A crypto consumer has misplaced greater than $282 million value of Bitcoin and Litecoin in one of many largest social engineering assaults ever recorded within the crypto sector.
The theft occurred on Jan. 10, 2026, at round 11:00 pm UTC, after the sufferer was tricked into revealing their seed phrase linked to a {hardware} pockets, in accordance with blockchain investigator ZachXBT. The attacker gained full management of the pockets and quickly moved the funds throughout a number of networks to obscure the path.
In response to ZachXBT, 2.05 million Litecoin (LTC), at the moment value $153 million, and 1,459 Bitcoin (BTC), now value round $139 million, had been drained. The attacker instantly started changing the stolen property into Monero (XMR) by way of a number of instantaneous trade companies, triggering a pointy spike in XMR’s worth as properly.
In parallel, massive parts of the Bitcoin had been bridged throughout Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP) and Litecoin utilizing THORChain, a transfer that allowed the attacker to shift worth between blockchains with out counting on centralized exchanges. The exercise reignited debate round how decentralized cross-chain infrastructure may be abused throughout large-scale thefts.
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$700K of stolen funds frozen
In a Friday publish on LinkedIn, safety agency ZeroShadow mentioned it was capable of hint and flag elements of the stolen move in actual time after being alerted by blockchain monitoring groups. Inside roughly 20 minutes, about $700,000 value of funds had been reportedly frozen earlier than they might be totally swapped into privacy-focused property.
ZeroShadow claimed it recognized the sufferer as a Bitcoin deal with “belonging to a person who had been tricked into sharing their seed phrase by an actor impersonating Trezor “Worth Pockets” assist.”
ZachXBT additionally rejected claims that the assault could be linked to a state-sponsored hacking group. “It’s not North Korea,” he wrote.
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Aged US Bitcoin holder loses $330 million
Final yr, an aged US particular person reportedly fell sufferer to a $330 million Bitcoin theft in one other main social engineering rip-off. The sufferer had held greater than 3,000 BTC since 2017 with little prior exercise, in accordance with blockchain information.
After the funds had been moved, the attacker quickly laundered the Bitcoin utilizing peel chains and a number of instantaneous exchanges, in the end swapping a lot of the stolen BTC into Monero to obscure its path.
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