Crypto trader loses $50M USDT to address poisoning scam
The post Crypto trader loses $50M USDT to address poisoning scam appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.
A crypto user has lost $50 million worth of USDT after falling for an “address poisoning” scam, copying the scammer’s address from their own transaction history. Crypto security expert Web3 Antivirus spotted the unlucky victim’s outgoings earlier today. The user first sent a test transaction of almost $50 worth of USDT to a crypto address beginning “0xbaf,” and ending with “F8b5.” However, they then sent almost $50 million worth of USDT to a suspiciously similar address that starts with “0xBaF,” and ends with “f8b5.” The full scam address, “0xBaFF2F13638C04B10F8119760B2D2aE86b08f8b5,” has a different body from the recipient of the test transaction, suggesting that the sender failed to check beyond the first few digits of the address. How to lose $50M in under an hour. This is one of the largest on-chain scam losses we’ve seen recently. A single victim lost $50M in $USDT to an address poisoning scam. The funds had arrived less than 1h earlier. The user first sent a small test tx to the correct address. Mins… pic.twitter.com/Umsr8oTcXC — Web3 Antivirus (@web3_antivirus) December 19, 2025 The victim’s wallet was active for two years and received its funds from Binance. Read more: Refund of $70M ‘address poisoning’ scam ongoing, over 50% returned The redirected funds have since been converted into the unfreezable stablecoin Dai, sent onwards to another address, and are now being swapped into wrapped ether via “Rizzolsver: Uniswap X.” How does crypto poisoning work? An address poisoning scam works by sending small amounts of crypto, known as “dust,” from an address that’s similar to the target’s recipient. These small traces of crypto appear in the victim’s transactions — hence the “poisoning” — and can trick them into accidentally copying and pasting that address instead of the legitimate one they intended to send to. In one instance, someone accidentally…
