Address Poisoning Scam: A cryptocurrency trader lost nearly $50 million in USDT on December 20, 2025, after falling victim to a sophisticated address poisoning attack—showing how even experienced users can be misled by subtle on-chain scams that exploit routine wallet habits.
According to blockchain monitoring firm SlowMist, the victim mistakenly sent 49,999,950 USDT to a fraudulent wallet address that had been deliberately planted into their transaction history. From start to finish, the entire theft unfolded in less than one hour.
Once the funds landed in the attacker’s wallet, the stolen USDT was quickly swapped into Ethereum, split across several addresses, and partially laundered through Tornado Cash, making recovery significantly more difficult.
In a last-ditch effort, the victim later posted an on-chain message demanding the return of 98% of the stolen funds within 48 hours. They also offered the attacker a $1 million white-hat bounty, while warning that failure to comply would trigger legal action and involvement of international law enforcement agencies.
How the scam worked
The attack took place shortly after the victim withdrew $50 million from Binance. Following standard security habits, the trader first sent a small test transaction of 50 USDT to confirm the destination address.
That routine step opened the door for the attacker.
Within minutes, the scammer sent a dust transaction of just 0.005 USDT to the victim’s wallet. This tiny transfer caused a fake address—crafted to closely resemble the real destination—to appear in the wallet’s recent transaction list.
When the victim returned to send the full amount, they copied the address from their transaction history, unknowingly selecting the spoofed one. The fraudulent address matched the legitimate wallet in the first three and last four characters, making the difference nearly impossible to spot at a glance.
Blockchain data shows the victim’s wallet had been active for nearly two years and was primarily used for USDT transfers, suggesting the attackers may have been monitoring whale wallets and waiting for a large transaction to strike.
A growing threat across crypto
While the $50 million loss is shocking, it represents only a small part of a much larger problem. In 2025 alone, address poisoning attacks have caused an estimated $3.4 billion in total losses across the crypto ecosystem.
More than 158,000 wallets have been compromised, affecting around 80,000 unique victims. September 2025 was particularly severe, with 32,290 suspicious poisoning incidents recorded across multiple blockchains, impacting 6,516 users in just one month.
Researchers have tracked over 270 million poisoning attempts on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, with confirmed losses directly tied to these attacks exceeding $83.8 million, excluding major headline cases.
Address poisoning scams rely on speed, precision, and human error. Scammers continuously scan blockchain activity for large transfers and inject lookalike addresses at exactly the right moment—turning a simple copy-paste action into a multimillion-dollar mistake.
As this incident shows, even careful users can be caught off guard, making address verification more critical than ever in high-value crypto transactions.
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