Leading South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals on Sunday after mistakenly identifying a scam token as the legitimate Aptos (APT) token.
Upbit halted services after noticing an “abnormal deposit attempt” of what it thought were APT tokens into its wallet system. The company has since resumed deposits and withdrawals but warned users they may see pricing differences compared to other exchanges.
The confusion arose after Upbit’s system erroneously read a set of airdropped scam tokens as authentic APT ones. The fake tokens were linked to a scam website “ClaimAPT.com” that had airdropped them to nearly 400,000 wallets.
According to an analysis shared on Twitter, Upbit misidentified the scam tokens due to a typo in their code. The typo led to about $250 being deposited into affected users’ accounts. One Twitter user noted this could have been far worse if the scammers had used a higher decimal amount.
The APT token currently ranks 38th with a market cap above $1.2 billion. Upbit is South Korea’s largest centralized crypto exchange. Its temporary suspension highlights the ongoing threat of clever scams in the crypto sphere.
The incident serves as a reminder for exchanges to heighten security practices to avoid confusing legitimate tokens, especially popular new ones like APT, with scam clones – even minor coding typos could lead to major repercussions.
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