News

• Wallets linked to the seized $4.2 billion PlusToken Ponzi scheme have begun moving thousands of ether (ETH), raising concerns about potential market pressure.
• The movement of funds, totaling approximately 2,800 ETH, was tracked from dormant wallets to a single wallet, with the origin traced back to a wallet involved in a $2 billion seizure in 2020.

Wallets tied to funds seized from the $4.2 billion PlusToken Ponzi scheme started moving thousands of ether (ETH) on Wednesday, creating chatter about more looming sell pressure among crypto market participants on X.

On-chain data shows over 2,800 ETH from various wallets linked to the seized wallet were today placed in a single wallet “0xf46847fa42fd9dd52737f3d25b8659cceba80eeb.”

CoinDesk verified the wallet movements using the on-chain tool Arkham. The ether in the previously dormant wallets was traced back to a wallet that seized $2 billion worth of ETH in 2020.

In November 2020, Chinese authorities seized almost $4 billion worth of various tokens, including ETH, bitcoin (BTC), dogecoin (DOGE), xrp (XRP), among others, from operators of the PlusToken Ponzi scheme, months after its 27 alleged masterminds were arrested.

The Ponzi was said to have grown to over 3,000 layers at the time, having fleeced more than 2 million investors using cryptocurrencies as a funding channel.

CORRECTION (Aug. 7, 13:47 UTC): Corrects headline figure to $4 billion. An earlier version of this story had it as $2 billion.

CORRECTION (Aug. 7: 16:36 UTC): Removes reference to LookonChain tweet that has since been deleted.