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Remittances have been accepted since 2018, with a cumulative amount of 2.4 billion won
According to the analysis results of the cryptocurrency data analysis company "CrtyptoQuant", the cryptocurrency wallet of the operator of Room N, Jo Joo-bin, has received a total of about 2.4 billion won in remittances since 2018. The types of cryptocurrencies that Zhao received remittances included Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin (BTC) and Monero (XMR). CrtyptoQuant said that only in the Ethereum wallet that Zhao announced to the members of the chat group on March 11, a fund flow of 2.4 billion won was traced.
The time when "Room N" will start operating has not yet been ascertained. The chat group run by Zhao is the most active "doctoral group" in Room N. Before the emergence of the "doctor group", there were other chat groups in Room N, such as GodGod and WatchMan, which specialized in producing and trading sexual exploitation content.
CrtyptoQuant stated that Zhao’s public Ethereum wallet has had capital inflows since January 2018, and it is speculated that members may have joined the “doctoral group” one after another since then. However, the size of the inflow of funds from this Ethereum wallet has decreased significantly since the middle of 2018. It is speculated that Zhao has other different Ethereum wallets. Moreover, after the "doctoral group" became famous, Zhao began to use the "encryption currency mixer and tumbler (Mixing & Tumbling)" method in 2019 to avoid the investigation agency's tracking.
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Involving 18 exchanges at home and abroad, Upbit has the highest utilization rate
Users used a total of 18 domestic and foreign exchanges for remittances, most of which were sent through Korean exchanges, so it is presumed that most of the members are Koreans. Judging from the usage of each exchange, there are as many as 93 records of remittance through Upbit, with the highest usage rate, Bithumb transaction records are 51, Korbit transactions are 15, Binance transactions are 13, Huobi transactions are 12, and KuCoin transactions are 10 , 7 CoinOne transactions, 5 Gopax transactions, 1 CoinRail transaction record, etc.
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The popularity of cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin and Monero has not yet been tracked, and the scope of the investigation needs to be further expanded
It is reported that in addition to Ethereum, Zhao mainly uses Bitcoin and the anonymous encrypted currency Monero to collect group membership fees. On March 13, the police sent an official letter to the four major exchanges in South Korea, including Bithumb, Upbit, CoinOne, and Korbit, requesting cooperation in the investigation of 3 Monero wallets and 4 Bitcoin wallets that were speculated to be owned by Zhao. These exchanges all support Bitcoin transactions, but only Bithumb supports Monero transactions.
In addition, the police have not yet issued official documents to domestic exchanges such as Gopax and Coinrail, which have found out the flow of relevant funds, requesting cooperation, and the investigation of users of overseas exchanges has not yet begun. With the continuous analysis of the flow of wallet funds, the scope of later investigation is expected to be further expanded.
JOIND Won Jaeyeon reporter won.jaeyeon@joongang.co.kr
