Bitcoin Forum

This morning is really a surprising one. I just have got a notification on my email that I have deposited 0.00318 USDT in my Binance account. After some research, I got two possible reasons-
1. Someone mistakenly sent (Not possible because I never have used USDT on Binance, at least for deposit. I am sure that I have never checked that address ever.
2. Any staking or holding rewards. But how can this be true when I have nothing left in my exchange account? Moreover, I never had participated any exchange's staking program.

What possible reason can be this? If the amount was bigger, I would say someone mistakenly sent. But now, I can't find any reason of this.

With that notification, probably, it was mistakenly sent to your deposit address. Because if it was related to rewards or stake and etc. it will be labeled as it is.
You won't receive a deposit notification from staked rewards, contest, launchpad, and etc.

The main question is how they get your address since you say you never used that before.

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Have you check if the email came from do-not-reply@post.binance.com? If not, then probably it is a phishing attempt.

It is most probably neither of the two reasons you've cited.

1. I can't find any reason why someone would send that too insignificant an amount to anybody. So it is probably not a mistaken transaction.
2. As you've said, there is also no reason why a reward should be sent to your account because (1) you've got no balance and (2) you are not participating in whatever program.

Could this be a case, therefore, of a dusting attack?

Not sure if dusting attacks works the same on Ethereum/Tron, but it's the only feasible reason I think. Sure it could be sent mistakenly, but 0.00318 USDT? Who sends that small of an amount on exchanges?

If that would be the case, then it would be better to not move that small amount of USDT to another address. However, it might affect his exchange account if there is an instance that he will be using his USDT wallet for trading.

It probably works the same on both blockchains since I presume every transaction on both would produce an unspent transaction output (UTXO) in the end. However, if the Binance USDT wallet address that is being dusted belongs to ERC20, I guess OP could still make use of his OMNI or TRC20 USDT addresses and stay away from spending the dust amount, provided these separate addresses do not combine their UTXOs.

By the way, it is not even 0.00318 USDT; it's 0.000318 USDT. Nobody would pay a fee just for spending that worthless amount.


I'm afraid this Samourai feature is not found in Binance's wallets.

Not a substantial amount so it must be dusting. I also received some of it even in my EOS tokenpocket account evenwhen there is only few EOS on it. It's either the developers airdrop some of the USDT or someone relaly is targetting. Some say that governments could possibly be dong it to identify crypto users. 

That would mean he can't use his USDT wallet anymore. That's the worse part when all that we need is the USDT or any other stablecoin.

The value of 0.00318 USDT is $0.00 :-P
No value at all. Maybe some guy wanted to have fun and sent 0.00318 USDT to hundreds of random addresses and you are one of the lucky one.

On a serious note: Maybe someone is trying to whitelist his address by sending dusts to random addresses. At the end he will send bigger amounts to one of his own address.
Or maybe I am talking stupid LOL

If it was a dust attack then it makes no sense at all. Why not use BTC or Ether instead. If OP checked the TX ID of the transaction I believe he would notice that the fee used to transfer the USDT would be so high making the dusk attack assumption a little impossible assumption far-fetched.

If we look at the current minimal fees
Ethereum Network in case the USDT was an ERC20 token - safe low is over 100 gwei. That's over $2 in fees considering that the gas limit for tokens is around 250,000
For Bitcoin Network in case it's based on the Omni Layer, the fee would still be high.

Just be thankful maybe a guy is sending gifts to random addresses we are in a pandemic and maybe he just want to be generous, but until you traced that address and ask the person that sent you why he sent , we could all just speculate.

Its just a phishing attack, I had seen lot of emails like these with the name of different exchanges to the emails which I never used to register on that exchange, so its like someone got a database and tried to do phishing with mail like these.

Is that your balance actually filled with that amount?

It doesn't matter whether it's a dust attack or not. The address belongs to Binance and it's not going to do any harm of me even if it is a dust attack. No worries from that side but still I'm confused why anyone would send such low amount. It seems I have to contact with Binance support soon.

I didn't log in my exchange yet but have checked the mail address. It's same as of the binance address, I have checked with previous mail and both are same.

