Recently, a whale/institution withdrew 50 million USDT from Binance and first "tested" by transferring 50 USDT to the planned receiving address. As a result, the attacker quickly generated a similar address with the same first and last three digits and transferred 0.005 USDT of dust tokens to the victim.
During the actual transfer, the victim appears to have directly copied the address from recent transaction records, resulting in all 50 million USDT being transferred to a similar address belonging to the attacker, sparking widespread discussion in the community.
Victim sends email to hacker
Following the attack, the victim sent an on-chain message to the hacker yesterday (20th):
We have formally filed criminal charges. With the assistance of law enforcement, cybersecurity agencies, and multiple blockchain protocols, we have gathered substantial and specific intelligence regarding your activities.
The following wallet addresses that you control are currently under 24/7 monitoring:
…This is your last chance to resolve this peacefully.
You are required to return 98% of the stolen assets to the following address within 48 hours:
0xcB8………….00819
You can keep $1,000,000 as a "white hat bounty" for discovering the vulnerability, but this offer is contingent on your full and timely cooperation. Once the funds are returned, we will consider closing the case and will not take any further action…
Unexpectedly, Wang Chun revealed that a large amount of Bitcoin had been hacked.
Just as the community was expressing condolences for this careless victim, Wang Chun, co-founder of F2Pool, one of the world's largest Bitcoin mining pools, quoted the on-chain message on X and commented:
What a pity! Please don't take everything away from this gentleman.
Last year, I suspected my private key had been compromised. To confirm whether the address was truly compromised, I transferred 500 bitcoins into it. To my surprise, the hacker was very "generous," taking only 490 bitcoins and leaving me 10 bitcoins as living expenses.
The hacker's address: 14H12PpQNzrS1y1ipjF4mPuVgQEpgfGA79
Wang Chun's nonchalant self-disclosure left everyone in the community speechless with "What the Fuck." After all, knowing the risks, who would invest such a huge sum of money to test it? At the time, 500 Bitcoins were worth nearly $25 million... making the community sigh that the world of the wealthy is truly beyond the comprehension of ordinary people.
Upon tracing the historical records of the address provided by Wang Chun, the author found that there was indeed a related transfer record on February 12, 2024... However, Wang Chun herself did not provide any further explanation regarding this matter.
Who is Wang Chun?
Chun Wang is a legendary figure in the cryptocurrency world. He started mining Bitcoin in 2011 when the price was only about $1, and founded F2Pool in 2013, which is one of the world's oldest and largest Bitcoin mining pools.
He once recounted mining over 7,700 bitcoins around 2011, of which over 4,000 were used to pay his electricity bill. He even had an incident where he bought an iPhone with over 600 bitcoins, only to have it stolen on the Russian subway… For someone who has witnessed bitcoin's rise from $1 to $100,000, his accumulated wealth should allow him to take the loss of 500 bitcoins in stride.
