Copying Error Causes Investor to Lose 50 Million USD: A Valuable Lesson on "Address Poisoning" in Crypto

The cryptocurrency market has just recorded a shocking incident, showing that even a tiny mistake in copying a wallet address can lead to catastrophic consequences. An investor lost about 50 million USD USDT simply by accidentally sending money to a fake wallet address created by hackers.
Scam Script: Sophisticated and Extremely Dangerous
According to the information recorded on the blockchain, the victim ( with a wallet address starting with 0xcB80) took a step that many people in the market still do: transferring a test amount of 50 USDT before sending a large sum. This is considered a safety measure to ensure the receiving address is correct.
However, after this test transaction, the attacker quickly deployed a technique called "address poisoning" (. The hacker created a fake wallet address with the first 4 characters and the last 4 characters identical to the real address of the victim, then performed a small transaction to make this fake address appear in the transaction history.
"..." In the Wallet Interface - Indirect Causes of Disaster
The key point lies in the fact that many wallet applications nowadays shorten wallet addresses, displaying only the beginning and the end, while the middle part is hidden by "...".
Due to the habit of only checking a few characters at the beginning and end, the victim inadvertently copied a fake address from the transaction history instead of their actual wallet address. As a result, in the next transaction, the remaining 49,999,950 USDT was sent directly to the scammer's wallet and cannot be recovered.
A Very Expensive Lesson for the Entire Market
Blockchain security experts believe this is one of the painful yet highly cautionary examples for the crypto community. The incident shows:
Transaction history is no longer a safe source to copy addresses.
Current attacks do not require hacking wallets; they just exploit users' careless habits.
Blockchain transactions are irreversible; a mistake once made is lost forever.
Survival Principles When Transferring Crypto Money
From this incident, investors need to especially remember:
Always check the entire wallet address, not just the first and last 4 characters.
Do not copy addresses from the transaction history, especially for large amounts.
Use Address Book / Whitelist if the wallet or exchange supports it.
Break down large transactions, do not transfer the entire amount at once.
With millions of USD, multi-layer verification, and even offline checks.
Conclusion
In crypto, security is not just technology but also a habit. The loss of 50 million USD did not come from a system error, but from a moment of subjectivity. The market always pays a high price for carelessness, and sometimes, that price is a fortune.