Today, a terrifying on-chain record has circulated in the community. 50 million USDT was completely drained within 10 hours by "similar addresses" through phishing and wash trading. The cold-bloodedness of the entire process is enough to alert anyone.

Let's talk about the method first. The victim withdrew 50 million USDT from a major exchange, cautiously testing the address by transferring 50 USDT first. Just as they confirmed it was correct, the phishing attacker acted—creating a "fake" address that closely resembles the real one at the beginning and end, and transferred 0.005 USDT to the victim. The key point: when the victim made a large transfer, they most likely copied the "similar address" from the top of their recent transaction records. And just like that, 50 million USDT disappeared.

What's even more ruthless is the attacker’s subsequent operations. They quickly exchanged USDT for DAI, then swept into over 16,000 ETH, and finally washed everything through a mixer, completely cutting off traceability. This is not amateur work; it’s a streamlined operation.

This case exposes a fatal vulnerability—most of us rely heavily on the convenience of transaction records but often overlook the most basic address verification. In an ecosystem where transactions settle instantly and errors cannot be undone, user education is far from sufficient. True security should be built into the underlying system design with protective mechanisms. The existence of tools like mixers, cross-chain solutions, and privacy protections also tests how the industry can balance decentralization and security. Perhaps this is the critical issue that the future stablecoin ecosystem needs to seriously consider.