Trader loses millions of dollars due to fake cryptocurrency transaction

A cryptocurrency market user lost more than $ 3 million in tokens PYTH $0.40 Pyth Network -8.23% Market capitalization $1.44 billion VOL. 24 hours $29.48 million . He mistakenly sent them to a fraudulent wallet. The incident was the result of using a fake address from the transaction history.

According to Lookonchain, the fraudster created a wallet with the first four characters matching the victim’s deposit wallet address.

To create the appearance of activity, he transferred 0.1 SOL (about $ 0.25) to the user’s wallet, which caused the fake address to appear in the transaction history.

The victim, without verifying the unique identifier, copied the fake address from the history and sent 7 million PYTH tokens worth more than $ 3 million to it.

This type of attack, known as «address poisoning,» is based on the habit of users to copy wallet addresses from transaction history instead of obtaining data from reliable sources.

Fraudsters manipulate the address display by using:

• Zero-value transactions, where they transfer a small amount of real tokens to make their address look legitimate.
• Fake tokens, which are created to imitate popular cryptocurrencies such as USDT or USDC.

These methods create the impression of real activity, forcing users to mistakenly use fraudulent addresses during repeated transactions.

Experts emphasize the importance of checking the full wallet address before transferring and not copying addresses from transaction history.

This case once again demonstrates the importance of caution when dealing with cryptocurrency assets.