Crypto VC-tied Entity Loses $35M in fwDETH to Phishing Attack

• A crypto wallet address has lost millions in wrapped tokens to a phishing scam.
• The address is suspected to belong to an institution.
• The attacker has already moved the stolen funds.

A wallet address believed to belong to an entity tied to a crypto VC firm has lost tens of millions in wrapped Ether to a phishing attack .

The development underscored growing concerns that phishing attacks targeting ERC-20 tokens have recently reached unprecedented levels of sophistication partly due to the proliferation of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. It came barely two weeks after a victim lost $32 million in spWETH after signing a “permit” phishing signature.

Entity Loses $35M to Phishing Attack

On October 11, Web3 anti-scam platform Scam Sniffer reported that someone had lost $35 million worth of wrapped Ether tokens on Blast’s chain (fwDETH) due to a “permit” phishing signature.

Alerting on the same incident, Lookonchain claimed the user was “probably related” to Continue Capital, a California-based venture capital firm focused on investing in blockchain technologies, early-stage tech startups, and providing Quant-Trading service.

Blockchain monitoring service EmberCN also tied Continue Capital to the affected wallet address, citing a tag by Arkham Intelligence.

While Continue Capital has yet to issue a public comment on the matter or allegations that it owned the address, EmberCN said the attacker directly exchanged the wrapped tokens back to ETH through a swap to quickly convert the stolen assets into safe assets.

“However, due to the insufficient depth of the DETH pool, 14,079 DETH was only exchanged for 2,288 ETH. The pool was emptied by him, and DETH/WETH was highly decoupled.” EmberCN wrote on X.

Per EmberCN, this caused the value of the stolen assets in the phishing attack to shrink by nearly 85%, from $35.98 million to $5.5 million.

Stay updated on Bitget’s tightened token listing rules for curbing rug pulls:
Bitget Tightens Token Listing Rules to Fight Exit Scams, Rug Pulls

Read how the FBI recently flagged a crypto investment scam:
FBI Flags ICHCoin Crypto Scam Taking “Millions” from Americans