[2019-08-15] A Mysterious $3B Chinese Ponzi Scheme Is Being Blamed for Bitcoin’s

[timerland]

Seems like a pretty suspicious article. It's a Chinese ponzi, so I'd doubt that a lot of the transactions were made in BTC (due to China's banning against the cryptocurrency.

Everyone acting way too gullible here, just because a random news site makes an article supposedly explaining the crash of BTC, doesn't mean it's true. Just because they had 2 addresses with BTC in it, doesn't mean those 2 addresses belonged to them. Anyone could show anyone those addresses and say they are BTC millionaires.

Just more manipulation of the news, bad articles about BTC means weak hands will sell their coins and dump the market even more. I'm still waiting for any actual proof before I'll believe this.

[bryant.coleman]

The amount scammed is just insane. 200,000 BTC and 800,000 ETH would amount to $2.5 billion as per the latest exchange rates.I don't understand why people pour their hard earned money in to these tokens and ICOs, despite the bad experience they had in 2018. I never thought scammers can be this successful. The largest scams that I have heard of involved a few hundreds of millions of USD worth of coins (mostly Ethereum). And this is bad news for Binance as well. Now the authorities have another excuse to make KYC mandatory for the Binance users (I am talking about the global users, and not about the users from the United States).

[Naida_BR]

Did they successfully sold the 1000BTC to Bittrex and Huobi?

74,000 BTC and another 95,000 BTC to their wallets. This scheme is pretty big but how come people here in the forum didn't talk about this PLUS token? I haven't really encounter a thread about them here in the forum.

I think that it is fake news.
There is nothing posted for this Scam and as they managed to steal so big amounts of money it would be noted somewhere. I didn't even hear about this token. I don't think that this is to blame the drop in Bitcoin price. It is more like a correction to the recent uptend.

[rodel caling]

Did they successfully sold the 1000BTC to Bittrex and Huobi?

74,000 BTC and another 95,000 BTC to their wallets. This scheme is pretty big but how come people here in the forum didn't talk about this PLUS token? I haven't really encounter a thread about them here in the forum.

where is the evidence of any of this?


smells of a last ditch attempt at manipulating the market downwards before a break upwards

Exactly mate nothing reason to panic about this issue, without any proof of evidence, and it's obvious people hp ehund they want to holder sell their coins quick to manipulate the price the market price.

[bbc.reporter]

If it is not a Chinese ponzi moving all those coins, then who? A rich investor? All bitcoin addresses of his are now marked, no more financial privacy for him hehehe.

In any case, Chainalysis launched a real time alert service for 15 coins. It might be helpful for suspicious transactions, however, it might also be used for blacklisting wallets.



Blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis has introduced "suspicious cryptocurrency transaction alerts" in "Chainalysis Know Your Transaction (KYT)", its "real-time anti-money laundering (AML) compliance solution".

According to Chainalysis, this new feature results in alerts being generated "whenever a transfer involves a risky counterparty and crosses a value threshold." Alert levels (Severe, High, Medium, and Low) are "based on factors such as category, service, direct versus indirect exposure, direction of funds, and amount," and are available for all 15 cryptocurrencies that Chainalysis supports (including BTC, ETH, BCH, LTC, USDT, and DAI).

Michael Breu, Gemini's Chief Compliance Officer, also chose to comment on this announcement:

As a New York Trust company we are required to monitor transactions on and off our platform. Tools like KYT alerts, which provide real time and ongoing blockchain analysis, coupled with Gemini's own compliance policies, help us meet our regulatory obligations.

Read in full https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2019/08/chainalysis-launches-real-time-suspicious-transaction-alerts-for-15-cryptocurrencies/

[1BTC EQUALS 1CAR]

Did they successfully sold the 1000BTC to Bittrex and Huobi?

74,000 BTC and another 95,000 BTC to their wallets. This scheme is pretty big but how come people here in the forum didn't talk about this PLUS token? I haven't really encounter a thread about them here in the forum.

