The post Monero Price Rallies After $280 Million Bitcoin Theft appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

A crypto investor has lost more than $282 million in Bitcoin and Litecoin after falling for a social engineering scam involving a hardware wallet. On January 16, on-chain investigator ZachXBT revealed the massive theft, which reportedly drained the victim’s account of 2.05 million Litecoin (LTC) and 1,459 Bitcoin (BTC). Sponsored Sponsored Monero Spikes 36% After Hacker Swaps Stolen Crypto Into Privacy Coin Cybersecurity firm ZeroShadow confirmed that the attacker executed the heist by impersonating Trezor customer support. Trezor is a major hardware wallet provider with over 2 million users. The impostors successfully manipulated the victim into revealing their recovery seed phrase, effectively handing over full control of the assets. Following the breach, the perpetrator immediately began laundering the stolen funds. ZachXBT reported that the attacker utilized multiple instant exchanges, specifically Thorchain, to bridge the stolen Bitcoin into Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin. On January 10, 2026 at around 11 pm UTC a victim lost $282M+ worth of LTC & BTC due to a hardware wallet social engineering scam. The attacker began converting the stolen LTC & BTC to Monero via multiple instant exchanges causing the XMR price to sharply increase. BTC was also… — ZachXBT (@zachxbt) January 16, 2026 Sponsored Sponsored Meanwhile, the attacker’s reliance on Thorchain has drawn sharp criticism toward the decentralized infrastructure provider. ZachXBT noted that this was not the first time bad actors have leveraged the platform for such purposes. This indicates that it remains a preferred destination for criminals seeking to move stolen wealth. Simultaneously, the hacker converted a significant portion of the loot into Monero (XMR), a privacy-focused token designed to obscure transaction details. “ZeroShadow tracked the outbound flows and froze over $1M before it could be swapped into XMR. The activity that could get through is likely increasing XMR’s price,” Zero Shadow stated. Notably,…

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Filed under: News - @ January 17, 2026 7:16 pm