Last year at the end of the year, my family and I spent a three-day holiday at a five-star hotel. But less than 24 hours after leaving, my wallet was completely emptied.

The most outrageous part is that I didn’t do anything risky—no phishing links clicked, no suspicious apps signed, and I didn’t even create a new wallet. Yet, I still got hacked. After spending half a day reviewing logs and consulting security experts, I finally understood what happened. It’s a bit heartbreaking to say: all of this was caused by the hotel WiFi, a phone call, and a series of my own basic mistakes.

As an experienced player in the crypto space, I always bring my laptop when I go out. That trip, I thought I could handle some work while spending time with my family. My wife was strongly against it, and now I see she was right.

At the hotel, I connected to the WiFi just like all other guests—no password required, just click the verification page to get online. Nothing unusual about that.

The next workday was very normal: browsing Twitter, checking account balances, looking at Discord and Telegram messages. No suspicious operations at all.

Then the phone rang. A friend in crypto called, and we talked for about ten minutes—market trends, Bitcoin movements, industry gossip, casual chat. But that one phone call turned out to be the turning point of the entire incident…