Tracking Plus Token: Bitcoin dropped 20% in 2 days, is it the smashed disk?

Text: 嚯 嚯

Source: Hive Finance

Editor's Note: Original title was "Tracking Plus Token"

Bitcoin has fallen by nearly 20% in 2 days. The running project Plus Token, which saw more than 13,000 BTC changes 4 days ago, was once again listed as a suspect of "hitting the disk".

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Blockchain security agencies PeckShield and Beijing Chain Security have stated that there is no sign of a link between the decline in BTC and Plus Token. After tracking the address of the assets involved, Beijing Lian'an believed that "the funds involved are still in the money laundering stage and have not entered the market."

Since the collapse of the Plus Token in July last year, a number of security and data institutions have joined the ranks of tracking the movement of the assets involved. Although these assets have increased the difficulty of tracking due to the use of mixed currency technology, the action has never stopped.

 

13,000 BTC changes involved in the case were again Lenovo

At 18:30 on March 10th, BTC's 24-hour low price remained near $ 7,600. Two days ago, BTC began to fall continuously from a high of 9,150 US dollars, with a single day drop of 15%, and its market value evaporated over 11 billion US dollars.

When the market began to look for the cause of the decline, the suspected MLM fund disk project Plus Token was also included in the discussion. The reason for this speculation may come from the change of the fund address of the project 4 days ago.

On March 5, CoinHolmes, a digital asset visualization tracking platform under the blockchain security agency PeckShield, warned that the starting addresses of Plus Token running funds "15pyB7" and "1Gc91z" transferred a total of 13,112 BTC to dozens of new addresses. The market value exceeds 100 million US dollars.

Plus Token is an asset disk project that appeared after March 2018. It has absorbed more than $ 3 billion in digital assets from a large number of investors with a high monthly interest rate of 10% to 30%, including 200,000 BTC, 78 Million ETH and 26 million EOS. In July last year, the project collapsed, and the main people involved ran away. On August 16, the Yancheng People's Procuratorate announced the approval of the arrest of six organizations of the Plus Token MLM activist, but as of now, important team members are still at large, and the huge amount of stolen money involved has not yet been recovered and returned to the victims.

Due to the huge amount of mainstream assets involved in the case, after the collapse of Plus Token, whenever the cryptocurrency market declines, the outside world will always connect the project's asset-related movements with “smashing disks”.

At 8:51 on December 19 last year, Whale Alert data from the monitoring agency revealed that 78.9 Ethereum changed from the address of the Plus Token involved, from an address beginning with "0xf4a2" to an unknown address beginning with "0x9971". At that time, the market value of this batch of ETH was about $ 105 million.

Plus Token involved in the transfer of Ethereum addresses

Coincidentally, the price of ETH also fell from the opening price of USD 132 at 8:50 to USD 127 on the day, a drop of 3.7% in 20 minutes, and the market value of ETH evaporated by USD 550 million.

Hive Finance combed the information and found that after the Plus Token crash, at least five security or data service providers, including PeckShield, provided address tracking of the project in question, and external warnings were more directed to the exchanges, intended to remind various platforms to pay attention to the funds involved in the case. In and out.

This time, the warning of 13112 BTC's on-chain address changes was also a regular disclosure. "From the perspective of the assets on the chain, there are no relevant signs that there is a link between the decline in BTC and Plus Token." PeckShield staff said.

Mixed currency laundering increases tracking difficulty

After the Plus Token crash, it is not difficult to track digital assets worth more than $ 3 billion, and different security agencies and researchers have different results in tracking the incident.

Data analysis agency Chainalaysis's tracking of PlusToken's on-chain assets shows that 180,000 BTCs have entered the Plus Token's wallet involved; independent researcher ErgoBTC has concluded that 93,900 BTCs are related to the address of Plustoken; PeckShield has tracked it More than 200,000 BTC.

Some insiders said that the difference between the tracking results of different institutions is that Plus Token uses mixed money laundering technology in the process of asset transfer, "this makes it more difficult to track assets on the chain."

In the Bitcoin network, the behavior of each trader sending and receiving digital assets is open and transparent. Based on this characteristic, trackers can determine the process of asset transfer by analyzing the transaction behavior between two addresses, because all transactions The records are all in the same public ledger.

However, when someone mixes a transaction with multiple transactions from other addresses, the tracker needs to spend more time to clear the mist of funds from the "mixed coin". The SlowMist security team told Hive Finance, "Bitcoin mixing means that users use a blender to mix and send Bitcoin with other users' Bitcoins, and through multiple transfers, to eliminate traces of tracking."

The coin mixing service provided by the Dream Market platform

The SlowMist security team is an example. A common coin mixer was developed based on the CoinJoin protocol. Taking the CoinJoin protocol as an example, it uses the UTXO feature of Bitcoin (a transaction can have multiple inputs and outputs) to build a "multiple transaction sending To the address of multiple transaction recipients ", so that the tracker cannot establish a strong correlation between the output address and the tracking event, thereby achieving the purpose of erasing the trace.

Mixed currency technology increases the anonymity of asset circulation for BTC transactions, but also brings opportunities for illegal acts such as money laundering and theft, as well as the difficulty of recovering stolen goods.

However, the mixed currency does not mean that these batches of digital assets will no longer be tracked down. The SlowMist team told Hive Finance, "After the mixed currency, the real flow of tracking funds will become more complicated, and the funds involved in the Plus Token will continue to be mixed, and The splitting of large funds into a large number of small funds makes the tracking targets scattered, but only results in greater resource and labor costs for tracking. "

 

Plus Token assets are still in the split stage

There is no evidence showing the correlation between the changes in the funds involved in the Plus Token case and the decline in the market, but its huge transfers are still worthy of vigilance, especially whether these funds have entered the transaction market, which is not only related to the pursuit of stolen goods and the interests of victims, but also to the To the possible market impact.

"The funds involved in the recent transfer of Plus Token are still in the money laundering stage and have not entered the market." Security agency Beijing Chain Security disclosed that since the wallet change on March 5, the current batch of digital assets is still in the split stage and has not yet entered the off-site market. The transaction, "contrary to the sharp decline in the currency market, has even slowed the pace of money laundering."

As early as February 13, Beijing Chainan's Chainsmap monitoring system has discovered that over 12,000 Plus Tokens involved in the case have been split into single-digit and double-digit bitcoins and have entered different batches of bitcoin. In the phase of confusion, the maximum number of transfers is close to 20.

The maximum number of Plus Token assets involved is nearly 20

In addition to over-the-counter trading, cryptocurrency withdrawal channels also include trading platforms. When security agencies warn the platforms, will the assets involved in Plus Token be locked by the platform's risk control system?

In this regard, Hive Finance has contacted major exchanges such as OKEx, Binance, and Huobi. The heads of multiple platforms have stated that if digital assets with unknown sources of funds are transferred to the exchange, they will be carried out as soon as possible. Track and process.

OKEx stated that the platform will focus on suspicious sensitive accounts. "Once abnormal behavior occurs, we will take appropriate measures and cooperate with the police to investigate. This does not specifically refer to Plus Token, any suspicious account will This way of course, of course, the specific situation must be analyzed. "

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