In such case better to just send an email and check for what reason was it send. This would clarify if they had send it or not else it will just go round and round and also it is not value as such in $ terms. So, if it would have being more it would have made some benefit as well to the OP.

According to Binance itself when they explained what is dusting attacks. It was stated there that dusting doesn't always related with scam/phishing and other attacks, but it could also mean that someone is tracking crypto criminals by sending out small amount of cryptos to several addresses. I dont know what would be the specific process, but here's a YouTube video of Binance about a brief explanation of dusting attacks. https://youtu.be/_dPkAxRwvew (https://youtu.be/_dPkAxRwvew)
What I'm talking about can be found in the video at 2:39.

Since the address came from Binance, there will be a potential reason that they're actually doing the tracking.
Infact, the amount is just too small as a dust to be suspected as some sort of attack, specially that you're not actually using that address.

It'd make very little sense to do this in ethereum. Huge fees and you can't fit many addresses to send coins to in one transaction. It's also quite hard, as it would require writing a contract specific for the token.
If anything, it might be an attempt to test dust attacks against the exchange.

I'd be interested to see OP's transaction hash if he wants to share it. If there are many outputs grouped together on Ethereum then the whoever is doing this must be dedicated. Not sure about the purpose. It'd be easy for Binance to save itself from troubles with implementing simple measures if this is an attack however.

Are you sure you did not joined any of the binance product for savings? Cause thats the only reason might be associated with this. It could be someone trying to monitor you or you had posted your Binance exchange address for eth deposit sonewhere and copied it.

As much as we wanted to check this ourselves but the information is bit confidential. But you are right OP can check the transactions or if Binance also did the same to most users. Cause if its unique case then he can just emailed them and ask.

I know what you are feeling of wanting to know the true answer to why it had happened to your account. Whether there is a dust attack or not, your eagerness of knowing the real thing won't stop you until you get the exact thing that had happened.

The amount may be small but the possibilities had been said could any of it is the potential reason why it happened to you. Have you reached Binance support to get the clarity of this event? they will be the ones to give you details by details for your curiosity.

Wasn't a rule minimum deposit to be 0.5 usdt or something like that?

Its a ridiculous ammount and if it sent by mistake, check out who had access to your address... this looks suspicious

You are not the only one who received that ridiculous amount of money randomly.
I did received and so everyone else.

And yes it was dusting attack which it's been exist quite a while since few years ago , the motive itself various but it well known used to deanonymize their owners i mean yeah when you send tiny amount of money through hundreds even thousands addresses.. difficult to find who's the real owner / original sender then.

When you log in to your binance's account, can you see the depositing transaction id? (It has been a while since the last time I used Binance). If yes, the try to google the sending address and see if it has been reported anywhere or if it was linked to any suspecious activities in the past.
You can use a blockexplorer to see if you are the only one who received from that address or there are others who did too. If you are not the only one, then this is just another dust attack.

If you are taking it as received mistakenly from someone, think once again because the fee would be many times the USDT received by you. I think it was a dusting attack or some rebates for trading if you were involved in trading some coin where some competition was going on?

I dont think that this was a mistake. I've received 0,000686 USDT from Binance also. Checking TXID leads to bulksend from TXw5jvzLgHUEMmQtsHchrf6ZW8ZCQY7nNp. Checking this address transaction in tronscan (https://tronscan.org/#/address/TXw5jvzLgHUEMmQtsHchrf6ZW8ZCQY7nNp/transactions) shows numerous transfers of small amounts to various address. To whom does these addresses belong to - I have no idea. Probably all of them are users from binance.

A guy from Russian local board thinks this is all due to https://twitter.com/paoloardoino/status/1296452483955523584 or this https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/75411/tether-1-billion-usdt-tron-ethereum-blockchain

Yeah, upon checking the above post, it is confirmed that it was a dust attack although it doesn't make much sense. There's nothing to think for me as the wallet belongs to Binance and I don't have to pay anything for that.
I think there is enough discussion and I got the reason. Locking thread to prevent unnecessary reponses.