Plus Token may turn out to be the biggest pyramid in the crypto world, even outpacing BitConnect, DavorCoin and other schemes. Recent analysis by Elementus reveal the team may have collected nearly 10 million Ethereum (ETH), with most of the assets leaving the wallets.
At this point, the map of addresses points to Huobi as the biggest recipient of Plus Token transfers - although Elementus does not establish whether the funds were sold or distributed as payouts. Analysts have a hypothesis that the transfers can be partial payouts, but also moving funds between insiders for a slow and complex exit scam. Elementus points out that large-scale payouts were sent to the “tip of the pyramid”, and only a small fraction of accounts received most of the ETH distributions.
In any case, the Plus Token scheme is currently defunct and under investigation of police authorities. Plus Token was also notable for running for a long time and never catching the attention of traders or buyers outside the predominantly Chinese and Korean social media and chat channels. The news of the Plus Token unraveling only seeped out slowly, through recent analysis on crypto scams in 2019, as well as the observations of Dovey Wan, co-founder of Primitive Ventures.
In the past days, Plus Token also sent out Bitcoin (BTC) to Binance, Huobi and other exchanges, with tranches of 50 to 100 BTC per day.
ETH currently trades around $190.88, recovering some of the losses, but still unable to go above $200. BTC is at $10,374.77, still ahead of the pack of altcoins. It is difficult to estimate the effect of Plus Token liquidations, though the scheme worked through some of the most active exchanges in the past few months.
According to the Elementus research, Plus Token moved funds to several newer crypto-to-crypto exchanges predominantly used by Asian traders. Those include ZB.com, Gate.IO, as well as larger markets like OKEx and Upbit. But Huobi took over 48% of the Plus Token transfers.
