The victim lost $280 million when funds were transferred to Monero

The attacker then used THORChain to exchange the money.

Popular on-chain investigator ZachXBT reported on Friday that one victim lost more than $282 million worth of BTC and LTC to a hardware wallet social engineering scam.

The stolen funds were converted into Monero (XMR), which is one of the reasons behind the asset's massive price increase that began last week. The on-chain sleuth added that a large portion of the slipped BTC was bridged to Ethereum, Ripple and Litecoin via THORChain.

On January 10, 2026 at 11pm UTC, one victim lost $282M+ worth of LTC and BTC to a hardware wallet social engineering scam.

The attacker converted the stolen LTC and BTC to Monero on several fast exchanges causing the price of XMR to skyrocket.

BTC was also…

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) January 16, 2026

The crypto community was quick to pick up on THORChain's posts on X. Some members accused the forum's social media team of enabling crime and even boasting about “celebrating”.

Others listed the dangers of social engineering scams, which even put money on hardware wallets at risk. Such scams are usually carried out through fake accounts pretending to be a beautiful woman who has fallen for the victim, even if they have never met.

At the time of the event and before the exchange to XMR began, Privacy Coin traded at around $450. It exploded to a series of all-time highs in the following days, the most recent being near $800 on January 15th.

Since then, XMR has pulled back significantly, perhaps as the attackers unloaded some of the earnings, and now sits below $630.

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