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Crypto Whale Who Made Millions on Leverage Trading Is a Convicted Fraudster: ZachXBT

(Azamat E/Unsplash)
(Azamat E/Unsplash)

What to know:

  • ZachXBT said that the identity of a trader who made millions betting with leverage is William Parker, a convicted fraudster that stole $1 million from two casinos in 2023.
  • On-chain data shows that the wallet in question had interacted with several crypto casinos.
  • The trader went long on BTC shortly before Donald Trump's announcement of a U.S. strategic crypto reserve.

A mysterious crypto trader that made millions trading derivatives this year has been identified as William Parker, a convicted fraudster, according to blockchain sleuth ZachXBT.

Parker made $6.8 million on one position after going long on BTC just before Donald Trump's weekend announcement of a U.S. strategic crypto reserve, per ZachXBT. He then turned around and made another $9 million going short BTC as the price pump quickly reversed.

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All of his positions used 50x leverage - a high risk strategy as it means the liquidation price of a position is close to the entry point.

And it seems as though high risk gambling was this particular trader's speciality, as on-chain data suggests the wallet frequently interacted with Roobet, Gamdom, Shuffle, BC Game, & Metawin accounts - all crypto-based online casinos.

It turns out that the wallet connected to the trades was set as the drainer fee receiver on a phishing website in January, receiving $17.1K from a phishing draining customer in the same month, ZachXBT revealed.

The investigation then dives into a Solana wallet that was the first to interact with the trader's wallet. This SOL wallet made withdrawals from four casinos following an input validation exploit on a casino game. ZachXBT reached out to these casinos which provided him with a Telegram account of the user.

That Telegram account yielded verification that the trader was active on-chain at the same time as posting in derivatives trading chats on Telegram.

ZachXBT went one step further — finding a payment sent by the trader to an unnamed person on the HyperLiquid exchange. That transaction led to the uncovering of a phone number linked to a person called William Parker.

Parker last year was convicted and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in jail in Finland for stealing $1 million from two casinos in 2023 . He was served time in 2010 in the U.K. for multiple fraud charges related to hacking and gambling.

Oliver Knight

Oliver Knight is the co-leader of CoinDesk data tokens and data team. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022 Oliver spent three years as the chief reporter at Coin Rivet. He first started investing in bitcoin in 2013 and spent a period of his career working at a market making firm in the UK. He does not currently have any crypto holdings.

Oliver Knight