Scammers move 12k BTC - dump is comming?

[TheAndy500]

According to https://twitter.com/chiachih_wu , scammers from PlusToken ponzi scheme move 12k BTC to the addresses that looks like cold wallet:

Here article about that: https://www.cryptoknowmics.com/news/scammers-move-over-12000-btc-from-plustoken-wallet-to-new-address

Here Chiachih_wu is following next transactions: https://twitter.com/chiachih_wu/status/1227150566041649153/photo/1

If they want to dump such a large amount, can we expect a flash crash below $5k?

Personally, I think that they will not be so crazy and if they decide on any sale, they certainly will not want to trigger panic sell, because they would lose a lot on it themselves.

What do you think guys?

[jackg]

If the coins are known to be tainted, will exchanges even accept them?

I've heard of them marking some in the past and if the exchange has been hacked and its based in Europe or the US, they'll want to keep a good relationship with the police if they've been hacked in the past (I assume)...

Not that law enforcement are ever very useful but it could be the exchanges only hope...

[LoyceMobile]

If they're really scammers, they won't just receive $100,000,000 on their bank account without having to answer some very uncomfortable questions.

[dunfida]

Personally, I think that they will not be so crazy and if they decide on any sale, they certainly will not want to trigger panic sell, because they would lose a lot on it themselves.

What do you think guys?

They cant still sell those coins off in bulks easily but somewhat selling on smaller pieces would do and knowing that hackers arent really that dumb enough
on letting theirselves to be traceable.Pretty sure that they would use up mixing services or other means for their tracks to be erased nor cant be followed.
Its hard to admit but stopping completely for these coins to be sold isnt possible.They can sell but not on one go and price decrease would vary from time
to time yet 12k btc isnt really that much for making the price dump back to 5k its just a small number. $123M on current pricing wont really be enough.

[TheAndy500]

If the coins are known to be tainted, will exchanges even accept them?

I've heard of them marking some in the past and if the exchange has been hacked and its based in Europe or the US, they'll want to keep a good relationship with the police if they've been hacked in the past (I assume)...

Not that law enforcement are ever very useful but it could be the exchanges only hope...

This is definitely the biggest puzzle, but what if they decide to use decentralized exchange, such as https://bisq.network/ later withdrawals in ATMs? I know that sounds abstract with such a huge amount, but still is possible.  

If they're really scammers, they won't just receive $100,000,000 on their bank account without having to answer some very uncomfortable questions.

As for the bank account, I think that with such money they can easily find someone who will open a fake bank account and even take responsibility.

Of course, I only wonder loud, but it certainly isn't the first case, so there must be a way.

But I do not mean the method of withdrawing the money itself, but whether (if they decide to do it at all) such a drop could lead to a price drop below $5k, or is it not enough to cause such a crash?

(snip)12k btc isnt really that much for making the price dump back to 5k its just a small number. $123M on current pricing wont really be enough.

I hope so

[jackg]

I doubt the decentralised networks are that liquid yet, they never used to be...

The hackers could send the funds somewhere and move them to an exchange that doesn't care about governments. Or they could just wait until btc starts to become more anonymous - using mimble wimble or something...

[hello_good_sir]

Just because there is a move doesn't mean that it's going to be necessarily sold.

There is an important distinction between that. Besides, I'd say that a lot of margin trading activity probably has more actual impact on price compared to a spot trade of 12k BTC.

Also, wouldn't it make sense for them to do this trade OTC as opposed to on a regulated exchange? Pure FUD is what this is.

[2double0]

I think they would go for an OTC deal 'or it looks like it has already been done by them and BTC had been sold' because exchanges would ask for KYC for such an amount of BTC to be sold directly, while still not allow them to do so if they are tracked down as scammers. I don't think they would risk the coins by sending them to an exchange, but have done it the OTC way.

[exstasie]

If the coins are known to be tainted, will exchanges even accept them?

After some mixing transactions and being moved through an OTC broker, sure. The PlusToken scammers have already cashed lots of BTC out this way: https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/plustoken-scam-bitcoin-price

The graph above is a great example of the PlusToken scammers’ obfuscation attempts. The funds start in the wallet in the upper left hand corner, and move to the right. Diagonal movements represent a change in address type, while vertical movements represent the use of a mixer.

In the end, the funds moved to the address of an OTC broker operating on Huobi to be liquidated — that’s how nearly all of the funds so far have been cashed out.

This peeling activity probably indicates they are liquidating again: https://twitter.com/chiachih_wu/status/1227467907740962816

It's only 12K BTC though. Existing demand is probably enough to absorb it without significantly changing the bullish trajectory. It'll probably end up being another false bearish narrative as the market climbs a wall of worry.

[bitbunnny]

This sounds like another conspiracy theory to me.  Such activities could be discussed and we might have opinion about that however it's very hard to tell that this is made with intention and that is aimed to manipulate Bitcoin price. And we can't certainly tell if that will cause further price dump or not.

