There is something that stands out on Monday’s suspicious transfer of more than 3,520 BTC ($ 330.7 million) to the Privacy Coin Monero (XMR), a conversion that Blockchain Sleuth Zachxbt said was probably linked to a hack: coordinated activity in the derivative market.

Monero, who hides the sender’s and the recipient’s addresses to provide an unspecified currency, has limited liquidity on exchanges, making it more difficult for users to act without affecting the market and exposing them to slip, the chance of the price changing for the worse before the agreement is completed.

The decision to undergo an illiquid cryptocurrency is unusual. Tether’s USDT or ether (ETH) would have given a lighter, less-tiring inclined way of moving the funds, and mixing like Tornado Cash could help hide the transaction path. Of course, stableecoins like USDT are also easier to listen and freeze.

However, trade data suggests that more than a simple case of someone trying to launder stolen funds.

The possible hacker probably encountered sliding during the transaction. Combined market depth that measures Order Book Service over a given price range was relatively low to about $ 1 million per day. 2% on both sides of the book. XRM increased by 45% due to the limited liquidity of exchanges, which means they could have lost as much as $ 20% -66 million to buy XMR rather than a more fluid token.

For a more complete picture, look at derived markets. While Monero increased, open interest – the number of outstanding futures and options – in XMR on the most important centralized exchanges more than doubled to $ 35.1 million, according to Coinalyze.

An increase of 45% in XMR’s price should only have increased open interest rates to $ 24.2 million instead of the number it ended up. Taking into account the $ 1 million in liquidations, some or some people were already long at XMR for $ 11 million.

While the price increase on this inventory would not have compensated for the full amount of sliding, it would help soften the impact. Furthermore, the figure does not take into account any positions that may have existed in decentralized exchanges, and let’s not forget that the funds were probably stolen in the first place, so (assuming) the perpetrators are still a few million dollars ahead.

This is not the first time that bad actors have flooded spot purchases to move the derivatives. Last month, a trader manipulated jelly prices on Decentral Exchange Hyperliquid manipulated. They bought jelly on illiquid exchanges, fooling the pricing of feeding an inaccurate price for hyperliquid and thus generating profits for holders of long positions.

Both cases draw similarities to the $ 114 million utilization in mango markets by 2022, who involved a trader named Avi Eisenberg, who manipulated MNGO awards by borrowing assets using poorly achieved gains as security. Eisenberg was found guilty of a jury in 2024 and faces 20 years in prison.