Goodness, the on-chain gossip is more thrilling than a TV drama! That whale/institution that lost 50 million USDT to phishing directly messaged the hacker on this 'public bulletin board' of the blockchain: 'Bro, return the money, 98% is fine, I'll leave you 1 million as a reward for your hard work, and we'll just call it a white hat exercise.'
The whole internet is watching that hacker's address. But to be honest, this money... is very likely not coming back. The method is too classic: in an instant, 50 million USDT was exchanged for ETH, and then it dived straight into Tornado Cash, getting washed clean. This is not phishing; this is like using an aircraft carrier to fish, and after fishing, directly diving into the deep sea, leaving no trace.
This matter sends chills down my spine. When we usually interact and manage funds, who doesn’t treat wallet authorization as a commonplace activity? But with a single oversight, signing something we shouldn’t or clicking something we shouldn’t, years of savings could evaporate in an instant. Ironically, the only 'strong counterattack' you can make after being robbed is to publicly plead for mercy on-chain... This reveals a cruel truth in the current crypto world: asset security heavily relies on your personal vigilance and the 'centralized credit' of the foundational assets you use.
What was stolen is USDT, a centralized stablecoin issued by Tether. Its security ultimately depends on: 1. You not making mistakes; 2. The issuing company having the capability and willingness to cooperate in freezing (but this time it went into a mixer, making it hard to trace); 3. Law enforcement being effective. If any link in this chain breaks, your assets are like a candle in the wind.
This makes me ponder whether there is an asset that can reduce dependence on 'individuals never making mistakes' and 'centralized institutions providing timely rescue'? Can its security model focus more on 'mechanism prevention' rather than 'post-event recovery'?
This brings to mind projects like @usddio that are reconstructing 'trust' from the ground up. It advocates for a #USDD to establish trust through stability. The word 'trust' carries significant weight.
The 'trust' of USDT: trusting the promises and reserves reported by Tether (which need to be audited).
The 'trust' of USDD: trusting transparent assets that are real-time verifiable and over-collateralized on-chain. Behind your USDD, how much BTC, TRX, and other mainstream assets are locked up is visible to everyone, and the collateralization ratio is usually above 100%. Its 'stability' does not depend on the credit endorsement of a single company, but on mathematics and transparency.
If (I mean if) what was stolen this time was not USDT, but a stablecoin completely backed by over-collateralized assets on-chain, would the story be different? Perhaps it wouldn’t change the phishing attack itself, but it fundamentally alters the underlying logic of asset redemption and trust. Its value support is real-time, public, and decentralized, not relying on the emergency response of a single company.
To speak frankly: our management and trading are all about chasing Alpha. But the accumulation of all Alpha requires a solid, trustworthy Beta (foundation) to support it. In today's age of frequent security incidents, paying attention to the underlying security model of the assets themselves is as important as focusing on the next hundredfold coin.
Is this painful lesson bought with 50 million USD reminding us: is it time to shift some attention from 'where else can we manage funds' to 'what kind of trust system are our hard-earned money stored in'?
Do you think that decentralized over-collateralized stablecoins will become a more reassuring choice for large funds in the future?
