AI Agent On Virtuals Protocol Stole $500,000: A Blessing In Disguise For Verified Bots And VIRTUAL Crypto?

If Meta, Google, and all the tech giants are sinking trillions into building AI infrastructure, that’s a clear signal that AI is here to stay, and may even replace you. The truth is, on the Virtuals Protocol platform, there are numerous AI agents, commanding tens of millions of dollars in market cap, doing, among other things, creating content and even trading.

It is this boom that explains the explosion of the VIRTUAL crypto. Unlike some of the top cryptos to best, struggling for momentum after the flush out of mid-October, VIRTUAL USDT is up nearly +10% year-to-date.

(Source: Coingecko)

In the last week, VIRTUAL crypto is up a decent +6%, bouncing strongly from recent swing lows. Will this uptrend continue?

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“AI Agent” Stole $500,000

The pace at which VIRTUAL grows, even outperforming top meme coins on Solana, all depends on the number of AI agents launching on its platform.

However, it isn’t just about deployment, as seen in meme coin launchpads like Pump.fun.

On the Virtuals Protocol ecosystem, quality is important, and fraud is something users don’t want to see.

The entire Virtuals Protocol ecosystem has been operating, until November 25, on nothing but “code is law.”

Since it is a platform where anyone can deploy an AI agent and launch a token, some of which are probably the next 100X cryptos to consider, many expected that scammers wouldn’t exploit the system and defraud users.

Virtuals does emphasize verification as the only check to prove that all AI agents on its platform are indeed on-chain. As such, agents must log their decisions onchain for transparency.

Then it happened.

An “AI agent”, BasisOS, running a yield optimization protocol, ended up stealing $500,000 of user funds. Investors chasing higher yields “trusted” their hard-earned funds with BasisOS only to be rugged.

The Agentic FoF has been compromised due to a security breach, exposing approximately 531k.

All vaults are currently paused, and withdrawals for the Agentic FoF are suspended pending the conclusion of the internal investigation. The Basis vaults are secure but paused as a…

— BasisOS (@BasisOS) November 23, 2025

It turned out that BasisOS was not an AI agent after all, but behind its promising strategy was a human operator.

An insider engineer behind the AI-driven yield optimization protocol used to handle the wrapper code enabling transactions and agent deployment, and would manually control the vault, successfully mimicking automated behavior since early November when it launched.

Unfortunate incident – an agent got hacked for $500k because a dev controlled its wallet key, a human-in-loop system. This is why tamper proof execution guarantees of @EigenCloud are required for autonomous agents that perform valuable functions in the economy https://t.co/yLPdI4d0lN

— chainyoda (@chainyoda) November 25, 2025

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Was This Theft A Blessing In Disguise for Virtual Protocols?

With user funds stolen, the co-founder of Virtuals said they will foot the bill and reimburse affected users since they actually, at one point, promoted BasisOS’s native token, BIOS.

Spoke with the Basis founders and next steps are locked in. There will be a more official statement coming out.

Tldr:

if you had funds here, you will be made whole. Don’t worry. You don’t need to withdraw (be it through butler or the Basis website) Just leave ur funds be. The… https://t.co/etHViYvQim

— EtherMage (,) (@ethermage) November 24, 2025

This was the first recorded AI agent fraud, but Virtuals is now taking steps to ensure that this never happens again.

Because of this theft, there was a purge. Non-verified AI agents on the protocol were affected, filtered out, pumping legit programs whose operational logs are fully-onchain.

In the last three days, VIRTUAL crypto has been pumping, adding nearly +20%. Since VIRTUAL underpins the Virtual Protocol as a whole, it is seen as a safe haven among the hundreds of verified agents.