Crypto Marketing Agency ICODA Releases Crisis Memory Study on AI and Crypto Hacks

Study of 296 AI Answers on Bybit, Bitget, Coldcard, Kelp DAO and Ledger Finds AI Engines Remember the Hack and Forget the Fix

BELLEVUE, Wash., Nov. 13, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ICODA, a crypto marketing agency that publishes original research on AI search and crypto media, today released a study of what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini say about crypto brands after a crypto hack. It is the first material in ICODA's November Crisis Memory series. AI gets the facts right and leaves out the recovery. All 12 answers to "Is Bybit safe?" named the February 2025 hack, 20 months later. Only one in four answers that mention Kelp DAO's exploit say users got their money back.

What Did the Crypto Hack Study Find?

AI engines keep a crypto hack in their answers for years, report it accurately and rarely say how the brand fixed it.

• Kelp DAO's April 2026 exploit comes up in 92% of answers to neutral questions about the protocol. Bybit's February 2025 theft comes up in all 12 answers to "Is Bybit safe?", and 11 of them lead with it.
• ChatGPT and Claude brought up a hack unprompted in 84% of neutral answers, Perplexity in 67%, Gemini in 27%. Gemini answered 29 of 45 neutral questions without searching, and none of those 29 mentioned the hack.
• Of 169 answers that mention a hack, 2 got a core fact wrong (date, amount, cause or attacker).
• Kelp DAO's users were repaid in full, yet only 11 of 45 answers that mention the exploit say so. All 12 answers to "Is Kelp DAO safe?" advise caution.
• Ledger's 2020 customer-data leak appears in 25 of 48 Ledger answers. The 2026 reseller implant, a month old, appears in 15, and the count did not move between one week and one month after the crisis (22 of 40 answers both times).
• Eleven days after Binance lost about $6.3 billion, 10 answers from Claude and Gemini still called Bybit's hack the largest on record.
  
  

The study scores each brand with a Crisis Memory Score, the share of neutral answers that bring up the hack unprompted. Kelp DAO scores 92, seven months after its ~$292M bridge exploit. Bybit scores 72, 20 months after its $1.5B theft. Coldcard scores 72, three months after a ~$115M firmware seed flaw, and Bitget 61, six weeks after a $387.5M wallet theft. Ledger scores 31, one month after a ~$100M reseller implant.

Charts and the full data are in the Crisis Memory study.

Crisis Memory · ICODA, November 2026 A hack ends in a week. AI keeps telling the story for months. Crisis Memory is ICODA's November series on what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini say about crypto brands after a crisis, with insights from Vlad Pivnev, Anastasia Marmuzevich, Anastasia Shalepina, and Artyom Abbasov. Explore the series →

What Should a Crypto Brand Do in the First 30 Days After a Crypto Hack?

In the first 30 days after a crypto hack, write the recovery down where AI engines can find it, in one sentence, Next to the hack itself.

"The hack will be in AI answers for years. The fix only gets there if you write it down. In the first 30 days, say what happened and what you did about it in a single sentence, put that on a dated page, and get the outlets AI engines cite to repeat it," said Vlad Pivnev, CEO of ICODA.

The study points to four steps:

1. Pair the fix with the hack. "We lost $1.5 billion; no customer lost funds" is the shape AI repeats for Bybit and Bitget.
2. Give the recovery a dated page. A post-mortem that ends with "users were made whole on [date]" gives engines a sentence to quote.
3. Get third-party coverage, because AI answers lean on what search finds and what media repeat.
4. Ask the four engines your buyers' questions at the start of the month and again at day 30, then keep checking.
   
   

Where Can You Read the Study and Talk to ICODA's AI Visibility Experts?

You can read the full Crisis Memory study on icoda.io and book a call with ICODA's AI visibility experts.

• Read the full Crisis Memory study → https://icoda.io/research/crypto-hacks-ai-answers/
• Book a call with our AI visibility experts → https://icoda.io/contact-us/ (they put your buyers' questions to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini)
  
  

About ICODA

ICODA is a crypto marketing agency for Web3 and iGaming brands, represented in Wrocław, Poland, and Bellevue, Washington. It runs crypto PR, SEO, AI SEO and AI visibility programs, has delivered 650+ projects, reports 94% client retention and regularly publishes original research on how AI engines and the media cover crypto brands. More at https://icoda.io/.

ICODA put 34 questions about five brands to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini on Nov. 9, 2026 and coded every answer by hand against fact sheets built from company statements, blockchain analytics firms and crypto media. Answers came through the APIs with web search enabled and a US location. API answers are close to, but not the same as, what the consumer apps show, and AI answers change between runs. ICODA has no commercial relationship with any of the five brands.

CONTACT: Media Contact

Icoda PR  Team 
Email: post@icoda.io
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