Shiba Inu and the Fake Airdrop of October 12: “no such airdrop. this is a drainer”

An account on X claimed on Monday that the SHIB airdrop was back, and circulated a link for checking your own wallet. Mazrael, a long-standing member of the Shiba Inu community and an adviser to the game Shiba Eternity, called the post a scam the same day: “care. no such airdrop. this is a drainer.” Anyone holding Shiba Inu loses nothing from a click alone. The holding goes only with a signature, and that is exactly what such pages present as a harmless check.

The case: what ran across the timelines on October 12

The fake account posed as an official source and spoke of a new round of free tokens. Anyone following the shortened link landed on a page that at first asked only for the wallet to be connected. A window then opened that looked like an ordinary transaction. Mazrael wrote that such posts were flooding the timelines right now, and advised against clicking and in favour of reporting the accounts. The industry outlet U.Today picked up the episode at 11:25 UTC on October 12.

Two things are missing from the report, and both matter for the assessment. Neither the domain of the scam page nor a loss figure is named. There is therefore no documented number for victims or tokens drained, and anyone reading such a number should ask for its source. What is documented is the episode itself and the warning from someone close to the project.

The project's official point of contact is shib.io. Anything that would be a genuine project airdrop would appear there and in the channels linked from it. An offer that surfaces only on X and presses for haste is therefore suspect before any technical check.

Wallet drainers: how an approval turns into an outflow

A wallet drainer is not a virus that sneaks onto your computer. It is a contract on the blockchain that the victim itself gives permission to move its tokens. In the language of the Ethereum standards, that permission is called an approval or allowance. It is granted with the approve call, and three details are fixed in the process: which token, which recipient and which amount.

The catch lies in the amount. Many interfaces enter the highest possible value there by default, so the user does not have to sign again on every trade. An unlimited approval of that kind stays in place until someone revokes it. It covers not only today's holding but every SHIB that later arrives at the same address. The attacker does not even have to be in a hurry after that. They can wait weeks and pull the holding out once it has grown large enough.

Signature or transaction: the difference the window does not show

There are two routes to signing, and the wallet displays them with differing clarity. A transaction costs a fee and appears later in the block explorer. A pure signature under the EIP-2612 standard, known in practice as permit, costs nothing and never shows up in your own history at all. The attacker submits it and pays the fee. Anyone looking only at the transaction list therefore sees nothing unusual, even though the permission was granted long ago.

Here is how to recognise the situation: when a page promises free tokens but demands a signature granting the other side access to your holding, the direction is wrong. A genuine airdrop sends tokens to your address. It needs no permission from you, because nobody requires authorisation to send you something.

Why Shiba Inu in particular works as bait

Memecoins suit this trick especially well for two reasons. The first is the unit count. In circulation, according to CoinGecko data, are around 589.24 trillion SHIB, with total supply at 589.50 trillion. Of the original quadrillion, 41.05 percent is therefore gone, burned or permanently locked. Anyone seeing quantities like that in their portfolio easily loses the feel for the value behind them. Ten million SHIB sounds like a lot and is worth around 47.80 euros on Monday evening.

The second reason is expectation. Shiba Inu grew out of an airdrop and out of distribution campaigns, and that is precisely the story the fraudsters retell. Add to that the state of the price: after a year down 49.9 percent, the hope of free tokens is an effective lever. The longer a holding sits at a loss, the more readily its owner reaches for an offer that evens out the sum.

Shiba Inu price on October 12: $0.00000533 and $63 million in turnover

On Monday evening SHIB trades at $0.00000533, or 0.00000478 euros, according to CoinGecko. The daily range runs from $0.00000530 to $0.00000555, and the 24-hour loss comes to 2.6 percent. Over the week there is a 9.3 percent loss, over 30 days a gain of 0.6 percent, and over one year a loss of 49.9 percent. Market capitalisation stands at $3.14 billion, or 2.81 billion euros, ranking 37th. In trading, $63.1 million changed hands within a day.

SHIB is 93.8 percent short of its all-time high of $0.00008616 from October 27, 2021. For the scam, that figure is no footnote: bridging exactly that gap is what an offer of free tokens promises.

Yesterday, in this spot, we worked through Shibarium's network utilisation after the 151 percent jump. The price has moved a further 2.6 percent down since then, and the daily low of $0.00000530 sits close to the current level. The mark that still left room below it yesterday has become the day's line. Nothing has changed on the chain itself in these 24 hours that would explain the price. The pressure comes from the broad market, in which Bitcoin and Ethereum are also down over the week.

