A cryptocurrency user lost over $282 million worth of Bitcoin and Litecoin in one of the largest social engineering attacks ever recorded in the cryptocurrency sector.
The theft occurred on January 10, 2026 at approximately 23:00 UTC, after the victim was tricked into revealing the seed phrase associated with the hardware wallet. According to to blockchain researcher ZachXBT. The attacker gained full control of the wallet and quickly moved funds between multiple networks to cover their trail.
According to ZachXBT, 2.05 million Litecoin (LTC), currently worth $153 million, and 1,459 Bitcoin (BTC), currently worth approximately $139 million, have been exhausted. The attacker immediately began converting the stolen assets into Monero (XMR) through several instant exchange services, which also caused the price of XMR to skyrocket.
In parallel, gigantic parts of Bitcoin were bridged between Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), and Litecoin using THORChain, which allowed an attacker to move value between blockchains without relying on centralized exchanges. This action has reignited the debate about how decentralized cross-chain infrastructure can be abused in large-scale theft.
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700,000 were frozen. stolen funds
In a Friday post on LinkedIn, security company ZeroShadow he said was able to trace and tag parts of the stolen flow in real time after receiving an alert from blockchain monitoring teams. Approximately $700,000 worth of funds were reportedly frozen in approximately 20 minutes before they could be fully redeemed for privacy assets.
ZeroShadow claimed to have identified the victim as a Bitcoin address “belonging to an individual who was tricked into sharing the seed phrase by an actor impersonating a Trezor ‘Value Wallet’ support.”
ZachXBT also rejected claims that the attack could be linked to a state-sponsored hacking group. “It’s not North Korea,” he said he wrote.
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Older Bitcoin holder in the US loses $330 million
Last year, an elderly person in the United States was the victim of the theft of $330 million in Bitcoin in another major social engineering scam. According to blockchain data, the victim had over 3,000 BTC as of 2017 and had not done much before.
Once the funds were transferred, the attacker quickly laundered the Bitcoins using peel chains and multiple instant exchanges, ultimately converting most of the stolen BTC to Monero to cover his trail.
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