Exploring the Mystery Behind a 1.6 Million Dollar NFT
Author: Angelica MorrisDue to security features and the mysteriously anonymous identity of the buyer remain unknown, many have speculated that the purchase had been funded by a digital wallet, which utilizes the Ethereum coin mixing service - Tornado Cash - to anonymize and obfuscate any and all transaction data. And although some have accounted the market excess as a mere “fat finger mistake”, the extreme disparities in price are still deemed worthy of suspicion as strategies such as wash trading may have taken place.
The said service, Tornado Cash, had been targeted by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) just this August due to its relationship with the laundering of ill-gotten funds and the extreme popularity among fraudsters. Unfortunately, these sanctions were unable to completely shut down the usage of Tornado Cash, as most recently seen in the July 2023 case of AnubisDAO’s $60 million stolen Ether, which had been funneled through said service over the course of several transactions.