How people lose money on cryptocurrencies

This story is about an anonymous crypto trader and investor, who is known under the pseudonym qklpjeth. As it turns out, he accidentally sent 7,912 ezETH tokens from the Renzo platform to the wrong address in June 2024.

Renzo is an ether and SOL restacking protocol. Unlike regular staking, where coins are blocked and used by the network to keep it running, re-staking involves engaging that crypto in various ecosystem protocols.

In other words, after blocking coins in steaking, users receive a corresponding amount of other tokens of equivalent value. These can be used on decentralised exchanges, to provide liquidity, arrange loans and more.

If it is necessary to get to the staked crypto, it is necessary to return the accrued tokens - in the case of the Renzo platform these are ezETH, pzETH and ezSOL.


Renzo’s re-staking platform

What exactly was the trader’s mistake? He trivially entered the wrong address when transferring the crypto. As Cointelegraph representatives note, the coins were supposed to go to the qklpjeth vault, but he transferred them to the general module of the vault. The tokens were then “locked and unavailable for withdrawal”.

Here’s a quote about losing money.

In a nutshell: copied the address incorrectly.

Since then, the user has made a lot of attempts to get his money back, but they ended in failure. So now he has announced a reward of 10 per cent of the total amount for so-called white hat hackers who can somehow get his coins back.

Here’s a rejoinder from the trader’s Twitter.

Urgent request for help!

To all cybersecurity experts and white hackers: I lost a significant amount of funds in a contract and need help to get them back. If I can successfully recover the money, I will immediately offer a reward of 10 per cent of the amount, which is currently around $2.5 million.

qklpjeth counts on the fact that hackers will be able to find a vulnerability in the mentioned protocol and get his coins. Still, they are currently frozen at the moment.

Cryptocurrency hacker

The developer under the pseudonym 0xngmi suggested that the best option in the current circumstances is to directly contact the representatives of Renzo and try to negotiate for them to make changes to the smart contract of the project.

This scheme does not suit the investor. According to him, he had previously tried to ask the developers for help, but they refused to do so because of regulatory restrictions. In other words, they might get problems from the law in such a case.

Harrison Seletsky, a representative of the SPACE ID digital identity platform, considers such situations in crypto unacceptable. Well, the case itself literally screams that the industry needs better user interfaces.

Here is his quote.

It’s amazing that simple copy and paste errors are still costing people millions in the cryptocurrency world.

This is a terrible situation, and I sincerely hope that the user is able to recover their assets. However, stories like this are a wake-up call for the entire industry. We need to do more and better.

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Cryptocurrency hacker who steals NFTs

According to Seletsky, the space for such mistakes simply shouldn’t exist in the cryptocurrency industry nearly 16 years after the Bitcoin network was launched. Still, something like this threatens the further popularisation of the coin sphere: for that, ordinary people need to be sure that their crypto transfer won’t end up losing the entire amount.

The expert continues.

Most people, when choosing between entrusting their financial security to a centralised organisation and being able to rely on their own infallibility, will choose the former.

Whether traders will be able to get their hands on the crypto is unknown. That said, the developers of Renzo will clearly not be happy about the call to hack their platform for the purpose of making money.

Note that some fraudsters specifically use address spoofing in an attempt to steal other people’s money. And they act more than brazenly.

The day before we made a transaction in USDT, sending them to the exchange. A few seconds later, our wallet received an incoming transfer in stablecoin for a tiny amount. Crucially, the sender’s address started with the same characters as the address we used to send it.


The relevant screenshot is shown below. On it, we transfer 250 USDT to the address "CBjA...6fR7" and immediately receive a transfer from "CBjA...cTM7" in the same coin.


An attempt by scammers to poison the blockchain address we use

This is done for a reason. This attack vector is called address poisoning, and scammers are hoping that the victim will mistakenly copy their address from the transaction history and send the crypto there next time.

Something like this can really work – especially if the potential victim frequently makes transfers to the same address, which could be an exchange for the further sale of coins via P2P.

Therefore, users should be careful when transferring coins and be sure to check the address used. Alas, making a mistake and losing money in crypto is much easier than it seems.


A user under the nickname qklpjeth hasn't been able to reach his crypto since the summer. With this in mind, his appeal to hackers looks like desperation, although the probability of success here remains. Well, the rest of us should be sure to check the addresses to which they are going to make a transaction - one way or another, it is impossible to cancel transfers on the blockchain and get your money back.


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