17 hours ago
The alleged scammer down the ZKasino rug propulsion has reportedly mislaid implicit $27 cardinal successful a high-risk Ethereum commercialized arsenic crypto marketplace turbulence continues to drawback overleveraged traders.
On April 7, blockchain analytics level Onchain Lens revealed that the scammer had exited a 20x leveraged agelong presumption connected ETH utilizing the Hyperliquid trading platform.
The setback is believed to person stemmed from Ethereum’s caller terms correction amid the broader marketplace slump triggered by the US deciding to instrumentality reciprocal tariffs connected 180 countries.
According to CryptoSlate’s data, Ethereum fell astir 20% implicit the past 24 hours to arsenic debased arsenic $1415 earlier attempting a betterment supra $1500. ETH was trading astatine $1537 arsenic of property time.
Many successful the crypto abstraction presumption the ZKasino scammer’s caller trading nonaccomplishment arsenic a “dose of karma.”
The scammer’s nonaccomplishment echoes a lawsuit from March 31, erstwhile the hacker down the $9.6 cardinal ZkLend exploit mislaid 2,930 ETH to a phishing tract mimicking Tornado Cash. That idiosyncratic had besides ignored a bounty connection from ZkLend.
Zkasino scam
The funds utilized successful the commercialized are believed to stem from an earlier exploit tied to ZKasino, which occurred successful 2024. The level faced wide backlash aft executing a rug propulsion that drained astir $33 cardinal worthy of Ethereum from users.
ZKasino’s determination triggered intense disapproval crossed the industry. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin criticized the project, claiming its usage of “ZK” branding was misleading and solely based connected its deployment connected zkSync.
In effect to the backlash, ZKasino promised to refund investors’ funds portion claiming it acted successful users’ interests by converting the ETH to ZKAS tokens and locking them nether a 15-month vesting schedule.
However, the promised refunds person not materialized arsenic of property time.
Meanwhile, the Netherlands’ Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) aboriginal arrested a 26-year-old man suspected of engagement successful the scheme. Authorities seized integer assets, luxury cars, and existent property worthy astir $12.2 million.
The station ZKasino scammer’s risky Ethereum commercialized backfires with $27M nonaccomplishment amid marketplace turmoil appeared archetypal connected CryptoSlate.
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