$1.3 Billion ETH Linked to PlusToken “Moves,” With $17 Million Listed

ETH prices have been falling in recent hours following news that $1.3 billion worth of Ethereum linked to the PlusToken case has been moved.

According to analysis by @ErgoBTC, a small amount of the $1.3 billion ETH vault linked to the Chinese PlusToken ponzi scheme was moved to the exchange on October 9, raising further concerns in the community about the risk of it being dumped into the market.

PlusToken is a Chinese crypto ponzi scheme that rose to prominence in 2018-2019 before being busted by authorities in 2020, seizing 194,775 BTC ($11.2 billion) - 833,083 ETH - 1.4 million LTC - 27.6 million EOS - 74,167 DASH - 487 million XRP - 6 billion DOGE - 79,581 BCH - and 213,724 USDT.

ErgoBTC claims that while all of PlusToken's huge BTC holdings were sold by China in 2019-2020, a third of the ~840,000 Ethereum was transferred to the Bidesk exchange and sold.

The remaining ETH, estimated at 542,000 ETH, has been held in reserve since then, only moving for the first time in four years in early August. This ETH is now worth $1.3 billion.

As of October 9, about 15,700 ETH ($38.4 million) had been moved from this cluster of addresses, with 7,000 ETH ($17.1 million) posted to Binance, OKX, and Bitget. This information led ErgoBTC to predict that PlusToken’s ETH liquidation activities could soon resume, creating huge selling pressure on Ethereum.

ETH has also been volatile in recent times, clearly shown by the poor performance of Ethereum ETFs, with the total amount sold after nearly 3 months of launch reaching nearly $850 million.

This is also the main reason why a large number of cryptocurrency investors have gradually lost faith in the future price prospects of ETH, leading to a massive sell-off by a "whale" who bought ETH during the ICO period in 2015, earning 113 million USD.