Plustoken is the most successful and infamous Ponzi scheme in the history of cryptocurrencies. It was active in China and South Korea and collapsed in 2019 with $3B of investor money stolen. Typically, the sell-offs of Plustoken assets result in huge pressure on the Bitcoin (BTC) price.
Next stop exchanges?
As revealed by OXT Research (aka @ErgoBTC), another huge portion of Bitcoins (BTC) that belong to Plustoken investors were moved to mixers. Suspicious transactions have been registered by the Whale Alert automated on-chain service.
The fraudsters have moved about 22,000 Bitcoins (BTC), or more than $202 mln. Plustoken uses coin-join services or Bitcoin (BTC) mixers to obfuscate the transaction history of their tokens. In turn, this obfuscation is required to avoid the KYC/AML checks of top cryptocurrency exchanges.
Often, the assets that were stolen from gullible investors are sold via over-the-counter desks (OTC), but cryptocurrency exchange platforms may also serve as instruments for massive sell-offs.
OXT Research highlighted that the process of selling through exchanges resumed in May 2020. It looks like scammers feel that Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) prices have recovered from Black Thursday and are interested in selling again:
Distributions to exchanges went on pause mid-march to early May. Since then exchange flows have averaged ~300 to 500 BTC/day.
Does it still affect the price of Bitcoin (BTC)?
The analytical community lacks a consensus on the actual role of Plustoken sell-offs in Bitcoin (BTC) price dynamics. Travis Kling, a top-notch investor, cryptocurrency fund manager and founder of Ikigai Asset Management, admits that since its collapse, Plustoken significantly affects crypto markets.
Also, he criticized Huobi and OKEx crypto exchanges for their ignorance of scam coin moves.
However, anonymous crypto trader and analyst PlanB, whose Twitter followers previously claimed that Plustoken activity was a major bearish market catalyst, suggests not overestimating this influence.
He outlines that the market situation is a much more powerful factor in Bitcoin (BTC) price upmoves ad downmoves than Plustoken.