On Wednesday (18) noon, Brasilia time, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced an attack against a cryptocurrency company. Details will be revealed at a hearing to be held at 2 p.m., at a conference that Lisa Odense Monaco, Deputy United States Attorney, will attend.
In anticipation of the conference, investors began to speculate about the worst, and the result was a 4.5% drop in Bitcoin (BTC) within two hours. The market was caught off guard when Monaco announced that the target of the “big international action” was a Hong Kong-based exchange called Bitzlato. The company, which has ties to Russia, has just over $11,000 in its portfolio.
What is pizzalato?
The stock exchange targeted by the Ministry of Justice shares is headquartered in Hong Kong, and its founder is Russian Anatoly Legkodimov. During the conference, Monaco claims that the exchange was helping to launder money from illicit companies based in Russia.
Coinbase director Conor Grogan used data from intelligence platform Arkham to Claim, on Twitter, Bitzlato’s wallets currently hold just over $11,000. Grogan even noted that nearly $670,000 was withdrawn in the last 24 hours, linking the action to the forfeiture the Justice Department mentioned during the conference.
UserZachXBT answered To the director of Coinbase, reporting the transfer of a few million on Tuesday (17). Arkham itself said, on Twitter, that no action had been made following the massive withdrawals from the exchange’s wallet. Even with the withdrawals, one of the Bitzlato-linked addresses still holds close to $2 million in Ethereum (ETH).
In any case, the peak funds that the main portfolio tied to the HKEX were just over $6 million. The amount is equivalent to just 1% of the total Binance currently holds in its wallets, according to data from Nansen.
With the exchange’s low profile in the global context of the cryptocurrency market, the cryptocurrency community on Twitter derided the hype made by the Department of Justice.
“Catch a big fish”
One of the most active profiles in memes was the user named db. In one of his posts he said, “If I had $1 for every Bitzlato meme released in the last half hour, I would have more money than Bitzlato”. In another post, the user jokes that the Justice Department has caught a “big fish.”
The Department of Justice caught the day in a big way, excellent job 🫡 pic.twitter.com/JtijSbk9MA
– dB (@tier10k) January 18, 2023
Another user named Solana Legend posted the image below about the “big statue” made by the Department of Justice.
After the news that the target institution of the Ministry of Justice was a small exchange, the bitcoin price began to recover, reducing losses to 2.3% in the past three hours.
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