Circle CSO’s Twitter account breached by scammers

“Any links to offers are scams. We are investigating the situation and taking action accordingly,” wrote USDC issuer Circle.

According to an official post on March 22 from Circle, issuer of the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin, the Twitter account for its chief strategy officer and head of global policy, Dante Disparte, has been compromised. In a previously deleted Tweet, Disparte’s account reportedly began promoting fake loyalty rewards to long-time users of USDC. 

@ddisparte Twitter account was hacked. https://t.co/pItTHAG9Al

— Jeremy Allaire (@jerallaire) March 22, 2023

Before the compromise, Disparte’s account tweeted about the firm’s regulatory developments and its participation in the ongoing Paris Blockchain Week. The security breach came less than a month after the stablecoin briefly depegged due to reserve deposits left in the custody of defunct American tech bank Silicon Valley Bank. The incident has since been resolved, and USDC has repegged, albeit a tiny variance with the stablecoin’s peg still exists at the time of publication.

At the time of publication, four Twitter posts left by the alleged scammer in Disparte’s name were removed. Only three posts with generic comments on the recent events surrounding USDC remain standing:

Cointelegraph reported on March 11 that crypto whales suffered huge losses as a result of the USDC depegging incident. Shortly after, fake Circle accounts began surfacing on social media with promises of making users’ assets whole. Although the peg has been mostly restored, the redemption of USDC for U.S. dollars has nearly eclipsed $10 billion since the beginning of the month. 

Some decentralized finance protocols, such as that of Dai (DAI) stablecoin issuer MakerDAO’s peg stability module, reportedly had USDC hard coded as 1:1 in their smart contracts instead of reflecting their market value. On the day of the incident, MakerDAO filed an emergency proposal aimed at reducing its 3.1-billion USDC reserve exposure, which was used to collateralize DAI. Like USDC, DAI has mostly restored its peg with the U.S. dollar, albeit a small variance still exists at the time of publication.