Key Highlights
- A $282M crypto theft briefly spikes Monero, showing privacy coins’ role in laundering stolen funds.
- Even hardware wallets aren’t immune—social engineering and address errors keep costing investors millions.
- Crypto crime hits $2.17B H1 2025; hacks like Bybit push users offline, but risks remain high.
A massive crypto theft, recently coming into the spotlight, has sent Monero (XMR) prices soaring. On-chain investigator ZachXBT confirmed that the hacker turned some of the stolen funds into XMR, which caused its price to spike briefly as privacy coins saw higher demand.
According to blockchain analytics platform Lookchain, a hacker exploited a hardware-wallet via social engineering scam, stealing over $282 million in Litecoin (LTC) and Bitcoin (BTC). The attacker later used THORChain to swap 818 BTC (worth $78 million) into 19,631 Ethereum (ETH), 3.15 million Ripple (XRP), and 77,285 Litecoin (LTC), and some of it to XMR, spreading the stolen money across different cryptocurrencies and networks.
The attack raises questions of victims identity, as to whether it is an individual or a firm, but it fits into 2025 trends in which social engineering is still the primary method of attack. These kinds of attacks basically entail tricking victims as employees of an organization to win their confidence. The hackers, therefore, take advantage of the unfamiliarity with cryptocurrency transactions.
Monero’s dark side exposed
This is not the first time Monero has played a role in laundering stolen funds. In April 2025, a similar event occurred, exploiting the coin’s relatively illiquid market to move stolen assets. This time, the XMR spike coincided with general privacy-coin demand. The use of Monero to hide transactions shows how easily stolen crypto can be moved without leaving a trace.
As of writing, according to data from CoinMarketCap, Monero was trading at $626.60, with $312 million volume in the past 24 hours. Its price has dropped about 7% today, but is still up nearly 40% over the past week.
Hardware wallets under pressure
Even though more people are using hardware wallets, they aren’t completely safe. On January 5, a data breach affecting Ledger users raised fresh privacy concerns. ZachXBT reported that the Ledger breach happened through Global-e, a third-party payment service, and exposed personal details like names and contact information. This shows that not even offline hardware wallets are impervious to hacks. Earlier in December 2025, a trader lost $50 million in USDT to a similar address-poisoning scam.
According to a Chainalysis’s report, crypto crime is growing rapidly, with hackers stealing over $2.17 billion in just the first half of 2025. Large hacks such as the $1.5 billion Bybit exploit, which was blamed on North Korea’s Lazarus Group, have pushed many retail investors toward storing crypto offline. But hardware wallets also aren’t entirely foolproof.
Also Read: Monero (XMR) Jumps to New All-time High Amid Privacy Coin Surge
