Treasury opens crypto cyber hub

A bank robbery used to mean someone walking out with cash. In 2026, the United States Treasury is treating a hacked crypto exchange the same way: as a threat that can spill into the wider financial system. (nextgov.com) On April 9, the Treasury Department’s Office of Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection opened a new channel that gives eligible United States digital-asset firms the same cyber threat information Treasury already shares with banks and other financial institutions. The alerts are supposed to be timely, actionable, and free. (compliancealliance.com) That means a crypto company that qualifies can get warnings about the kinds of tricks hackers are using, instead of learning about them after money is gone. Treasury said the goal is to help firms identify, prevent, and respond to attacks on customer accounts and company networks. (publicnow.com) The timing is not random. On February 21, 2025, Bybit lost about $1.5 billion in ether in what has been described as the largest crypto theft on record. (cnbc.com) By the end of 2025, Chainalysis said total crypto theft had reached $3.4 billion, and North Korean hackers alone had stolen at least $2.02 billion. Chainalysis also said North Korean groups were responsible for 76% of all service compromises that year. (chainalysis.com) Treasury is also following a policy script written last summer. A White House report from the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets was released on July 30, 2025, after the group was created by Executive Order 14178 on January 23, 2025. (whitehouse.gov) That report argued that digital-asset businesses needed stronger cybersecurity coordination with the government, not just new market rules. The new Treasury channel is one of the first concrete pieces of that recommendation to show up in day-to-day operations. (aba.com) The quiet shift here is about status. When Treasury gives crypto firms access to the same warning system used by traditional finance, it is saying these companies now sit close enough to the core of payments and markets that their outages and thefts are no longer a side story. (coindesk.com) This does not mean every exchange or token project gets a direct line into Treasury. The department said firms and industry groups have to meet eligibility criteria, and interested companies are being told to contact the Office of Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection for access details. (crwepressrelease.com) So the story is not that Washington suddenly loves crypto. The story is that after a record year for theft, the United States government has decided crypto security belongs in the same emergency-prevention machinery as the rest of finance. (nextgov.com)