Trader Loses $50M in USDT to Address‑Poisoning Scam
A crypto trader lost roughly $50 million in Tether (USDT) after an address‑poisoning attack exploited copy‑and‑paste and clipboard vulnerabilities. The attacker substituted a legitimate wallet address with a look‑alike malicious address (same leading and trailing characters), which appeared in the victim’s transaction history or clipboard, causing a large outgoing USDT transfer to be routed to attacker‑controlled wallets. The thief quickly fragmented and moved funds across multiple addresses, converted portions to ETH, and used mixers to obscure the trail, making recovery unlikely. No exchange or individual names were disclosed. The incident highlights the risks of truncated address displays, clipboard hijacking and human error when copying addresses. Traders are advised to verify full addresses, use checksum‑aware wallets and hardware wallets, enable address whitelists and multi‑factor confirmations for large transfers, use dedicated address‑book tools, and avoid pasting addresses directly from recent transaction lists. Primary keywords: address poisoning, USDT, Tether, crypto scam. Secondary keywords: clipboard hijacking, address substitution, wallet security, hardware wallet.
Bearish
The theft directly involves Tether (USDT) and large on‑chain movements of that stablecoin. Short‑term, the market reaction for USDT is likely negative (bearish) because a high‑value hack erodes user confidence in the token’s on‑chain security and could trigger temporary shifts into other stablecoins or fiat, increasing USDT supply on open markets and upward selling pressure. Conversions of stolen USDT to ETH and use of mixers may cause temporary volatility in ETH as attackers swap funds, but the primary price impact is concentrated on USDT sentiment. In the longer term, the fundamental demand for USDT as a stablecoin is unlikely to change materially unless repeated security incidents occur; however, repeated address‑poisoning stories can gradually reduce confidence and drive more traders to prefer hardware wallets, whitelists and alternative stablecoins. Overall: short‑term bearish sentiment for USDT due to confidence and liquidity effects; medium‑to‑long‑term neutral to modestly negative if no further incidents follow.