how institutional inflows have bloated crypto market valuations without fortifying the security infrastructure.
The early Asian session sell-off triggered liquidations exceeding $400 million in leveraged crypto futures, primarily affecting long positions, according to data source Coinglass. This indicates that many traders were betting on a price rebound and were caught off guard by the sudden downturn.
Bitcoin ended November (UTC) with a 17.5% loss, the biggest since March, even though prices recovered from nearly $80,000 to over $90,000 in the final week of the month. Ether fell 22%, registering its worst performance since February.
The dour performance came as institutional demand weakened significantly. The U.S.-listed spot BTC ETFs bled $3.48 billion in net outflows in November, the second-largest redemption on record, per data source SoSoValue. Ether ETFs lost a record $1.42 billion in outflows.
1:29 UTC: Adds commentary on liquidations, November performance and ETFs.
AI Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk's full AI Policy.
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