Scammers Target Ships at Strait of Hormuz; Arbitrum Freezes $71M

Maritime risk firm Marisks warned that unknown actors contacted shipowners whose vessels are stranded west of the Strait of Hormuz, demanding payment in Bitcoin (BTC) or Tether (USDT) in exchange for clearance. Marisks said the messages do not come from Iranian authorities; Tehran has not issued a public response. The strait remains largely closed following renewed regional conflict; before the disruption it handled about one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas exports.

The messages requested transit “fees” in cryptocurrency for safe passage. Marisks advised shipowners to ignore the demands and to follow official guidance from maritime authorities. Earlier this month there were reports that Iran was considering a tariff payable in Bitcoin for some ships passing the strait.

Separately, Arbitrum’s 12-member security council said it took emergency action on Monday to freeze 30,766 Ether that had been moved from an address tied to an exploit of the Kelp protocol on Saturday. The council said the funds were transferred to an intermediary frozen wallet and cannot be moved by the original address; any further movement would require action by Arbitrum governance. The amount equals about $71 million at current prices.

Kelp, a liquid restaking protocol, lost at least $293 million after a breach of a LayerZero-powered bridge that connected the protocol to other blockchains. The breach also produced millions of dollars in bad debt across lending platforms that had accepted Kelp-derived tokens as collateral.

Some community members criticized the freeze as raising questions about on-chain finality and governance power. Griff Green, a member of the security council, posted that the council “did not make this decision lightly, there were countless hours of debates, technical, practical, ethical and political.”

Liquid restaking lets users earn staking rewards while holding a tokenized representation of their staked assets for use in other protocols. Cross-chain bridges move value between blockchains but have been frequent targets for attackers; the Kelp exploit used those connections to withdraw funds from the protocol’s reserves.

The frozen Ether remains under the control of Arbitrum governance and may be subject to legal or technical recovery efforts. Investigations into the Kelp exploit and the identities of the actors who contacted vessels near the Strait of Hormuz are ongoing.