Hardware wallet or exchange: what custody changes for your SHIB

The trick works only where you sign yourself. If your SHIB sits with an exchange, no page on the internet can get you to grant an approval, because you do not hold the keys at all. In exchange you carry the custodian's risk. Since December 30, 2024, providers in the EU need authorisation under the MiCA regulation for this business, and a scam page never holds that authorisation. Deposit protection of the kind that applies to a bank account does not exist for crypto, not even with a licensed provider.

If you hold your own keys, the relationship reverses. Nobody can freeze your holding, but every signature is yours. A hardware wallet shifts that line once more: the key never leaves the device, and the operation has to be confirmed on the device. Against an approval you confirm on the device yourself, however, that does not help. It protects against theft of the key, not against your own consent. If you want to compare the devices and their differences, you will find them in our hardware wallet comparison.

A middle route that stands up well to this trick is separation by purpose. One address for day-to-day use with small amounts, a second address without any approval at all for the holding that is meant to sit still. Connect only the first to outside pages and the damage stays capped, in the worst case, at the small amount.

Revoking approvals: how to check your SHIB permissions

Revocation is the only operation that undoes an approval once granted. Technically it sets the permitted amount to zero. It costs a network fee, because it is itself a transaction, and it takes effect as soon as it is confirmed in a block.

Here is how to go about it. Open an approval checker such as revoke.cash or the corresponding page of a block explorer and enter your address. The list shows, for each token, which contract may move how much. Pay particular attention to entries with unlimited amounts and to contracts whose names you cannot place. Set each of these approvals to zero, starting with the largest position.

Two points are often overlooked. First, the list always covers one chain only. SHIB runs on Ethereum, on Shibarium and, since the start of October, in bridged form on Solana as well, and each chain keeps its own approvals. Second, a signature granted under EIP-2612 does not disappear from the list if it has not yet been submitted. If you suspect such a signature was handed out, the only remedy left is moving to a fresh address with a new key.

If you want to bring your holdings together in one place anyway, check the terms of the licensed venues first: which provider lists SHIB at all, and what a transfer there costs, decides whether the move is worth it for a holding worth tens of euros.

Stolen SHIB and the tax office: holding period, exemption limit and the loss

For investors in Germany, theft has an uncomfortable tax side. Gains from selling crypto assets fall under private disposals as set out in section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. After a holding period of one year the gain stays tax-free; below that it counts towards the rest of your income, and since 2024 the exemption limit has stood at 1,000 euros per calendar year. If that limit is exceeded, the entire gain becomes taxable, not just the part above it.

Theft, however, is not a sale. The disposal is missing, and on the line taken in the German finance ministry's guidance on crypto assets no loss arises that could be offset against gains from other private disposals. The holding is gone and the tax burden on earlier gains remains. That is why the half hour spent revoking old approvals pays off more reliably than any attempt at rescue afterwards.

The duty to keep records applies regardless. Anyone holding SHIB across several addresses and chains should keep acquisition dates cleanly, otherwise the one-year period cannot be proven in case of doubt. Tools that handle this automatically read the purchases straight from the addresses. Classifying an individual case remains a matter for your tax adviser, and this text does not replace one.

Our assessment: the bait grows as the price shrinks

From this newsroom's point of view, the timing of this trick in this particular week is no coincidence. The evidence is in plain sight: SHIB stands 93.8 percent below its 2021 high, down 49.9 percent over the year, and daily turnover of $63.1 million is thin for an asset with a $3.14 billion market capitalisation. In such an environment, a promise of free tokens meets holders who have been waiting months for a countermove. Mazrael made the same observation in his post when he spoke of a flood of such accounts.

Against that, the trick has not changed technically. Approvals as a route of attack have existed for years, and every wallet now displays warnings. Anyone going through the approval list for their addresses once a quarter removes the basis for this attack, no matter how convincing the next page looks. No statement about the further course of the price follows from this, and this section is not a recommendation to buy or sell.

SHIB security: three steps before the next approval

1. Check and revoke approvals. Go through the list for every address and every chain on which you hold SHIB, and set unlimited amounts to zero. If your holding sits with a custodian anyway, check its licensing in the overview of crypto exchanges.
2. Separate your holdings. Set up one address for day-to-day use and a second that is never connected to an outside page. For the second, a device that confirms the signature separately from the browser makes sense; you will find these in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Record acquisition data. Note the date, quantity and price for every purchase, so that the one-year period under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act stays provable. The suitable tools are in the comparison of crypto tax software.

(As of October 12, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)