• A hacker hijacked Circle CSO’s Twitter account on March 22, 2023.
• The account was taken down by Twitter after reports of the hack and the scammer posted links to bogus loyalty benefits to long-time customers of USDC.
• Crypto whales have experienced significant losses due to the USDC depegging episode.
Hacker Hijacks Circle CSO’s Twitter Account
On March 22, 2023, according to an official statement published by Circle, the company responsible for issuing USD Coin (USDC), their Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) and Director of Global Policy Dante Disparte’s Twitter account had been hacked. Minutes after reports of the hack were made public, Twitter took down the account. The scammer posted a tweet offering bogus loyalty benefits to long-time customers of USDC, which has since been removed.
USDC Depegging
The security vulnerability occurred less than a month after the stablecoin depegged due to reserve deposits left in the custody of Silicon Valley Bank. Although it has since been fixed and re-pegged, there is still a minimal deviation between its current value and its original value when this article was written.
Crypto Whale Losses
Crypto whales have experienced significant losses due to USDC’s depegging episode. Fraudulent Circle profiles have since appeared on social networking platforms with promises of restoring consumers‘ lost assets and some decentralized finance protocols hard coded USDC as 1:1 rather than reflecting its market value at the time.
Investigation Into Hack
When this article was written, four tweets that were published using Disparte’s identity had been deleted while three remained providing general commentary on current events involving USDC. According to reports, USDCs redeemed for fiat US dollars since early March had come dangerously close to exceeding $10 billion when this article was written.
Conclusion
Circle is currently investigating into the situation and taking action accordingly in order to ensure that similar incidents do not occur in future – it is important that cryptocurrency users remain vigilant when interacting with any online accounts or offers related to digital currencies
