Worth up to 1.3 billion dollars Ethereum The Ponzi scheme from Plus Token may soon move to a cryptocurrency exchange, according to the chain.
Free Zamora, an anonymous analyst at OXT Research, tweeted on Wednesday that some of these funds were sent to exchanges including BitGet, Binance and OKX.
of The price of Ethereum It is currently down 1.5% on the day but has been flat over the past week, trading at $2,448 according to CoinGecko.
Blockchain analytics firm AMLBot further corroborated OXT Research's data through an independent investigation on behalf of Decrypt.
What was PlusToken?
Plus Token was a Ponzi scheme that operated in China between 2018 and 2019, attracting 2.6 million participants. Authorities busted the operation and seized a large amount of cryptocurrency.
“The remaining amount, approximately 542,000 ETH, was distributed across multiple wallets and began moving in August, eventually ending up in 294 different addresses,” an AMLBot representative said.
Earlier this week, blockchain analyst FreeSamourai said that of the 542,000 ETH (valued at $1.3 billion) held by Plus Tokens, it reached about 7,000 ETH ($17.2 million) on exchanges, “signaling that it intends to start selling the remaining tokens.”
“More than 15,700 ETH has been transferred [PlusToken’s] Last Known Addresses” and within that “More than 7,000 ETH sent to few exchange addresses.
“Considering the recent efforts to hide ETH again, it is unlikely that the active distribution of 15,700 ETH was the last of the 540,000 ETH supply that was moved yesterday,” Frisamorai wrote. Declining sales of Plus Token Ethereum has been cited by crypto investment firm QCP as one of the reasons for the lack of optimism in the crypto market.
Calvin Ferreira, head of ecosystem and development at the Bitcoin Layer-2 network BitcoinOS, told Decrypt that “the total amount held is around $1.3 billion, so any significant liquidity could significantly increase the selling pressure, which would cause the price of Ethereum to drop.
Anmol Jain, head of investigations at blockchain forensics and compliance firm AMLBot, told Decrypt that the move could anticipate increasing selling pressure, exacerbate market sentiment and lead to reduced liquidity. Still, “the exact impact depends on the amount of ETH, the timing of the transfers and the overall market conditions at that time.”
In late 2020, Decrypt reported that the Chinese police seized 1% of Bitcoin's total supply in the case of Plus Token. Local authorities also seized more than 830,000 ETH, 1.4 million LTC, 27 million EOS, 74,000 Dash, 487 million XRP, 6 billion Doge, 79,000 BCH and 213,000 USDT. Local law enforcement was able to indict six members of the PlusToken group in early September 2020.
In the year In a 2020 court document, authorities reported transferring seized assets to Zhifan Technology Beijing, with the hope that the money would eventually be distributed to victims. According to OTX Research, Bitcoin is believed to have been sold on exchanges, and some Ethereum has been liquidated, leaving 542,000 ETH.
Edited by Stephen Graves
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