I think that it is fake news.
There is nothing posted for this Scam and as they managed to steal so big amounts of money it would be noted somewhere. I didn't even hear about this token. I don't think that this is to blame the drop in Bitcoin price. It is more like a correction to the recent uptend.

No, this is true and many articles about this were shared across telegram and twitter. There are also pictures of the perpetrators and one them looks like an Asian version of vitalik. But it seems like the exchanges were alerted about this and monitor the wallets of those scammers which has prevented the big dump of bitcoin.

[bryant.coleman]

No, this is true and many articles about this were shared across telegram and twitter. There are also pictures of the perpetrators and one them looks like an Asian version of vitalik. But it seems like the exchanges were alerted about this and monitor the wallets of those scammers which has prevented the big dump of bitcoin.

As per Elementus, more than 50% of the scammed amount was withdrawn using China-based Huobi. Other exchanges such as ZB, Upbit, Gate and OKEx were also used. Multiple cryptocurrencies are involved in this scandal (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple.etc) and this makes tracking the stolen amount a very tedious and complicated task. But the amount stolen was huge and therefore a lot of the individuals and firms are keeping track on the movements.

And it won't be very easy for the law enforcement authorities to seize the stolen coins. According to Dovey Wan, the Bitcoins are being held in multi-sig wallets and the cops won't be able to secure the BTC unless they capture all those who are involved. Seizing the ETH and XRP coins should be easier, but till now the authorities didn't had any luck with that as well.

[veleten]

Did they successfully sold the 1000BTC to Bittrex and Huobi?

74,000 BTC and another 95,000 BTC to their wallets. This scheme is pretty big but how come people here in the forum didn't talk about this PLUS token? I haven't really encounter a thread about them here in the forum.

I think that it is fake news.
There is nothing posted for this Scam and as they managed to steal so big amounts of money it would be noted somewhere. I didn't even hear about this token. I don't think that this is to blame the drop in Bitcoin price. It is more like a correction to the recent uptend.

No, this is true and many articles about this were shared across telegram and twitter. There are also pictures of the perpetrators and one them looks like an Asian version of vitalik. But it seems like the exchanges were alerted about this and monitor the wallets of those scammers which has prevented the big dump of bitcoin.

looks like after all this could be one of the contributing factors to the recent crash
I didn't pay much attention to the news in August , but when I saw people dump coins  at the highest bidder price , I instantly recalled this topic
maybe some of the coins did end up on the markets , the total volumes that day were not insane but pretty high for some exchanges over 70.000 coins traded hands
but if even 1/10th of the reported coins were laundered and sold , this would explain the sudden 2000$ price drop

[magneto]

Imagine blaming a completely irrelevant (and not even sizable) scam for BTC's price movements.

Short and long term cycles within the market, as well as other factors are much more likely to cause these price movements. The market has sufficient liquidity to soak up these 50-100 BTC trades quite easily. If you look at the volume, you will quickly realise this as well.

These articles are written up most likely for attention, or sensationalist headlines. Price movements are not determined by a single event, ever, period.

[Sithara007]

Imagine blaming a completely irrelevant (and not even sizable) scam for BTC's price movements.

Short and long term cycles within the market, as well as other factors are much more likely to cause these price movements. The market has sufficient liquidity to soak up these 50-100 BTC trades quite easily. If you look at the volume, you will quickly realise this as well.

These articles are written up most likely for attention, or sensationalist headlines. Price movements are not determined by a single event, ever, period.

I don't think that it is irrelevant. The total market cap of cryptocurrency is around $220 billion (the net worth of coins in free-float would be much lower), and the amount mentioned here represents almost 1.5% of that amount. And this is from a single scam. The real extent of the PLUS Token scam is still unknown. I have read reports claiming more than 10 million individuals scammed (most of them in China and South Korea). Last month, CipherTrace released a statement claiming that the real losses from this scam may be much higher than $3 billion. They also claimed that a lot of this stolen money is being dumped on various crypto-exchanges (which explains the recent bearish price movement).