A crypto user who lost $5,000 from a hot wallet after a stay at a hotel says the real culprits were open WiFi, a casual lobby phone call, and one careless wallet approval.
A crypto user known as The Smart Ape says he lost around $5,000 from a hot wallet after spending three days in a hotel, not because he clicked a phishing link, but because he made a series of “stupid mistakes,” including using an open WiFi network, taking a phone call in the lobby, and approving what looked like a routine wallet request.
The incident, analyzed by security firm Hacken for Cointelegraph, shows how attackers can combine network‑level tricks with social cues and wallet UX blind spots to drain funds days after a victim signs a seemingly benign message.
According to the victim’s account, the attack began when he connected his laptop to the hotel’s open WiFi, a captive portal with no password, and started “working as usual, nothing risky, just scanning Discord and X, and checking balances.”
