Chinese crypto exchange Huobi has seen the highest number of withdrawals from the alleged crypto Ponzi scheme PlusToken to date, according to new research.
Chinese exchanges prevail
New York-based blockchain infrastructure firm Elementus released a study on Aug. 23, claiming that almost 50% of the total number of PlusToken withdrawals were sent to Huobi.
As Cointelegraph reported earlier in August, PlusToken apparently began a mass sell-off of Bitcoin (BTC) that may have been to blame for a $400 dip in BTC’s price over a matter of minutes.
According to the research, PlusToken withdrawals on Huobi amounted to over 4.3 million Ether (ETH), out of a total of 9.2 million ETH. Other popular exchanges for PlusToken withdrawals included another Chinese exchange ZB.com, which received about 8% of withdrawals, as well as South Korea’s Upbit, Malta-based OKEx and Gate, also from China.
Five largest PlusToken recipients | Source: Elementus
Bigger than BitConnect
As previously reported, PlusToken could be the largest crypto exit scam in history, with an estimated loss of about $2.9 billion. On July 10, Cointelegraph first reported on PlusToken when Vanuatu extradited six Chinese citizens who were arrested as part of an investigation into the South Korean wallet provider and exchange.According to Elementus, PlusToken’s scheme collected almost $2 billion in Ether alone (9.9 million ETH) — and BTC, XRP and EOS were also involved. In the study, Elementus anticipated PlusToken to be the largest Ponzi scheme to date — surpassing famous crypto exit schemes such as BitConnect and OneCoin.
Recently, Cointelegraph reported that more than $240 million of PlusToken funds were moved through four Bitcoin transactions.