Onchain detective ZachXBT has identified a major Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) whale as a suspicious entity involved in ransomware and pig-butchering schemes.
Pig butchering scams can be described as a type of long-term fraud and investment scam in which the victim is gradually tricked into making increasing contributions, usually in the form of cryptocurrency, to a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme.
He explained this information by detailing the whale’s asset data on the X platform:
- The 0xed805ac246f441ea0d057b81d910ef1e39eb5995 wallet holds 1,253 WBTC, or approximately $73 million.
- Wallet 0x9a5c7630d327885ae849217702824e5835d3c5e0 holds 185 WBTC, approximately 10.8 million USD.
This crypto whale is the largest holder of WBTC when excluding bridge/DeFi contracts and exchange hot wallets.
In response to the addition that Justin Sun will have a say in WBTC governance, web3 risk and analytics team BA Labs took a forward-looking stance. On August 10, BA Labs submitted a proposal on MakerDAO’s governance forum, calling on the community to lower WBTC vault debt ceilings to 0 DAI and disable WBTC borrowing on the SparkLend money market protocol.
BA Labs explained that these measures will prevent new borrowing against WBTC, but will not immediately impact users with existing loans or DAI minting collateralized by WBTC.
*This is not investment advice.