By Nathan Ferguson
Justin Sun – a crypto entrepreneur – happened to pass through the misplaced Bitcoin of the consumers of Poloniex under the risky scheme called Operation Couch Cushions. As per The Verge, Poloniex developers were asked by Sun to take away the respective funds, while pursuing Bitcoin “dust,” soon after the purchase of a crypto exchange by Tron founder in 2019. Dust is known to be Bitcoin’s silvers having been leaked via the cracks of the architecture of Poloniex and got lost or forgotten.
By 2021, the platform’s developers estimated a cumulative amount of up to 300 Bitcoin (nearly $11.6M). The digital architecture of Poloniex was old along with being strangely programmed, thus it turned out to be usual for money bits to get ensnared.
The consumers mistakenly originated Bitcoin dust in an endeavor to deposit BTC in wallets that were just meant to receive USDT (Tether). The BTC remained at the midpoint, incapable of being returned to the sender or claimed by someone else. This happened till it was noticed by Sun and he directed the teams thereof to gather it.
Justin Sun refutes possessing customers’ Bitcoin
Harland-Dunaway – a journalist – reported that a way had been devised by Poloniex to transact BTC deposits through an anonymous address to the communal wallet of the venue. The Bitcoin dust (gathered from 2013 onwards) was detected by the employees of the platform. Raids were reportedly executed on numerous Tether wallets.
The ultimate beneficiary of the respective 300 Bitcoin could not be traced by Harland-Dunaway as it got lost during the flood of withdrawals and deposits performed on the behalf of the Poloniex consumers.
Similarities with Binance CEO
A former worker who served at the venue mentioned that the entirety of the utilization of Polo was contemplated by Harland-Dunaway. According to the employee, legal experts enquired about the legitimacy of the strategies to take the funds of clients to utilize them for personal purposes. The employee moved on to assert that the matter of the legality of using clients’ BTC is a debatable issue.
Sun – just as Changpeng Zhao (the business associate thereof) – may not enter the United States anymore as he favors being free from the jurisdictions. While having a business meeting, as Harland-Dunaway reported, Sun allegedly claimed not to step into the United States in the future in the case of a collapse in the schemes thereof.