Ethereum transaction with a huge commission

Unknown person sends another Ethereum transaction with a commission of $ 2.6 million

On Wednesday, the attention of the cryptocurrency community was attracted by a transaction of 0.55 ETH ($ 134), for the processing of which a commission of 10,668 ETH ($ 2.6 million) was paid. While users were discussing what could have caused such an abnormal movement of assets, another transaction was sent with a commission for the same amount.

According to Etherscan, the second transaction with a fee of 10,668 ETH from this address was sent today at 06:30 UTC. In addition to the commission, the amount of assets transferred this time was higher - 350 ETH.

The recipient was another address, to which 0.012 ETH was also sent today from the verified wallet of the OKEx exchange. In the first case, the assets received were immediately transferred to the Bithumb exchange.

Unlike the first transaction that the Spark Pool added to the blockchain, the commission for the last one went to the Ethermine pool. “We think there was a mistake. To solve this problem, the sender of the transaction must contact us immediately, ”wrote the company Bitfly, which is the operator of Ethermine.

A second transaction of the same type did not help clarify the situation. Some insist on the version of money laundering: miners report income in accordance with the rewards and commissions received, so adding a transaction with a large commission will allow the owner of this money to avoid the need to explain the source of their origin. Others are convinced that the program that controls this address has crashed. Transactions from it are sent every minute, which indicates at least partial automation of the process.

After the first transaction, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin expressed confidence that an error had occurred and spoke in favor of the early addition of the EIP 1559 protocol, which will reduce the role of manual input in setting fees.

$ 1.36 Billion Cryptocurrencies Stolen Since Early 2020

According to the CipherTrace report, in the five months of 2020, the total amount of stolen crypto assets reached $ 1.36 billion, while the volume of dirty cryptocurrencies on exchanges decreased.

CipherTrace analyzed international cryptocurrency exchanges for the presence of transactions with illegally obtained digital assets. The company found that Finnish cryptocurrency exchanges ranked first in receiving dirty bitcoins. 12.01% of the BTC flowing there is of illegal origin, with 99% coming from the LocalBitcoins P2P platform. There are no other major platforms for trading cryptocurrencies in Finland.

The second place is taken by Russian platforms - 5.23% of all funds received by them were previously used on the darknet or received as a result of attacks by hackers and ransomware. This is followed by the English exchanges, whose rate of receiving "dirty" crypto assets is 0.69%. At the same time, the share of illegally obtained cryptocurrencies on German, Japanese and American exchanges is less than 0.1%.

In 2019, the volume of digital assets obtained by criminal means decreased by half on exchanges compared to 2018. Last year, the number of assets transferred to exchanges from illegal sources amounted to only 0.17%. Over the past three years, the number of such digital assets on cryptocurrency platforms has dropped significantly. This is due to the tightening of requirements for KYC / AML procedures and the implementation of the Fifth Directive of the European Union against money laundering (AMLD5).

However, CipherTrace reported that the number of fraudulent schemes and hacker attacks to steal cryptocurrencies has increased over the past five months. To date, the volume of crypto assets stolen in 2020 is $ 1.36 billion, up from $ 4.5 billion for the whole of 2019.

According to analysts, the increase in this indicator was facilitated not only by the coronavirus crisis, but also by the Wotoken cryptocurrency pyramid in China. The project promised investors fabulous returns on non-existent algorithmic trading software. As it turned out, Wotoken was associated with the creators of the PlusToken cryptocurrency wallet, who were accused of stealing $ 3 billion worth of client assets.As for the Wotoken project, its organizers appropriated digital assets of more than 715 thousand victims worth more than $ 1 billion.

Japanese Crypto Exchange SBI VC Trade Offers Free XRP To New Clients

The newest Japanese crypto players are becoming increasingly aggressive in their marketing efforts. For example, the financial giant SBI is now offering XRP token to all new crypto clients as an advertisement.

SBI operates the SBI VC Trade crypto exchange, and according to an official Twitter post, anyone who opens an account between June 1 and September 30 will receive 50 XRP (currently equivalent to roughly $ 10).

SBI is one of Ripple's closest partners and the Japanese company is using Ripple's MoneyTap solution in its own e-payment platform. Earlier this month, the company announced its intention to implement a solution that uses MoneyTap in hundreds of Japanese ATMs.

Its CEO, Yoshitaka Kitao, is a member of Ripple's board of directors, and the company has made several XRP payments to shareholders of its Morningstar subsidiary.

SBI VC Trade also announces that it has launched the e-KYC (Know-Your-Customer) authentication platform, which allows new customers to complete the entire registration process using their smartphones.

The move comes hot on the heels of yet another giveaway from a major new player in the Japanese crypto scene. So, earlier, the e-commerce giant Rakuten launched a monthly themed Bitcoin Pizza Day promotion. Its subsidiary Rakuten Delivery is offering pizza delivery customers about $ 9 worth of promotional bitcoins (BTC) - provided they already have or open an account with Rakuten Wallet.

Japanese business experts have suggested that the new crypto market regulations, which came into force on May 1, have given the industry more legitimacy - and encouraged marketers, especially among the larger, wealthier players.