Treasury shares crypto intel

The United States Treasury just opened one of Wall Street’s quieter defenses to crypto firms: early cyber threat warnings that banks already get. The program was announced on April 9 by the Office of Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection, a Treasury office that usually works behind the scenes on financial-sector cyber risk. (nextgov.com) The offer is simple: eligible United States digital asset firms and industry groups can receive the same “timely, actionable” cybersecurity information Treasury already shares with traditional financial institutions. Treasury said the service will be provided at no cost, but firms still have to meet Treasury’s criteria. (bankingjournal.aba.com) That means a crypto exchange or custodian may hear about a fresh phishing campaign, a software weakness, or a new hacker playbook from the same federal channel used by banks. It is less like getting a police report after a robbery and more like getting a neighborhood alert while the burglar is still moving down the block. (coindesk.com) Treasury is doing this because crypto is no longer sitting outside the financial system’s fence. Treasury officials said digital asset firms are becoming an increasingly important part of the United States financial sector, and their resilience now affects the broader system. (publicnow.com) The timing is not random. Chainalysis estimated that crypto theft reached $3.4 billion in 2025, the highest annual total since 2022, and said a small number of very large attacks drove most of the damage. (chainalysis.com) The consumer side looks bad too. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Americans reported nearly $11.4 billion in cryptocurrency-related fraud losses in 2025, up 22% from 2024, inside a broader year of almost $21 billion in cyber-enabled losses. (fbi.gov) Treasury also tied the move to a policy push already underway in Washington. The American Bankers Association said the initiative advances a recommendation from President Donald Trump’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets report, which means this is not just a one-off cyber gesture but part of a wider effort to pull crypto closer to the government’s financial-risk framework. (bankingjournal.aba.com) That shift matters because banks have spent years inside public-private warning loops that most crypto firms never had. Crypto companies built fast-moving trading systems and custody platforms first, then had to learn under fire that a wallet provider, bridge, or exchange can become critical infrastructure the moment enough money flows through it. (nextgov.com) There is still a gate on the door. Treasury has said the program is for eligible United States firms and organizations, but public descriptions so far have not spelled out every qualification, so companies will need to contact the office directly rather than assume automatic access. (coindesk.com) So the real news is not only that crypto firms may get free warnings. It is that the Treasury Department is starting to treat parts of the digital asset industry the way it treats banks: as institutions whose outages, hacks, and weak defenses can spill into the rest of the financial system. (nextgov.com)