The $282 Million Crypto Heist and the Mysterious Rise of Privacy Coins

While browsing the crypto market charts for the past few days, I noticed something strange. Suddenly, there was a huge jump in the price of Monero (XMR). There were no major project updates, no partnership news—yet the price was rocketing. What I found out was truly shocking.

There was no ordinary trading or investment behind this whole incident, but rather one of the biggest thefts in crypto history. An investor lost almost $282 million (an incredible amount in Bangladeshi taka) in just a few moments.

What really happened?

Those of us who invest in cryptocurrencies always think that hardware wallets (like Trezor or Ledger) mean ultimate security. But hackers are no longer breaking code; they are hacking human psychology. This is technically called ‘social engineering’.

On January 16, popular on-chain investigator ZachXBT leaked information. He said that a victim had given the seed phrase of his Trezor wallet to scammers. The hackers basically contacted the investor posing as Trezor customer support and misled him to take full control of his wallet. The result? 2.05 million Litecoin (LTC) and 1,459 Bitcoin (BTC) in an instant!

Stolen money and a sudden increase in the price of Monero

The most interesting (and scary) thing is the next step for the hackers. Usually, after stealing, hackers use mixers, but this time they have chosen a different path. They first convert the stolen Bitcoin and Litecoin into Ethereum and Ripple using instant exchanges like ‘Thorchain’.

Then the real game begins. Hackers know that they are easy to track on the public ledger. So they started buying the privacy coin ‘Monero’ (XMR) with this huge amount of money.

Just think, when someone starts buying a particular coin with millions of dollars in the market, what can happen to its price? That is exactly what happened. Due to this ‘panic buying’ of hackers, the price of Monero has increased by 36% in just 7 days to around $800. Although the price has now decreased slightly and is around $621, this incident proves that the movement of the crypto market is not always due to natural reasons.

##:Is the security system collapsing?

This incident shows us that no matter how advanced the technology is, human carelessness is the biggest weakness. According to cybersecurity firm ‘ZeroShadow’, they were able to freeze about $1 million, but the hackers were able to remove the remaining huge amount.

Another scarypiece of information has come up in my research. A report by ‘Chainalysis’ says that the rate of such ‘impersonation scams’ or fraud in disguise has increased by about 1,400% in the last year! In other words, hackers are no longer chasing complex coding; they are directly trying to fool you.

As ordinary investors, we have a lot to learn from this incident. Your seed phrase is the key to your safe. No official support team, be it Trezor or Binance, will ever ask you for this secret code.

Those who were happy to see the sudden increase in the price of Monero may not have known that behind this pump is the cry of a lost person. The crypto world is as exciting as it is cruel. So keeping your assets in your own hands is the biggest challenge of the time.