[xvids]

If they want to dump such a large amount, can we expect a flash crash below $5k?

Personally, I think that they will not be so crazy and if they decide on any sale, they certainly will not want to trigger panic sell, because they would lose a lot on it themselves.

What do you think guys?

Why would they lessen the amount that they could get?
I think they would sell it little by little so that the price of themarket wouldn't crash and they would get the highest amount that they could and they wouldn't have a hard time converting it to fiat.

[peonminer]

Probably just mixing going on. I would imagine a mix over a long time and a slow release into the ecosystem.

[1Referee]

Why would they lessen the amount that they could get?
I think they would sell it little by little so that the price of themarket wouldn't crash and they would get the highest amount that they could and they wouldn't have a hard time converting it to fiat.

They don't care about the price crashing because they got their coins for free. All they care about is getting rid of the coins and walk away with fiat. In the end, they aren't the only large holder of Bitcoin (assuming they actually hold any at this point), so there is always the risk of seeing other whales cash out and take the price down due to the thin orderbooks.

$5000 might look low today, but might be the high of next months. Reminds me of people saying how they can't believe anyone would sell under $6000 because it was super duper low..... It turned out to be high when we were approaching the $3000 level.

In the end, if there are coins to be dumped, let the scammers dump them now because of the increased demand. This way it won't hurt as much.

[JL0]

They say that Huobi is involment in the PlusToken Scam. They Processed over 50% of the Coins from them. Why is nobody doing anything about it?

[peter0425]

hackers tend to move hacked amount from other wallets just to lose tracking but it doesnt mean they will just dump the currency just like that they are surely preventing from being hooked.
and besides thats only 12k Btc not that big effect in the market or the price of Bitcoin IMO.and if does?surely market will recover faster because of the coming Bitcoin halving.

They say that Huobi is involment in the PlusToken Scam. They Processed over 50% of the Coins from them. Why is nobody doing anything about it?

if that exchange is really involved in this>?then there are some actions maybe taking place in silent ways to prevent being nuked.

[20kevin20]

If the coins are known to be tainted, will exchanges even accept them?

I've heard of them marking some in the past and if the exchange has been hacked and its based in Europe or the US, they'll want to keep a good relationship with the police if they've been hacked in the past (I assume)...

Not that law enforcement are ever very useful but it could be the exchanges only hope...

I guess there's at least one exchange in this world they could get through with the stolen funds. After all, it's quite easy to set up a test account and move a small part of your funds to test it out. Otherwise, Bisq is a great solution they can go for.

They say that Huobi is involment in the PlusToken Scam. They Processed over 50% of the Coins from them. Why is nobody doing anything about it?

They've probably been paid a good amount of $$ to stay silent. Or they just don't care if the laws allow it.

[RapTarX]

besides thats only 12k Btc not that big effect in the market or the price of Bitcoin IMO.

12k BTC is not an only amount. Look at the top exchanges and see how much BTC are in order. I just have checked bitstamp and the total SUM in sale was 4.5k BTC; it's the total SUM of sale order. Can you imagine what would happen if the supply there was more; certainly a price decrease and with a supply of 3x of current amount, price would significantly fall. Hence, it's not a small amount.

[STT]

The MT.gox coins got sent to BTC-E which then got closed down I think is some relevant history.   Thats a fairly large failure, at the time I used to check their prices and ran charts on there every day and it just disappeared along with all the fees they might have been earning.  I imagine most exchanges want to avoid being tied to known bad sources in that way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTC-e

[The Sceptical Chymist]

If the coins are known to be tainted, will exchanges even accept them?

That's a good question.  I would imagine that hackers would be able to find at least one exchange (which is probably all it would take) that would accept the coins, likely not even knowing they were stolen.  Bigger, more reputable exchanges like Binance most likely would not, but who knows.

As far as OP's question goes, I don't think there's necessarily a drop coming because of a large sale of stolen coins.  12,000BTC is a lot, and the thieves might even dump them all at once, but I suspect it's only going to involve one exchange and won't affect bitcoin's price much.  This situation has happened before with other hacks--I'm not saying the sale of the coins worked like that--but bitcoin has proven to be pretty resilient to stuff like this.

The MT.gox coins got sent to BTC-E which then got closed down I think is some relevant history.   

There you go.  And that represented a larger proportion of available coins than this current allotment does.  Then again, look what happened after the Mt. Gox fiasco.  Bitcoin crashed to the floor almost.

[wxa7115]

Probably just mixing going on. I would imagine a mix over a long time and a slow release into the ecosystem.

That could be an option for them if they did not found the cooperation from any exchange, but it seems they have so they can dump their coins as fast as possible and obtain their gains, the problem for them and this is something we will not know for the moment is how are they going to justify all that cash coming to their bank accounts?

That is definitely going to raise huge red flags to any bank unless they have the cooperation of banks as well, something which will not surprise me.