$280M Bitcoin heist sparks Monero price surge

A crypto investor lost more than $282 million after scammers impersonating Trezor support tricked the victim into revealing a recovery seed.

On-chain investigator ZachXBT said the theft drained 1,459 Bitcoin and 2.05 million Litecoin from the victim’s wallets.

The attacker laundered the stolen assets through instant exchanges, including Thorchain, to obscure transaction trails.

ZachXBT said the funds were bridged across multiple networks before further conversion.

A large portion of the stolen crypto was swapped into the privacy-focused token Monero.

“ZeroShadow tracked the outbound flows and froze over $1M before it could be swapped into XMR,”

ZeroShadow said, adding that remaining activity likely boosted prices.

Monero surged more than 36% over seven days, briefly approaching $800 before pulling back.

The incident drew renewed criticism of decentralised infrastructure used to move stolen funds.

Security firms said social engineering and brand impersonation scams are increasingly replacing technical exploits.

Blockchain analytics data showed impersonation scams rose more than 1,400% year on year.

Analysts said average losses per incident have also increased sharply alongside the trend.

At the time of reporting, Bitcoin price was $92,655.46.