A phishing campaign sprang up on social media on March 16th falsely promising access to the new USDC DeFi trading platform.
Fake USDC trading platform emerges
A fake blog post promoting a swap platform can be found at http-circle-dot-blog and a fake trading platform can be found at http-circledefi-dot-center.
The fraudulent platform allegedly allows users to exchange Circle’s USDC stablecoin for Tether’s competing USDT stablecoin and promotes a partnership with TRON DAO. Its interface appears to be based on his legitimate DeFi platform, Raydium.
The amount transferred to the fraudulent service is unknown.
Reddit primarily propagated phishing sites. It never made it to /r/cryptocurrency, but was shared on /r/USDC and about 20 other subreddits.
Interestingly, the scammers initially attempted to gain attention on /r/Buttcoin, garnering a large number of comments. The scammers may have hoped that the subreddit’s skepticism about cryptocurrencies would allow commenters to overlook details of the scam.
A Circle spokesperson confirmed to CryptoSlate that the website is a scam, but did not specify what action would be taken. The company also recent tweets It suggests that users “beware of scammers and scammers using fake accounts.”
Circle’s USDC stablecoin remains strong
The official Circle blog at www.circle.com/bloglast updated on March 15th, with no mention of DeFi products in the latest update.
This scam appears to be an attempt to take advantage of USDC’s recovery after losing parity with the US dollar. USDC lifted its peg following the Silicon Valley Bank shutdown, and its price fell back to $1.00 on March 13 after falling to $0.88 on March 11.
During that recovery, the Circle worked to strengthen the USDC by saying it was clearing its backlog and forming new banking deals.
These forward-looking developments were alluded to in fake announcements that attempted to portray DeFi Swap as one of Circle’s attempts to harden its products.
