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Primitive Ventures founding partner Dovey Wan says the recent Bitcoin sell-off may be largely attributed to a Chinese Ponzi scheme.
According to Wan, local sources report that the promoters of an allegedly fraudulent project called PlusToken have scammed Chinese investors out of 200,000 Bitcoin (BTC), an amount worth more than $2 billion at current market prices.
Unsuspecting victims have also reportedly lost a total of over 900,000 Ether (ETH) after investing in the PlusToken project. Wan says traders in China believe the scammers are selling the cryptocurrency they’ve acquired “nonstop” on several different digital asset exchanges.
Wan has also shared what she claims are some of the addresses that belong to PlusToken promoters.
She adds,
“How I get these addresses? These were the ones PlusToken ppl posted in their own chats for new members to send coins over, and are the only ones in Chinese chat I can find they also have branches in Korea, Japan and Malaysia AFAIK, which I have no visibility.”
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In an attempt to stop the reported sell-off, Wan suggests,
“Tell all exchanges, OTCs and any possible endpoints they might sell to label these addresses and addresses associated with them down the stream as blacklist ones…
“Stop BTC is hard. Need exchanges’ coordination.
Good on both ends if either happens – either BTC circulating supply goes down or we get cheaper BTC once they sell-off.”
Wan notes via Twitter that blockchain security firms Peckshield and Chainalysis are currently investigating what appears to be one of the largest scams in the history of the cryptocurrency space.
Launched in 2018, PlusToken is accused of having the telltale signs of an elaborate Ponzi scheme that claims to offer extremely high-yield returns on investment. There were reportedly four membership levels, with each offering huge dividends. The PlusToken project promoters managed to enroll 10 million members.
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The core group of individuals associated with PlusToken were taken into police custody two months ago, says Wan. Since early July, PlusToken wallets have sent around 1,000 BTC to crypto exchange Bittrex and Huobi, according to cybersecurity researchers at Peckshield.
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