Coinbase Users May Have Lost as Much as $46 Million to Phishing Scams Over the Past Two Weeks

Rising crypto prices continue to attract bad actors to the industry.

Coinbase users may have lost as much as $46 million to suspected phishing scams over the past two weeks as rising crypto prices continue to attract bad actors to the industry.

According to blockchain investigator ZachXBT, multiple Coinbase-linked wallets have been targeted this month with scams such as address poisoning and wallet spoofing, which involve tricking victims into sending assets to fraudulent wallet addresses that closely resemble legitimate ones.

A screenshot from blockchain explorer Blockchair shows a suspected 400 Bitcoin (BTC) theft from a single wallet address.

“It is suspected a Coinbase user was scammed yesterday for $34.9M (400.099 BTC),” the investigator wrote in a March 28 Telegram post. “After uncovering this theft I noticed multiple other suspected thefts from Coinbase users in the past two weeks bringing the total stolen this month to $46M+,” he added.

Suspected 400 BTC phishing theft victim. Source: Blockchair

“We are aware of ZachXTB’s claims and are investigating,” Jaclyn Sales, director of communications at Coinbase, told Cointelegraph.

“Coinbase does not contact users to request personal information or seed phrases and we never ask users to transfer assets to another user. If someone contacts you claiming to be from Coinbase and requests this information or asks you to transfer assets, do not do it. It is a scam,” she said.

Sales also advised users to follow Coinbase's safety tips to avoid such scams.

Scammers continue to impersonate top brands

In an interview with Cointelegraph in June, email security firm Mailsuite reported that US brands are often targeted by scammers.

According to the firm’s data, Coinbase was the most impersonated brand by scammers with 6,760 fraudulent emails detected in the first half of 2024. The next most impersonated brand was Meta, with 214,000 fraudulent emails detected.

The firm’s findings also showed that, on average, 378 brand impersonation attempts were detected every day.

World Economic Forum (WEF) also among most impersonated brands. Source: Mailsuite

The findings come as scammers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their attempts to deceive victims.

Earlier this month, crypto security firm Cyvers reported that pig butchering schemes on the Ethereum network costed the industry over $5.5 billion across 200,000 identified cases in 2024.

The schemes involve prolonged and complex manipulation tactics to trick investors into willingly sending their assets to fraudulent crypto addresses.

Coinbase is the world’s third-largest centralized cryptocurrency exchange (CEX), with over $1.6 billion of daily crypto trading volume, according to CoinMarketCap.

To protect themselves, Coinbase users are advised to use a dedicated email account, enable two-factor authentication, set up an address allowlist, and use Coinbase Vault for additional security, the exchange said in a February blog post.