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Ethereum’s price action has been firmly tracking that of Bitcoin’s in recent times, although it has not been able to put as much distance between its recent lows as BTC has. ETH’s bearishness against BTC has come about as investors grow increasingly concerned about the hundreds of thousands of tokens currently held by a ring of scammers.
This has called into question whether or not Ethereum will ever be able to post a long-term recovery with these sellers continuing to place insurmountable selling pressure on the cryptocurrency.
Ethereum Stuck Beneath $130 as Bears and Bulls Remain at an Impasse
At the time of writing, Ethereum is trading down over 2% at its current price of $129, which marks a notable decline from its daily highs of $132 that were set earlier this morning when bulls attempted to spark some upwards momentum.
This past weekend, ETH’s bulls were able to push the cryptocurrency up to highs of $135 concurrently with Bitcoin’s surge to $7,600, although this upwards momentum was short-lived and followed by a significant influx of selling pressure.
Analysts don’t expect Ethereum to incur bullish price action that mirrors that of Bitcoin and other major altcoins in the near-term, which is largely due to the massive amount of ETH tokens currently held by the ring leaders of the defunct PlusToken Ponzi scheme.
Su Zhu, the CEO at Three Arrows Capital, explained in a recent tweet that the ring leaders of this scam could theoretically use their massive ETH holdings to manipulate Ethereum forever.
“The PlusToken scammers’ social media account in China now claims credit for the movement. What if they just use their $ETH transactions to PnD the market forever? ‘hi, who wants to buy 200k eth from me?’ ‘brb, about to go lvg long eth on DeFi’ ‘10k eth to tornado, actually nvm,’” he said.
The PlusToken scammers' social media account in China now claims credit for the movement
What if they just use their $ETH transactions to PnD the market forever?
"hi, who wants to buy 200k eth from me?"
"brb, about to go lvg long eth on DeFi"
"10k eth to tornado, actually nvm" https://t.co/LDpfdP2hsB— Su Zhu (@zhusu) December 19, 2019
PlusToken Moving ETH to Huobi; Is a Massive Sell-Off Imminent?
Yesterday, Gainzy, a popular cryptocurrency analyst on Twitter, explained in a tweet that ETH inflows into Huobi were positive by 100k tokens from PlusToken, which is an occurrence that is likely to become regular as they continue dumping their $100 million worth of stolen tokens.
“$eth inflows to huobi positive by 100k again lmao. PlusToken bringing the pain. A bull market in these conditions requires someone to constantly absorb 100k eth dumps until the scammers are done dumping 100M of stolen Ethereum,” he noted.
$eth inflows to huobi positive by 100k again lmao. Plus token bringing the pain.
A bull market in these conditions requires someone to constantly absorb 100k eth dumps until the scammers are done dumping 100M of stolen ethereum.
— Gainzy Claus (@CryptoGainz1) December 23, 2019
It is probable that this selling pressure will ramp up if Ethereum and the aggregated crypto markets find themselves caught within a bull market, which may mean that ETH will struggle to match the gains seen by other cryptocurrencies during the next uptrend.
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