The price of Beam (BEAM) has taken a hit after a holder, with significant portions of the token, suffered a phishing attack on Thursday, February 15.
BEAM serves as the native token of the Beam network, a gaming-focused platform empowered by the Merit Circle DAO. BEAM facilitates transactions within the network and serves as the governance token for the DAO, allowing holders to participate in decision-making processes.
According to Lookonchain monitoring, the victim with the address “kirilm.eth”, was phished-attacked several hours before press time and lost 180.25 million BEAM tokens, valued at around $5.14 million.
kirilm.eth was phishing attacked and lost 180.25M $BEAM($5.14M) 13 hours ago.
The scammer quickly sold the 180.25M $BEAM for 1,629 $ETH($4.6M), which caused the price of $BEAM to drop by ~7%.https://t.co/x8epiNx4Qa pic.twitter.com/ytcfYib2Kg
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) February 16, 2024
Following the attack, the scammer swiftly dumped the ill-gotten BEAM tokens, exchanging them for 1,629 ETH, equivalent to $4.6 million.
Swift Sell-Off Triggers Price Drop
This quick sell-off negatively impacted the price of BEAM, with the token dropping sharply by 7%. At the time of writing, the token has slumped further by over 9% to trade at $0.02679.
On-chain data shows that the victim’s wallet address currently holds a zero balance of BEAM. However, the wallet has a total balance of $383,711 worth of multiple tokens.
While detailed analysis of how this attack happened remains scarce, the attacker could have managed to deceive kirilm.eth into granting access to their wallet – which leads to the tokens’ siphoning.
Rising Phishing Attack
Phishing attacks often involve fraudulent emails or websites that mimic legitimate entities to trick victims into revealing sensitive information or clicking malicious links.
This type of scam has become one of the most prevalent in the crypto sector over the years.
In one case, a victim lost a staggering $24 million worth of cryptocurrencies late last year after being tricked into visiting a malicious website and signing “increaseAllowance” transactions on their wallet.
According to Chainalysis, approval phishing scams have been used to steal a whopping $1 billion worth of cryptocurrencies since May 2021.
