Scammer’s $27M Loss: A Hilarious Twist of Fate in the Crypto World! 😂

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It is with no small measure of amusement that I recount the tale of a certain wallet, which, being inextricably linked to the notorious ZKasino scam of $40 million, has recently suffered a most unfortunate loss exceeding $27 million. This calamity, as some members of the crypto community have dubbed it, is nothing short of a delightful instance of karmic retribution. 😏

Launched in the spring of 2024, ZKasino endeavored to entice investors with the promise of an airdrop of its native token, should they be so bold as to bridge their Ether (ETH) to the platform. Alas, rather than returning the funds as any respectable establishment would, ZKasino chose instead to divert approximately $33 million in user ETH to the staking protocol known as Lido Finance. How very generous of them! 🙄

Fast forward nearly a year, and the wallet responsible for this alleged mischief has been liquidated for the sum of $27.1 million, following a rather sharp decline in the price of ETH, as reported by the esteemed blockchain analytics platform, Onchain Lens. One cannot help but chuckle at the irony! Crypto Image 1

“A scammer gets a dose of karma,” quipped Onchain Lens in a post on the 7th of April, adding with a flourish:

“The ZkCasino scammer, who scammed $40M+, closed its $ETH (20x) position on #Hyperliquid, faced a total loss of $27.1M.”

Regrettably, the liquidation has left the affected users no nearer to reclaiming their funds, which is, I daresay, a most unfortunate state of affairs. This liquidation follows a period of unprecedented sell-offs in traditional equity markets, which, in turn, precipitated a correction in the crypto market, causing ETH’s price to plummet to a near two-year low of $1,480, a figure not seen since May of 2023. Crypto Image 2

Earlier that very same day, an unidentified crypto whale found themselves in a rather precarious position, compelled to make an emergency deposit of $14 million to avert a liquidation of over $340 million in Ether. One can only imagine the panic! 🐋

The ZKasino Exit Scam

In the wake of accusations regarding their dubious practices, ZKasino proclaimed that they had initiated a 72-hour process to return funds to investors, a month after they had so generously transferred $30 million of user funds to Lido. “We are now initiating the 2-step bridge back process in which bridgers can sign up and bridge back their ETH at a 1:1 ratio,” they declared in a post on Medium dated May 28, 2024, whilst assuring the public that they had not abandoned their project. How noble! 🙃

However, any investors wishing to reclaim their ETH would be required to forfeit any allocated ZKAS tokens and the remaining 14 months of ZKAS releases, as ZKasino so kindly informed them. On April 29, 2024, Dutch authorities apprehended one of the individuals suspected of orchestrating this “rug pull.” Shortly thereafter, all bridged ETH was returned to the ZKasino multisig wallet, as Derivative Monke publicly refuted the rug pull allegations on X. Yet, despite these developments, ZKasino has yet to return the ETH nearly a year after the incident. Truly, a tale for the ages!

“Unfortunately, everyone who sent the ZKAS back has not heard anything from them yet,” lamented one user, who preferred to remain anonymous, in a conversation with CryptoMoon in August 2024. Such is the nature of the crypto world, where fortunes can vanish as swiftly as they are made!

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2025-04-07 15:43