The Hyperliquid Foundation donated 10,000 HYPE tokens, valued at approximately $254,000, to on-chain investigator ZachXBT on January 18. ZachXBT received the second-largest single donation, highlighting growing institutional support for independent crypto investigations, and it shows that institutional support for independent investigations in the crypto world continues to grow.
The recent post by Wu Blockchain highlighted that ZachXBT confirmed that he had received the donation and shared his current list of top donors. Other major donors to the list include Optimism, Octant, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Nouns, Unipcs, CL207, The White Whale, and High Stakes Capital.
The significance of the donation lies in the fact that it highlights the commitment of the crypto space to being part of the solution. Hyperliquid’s donation will help ZachXBT continue his research into illicit activity on-chain and will encourage others to support projects that promote transparency.
Also Read | Hyperliquid (HYPE) Price Shows Rebound Signals Targeting Key $34 Resistance
Then, on January 10, ZachXBT mentioned that a crypto theft of $282 million had been committed using a hardware wallet. The victim lost 2.05 million units of Litecoin (LTC) and 1,459 units of Bitcoin (BTC) as a result of a social-engineering attack. Stolen funds were converted into Monero (XMR) via multiple instant exchanges, briefly triggering a notable spike in XMR’s price due to large liquidity inflows.
The theft relied on the exploitation of unauthorized access to what was believed to be a secure hardware wallet. Social engineering was used to trick the victim into sending out the assets. Human vulnerabilities, rather than technical flaws, were the main factor in this sophisticated attack.
Scams related to hardware wallets are still not very common, but they have become more complex. In the current scam, the attackers managed to compromise the integrity of the wallet during the production or engineering phase, thus getting access to the private keys. The attackers could then move the funds without any detection.
Also Read | Bitcoin and Litecoin Hardware Wallet Scam Exposed as $282 Million Stolen


