A CrypToadz #4030 NFT was acquired today on the OpenSea marketplace for 1,055 Wrapped Ethereum (WETH), equivalent to over $1.6 million.
Alongside the base price, the buyer also paid a fee of nearly $42,000 worth of ETH to OpenSea.
This substantial transaction far exceeds the typical market rate for CrypToadz NFTs.
These NFTs generally start at 0.53 ETH (approximately $835) on OpenSea.
Observers on the X speculated about a potential "fat finger" error, suggesting that the buyer might have rushed through the transaction process, inadvertently paying more than intended.
The buyer was apparently making multiple bids for the NFTs, only to mistake a "," for a "."
Deliberate Bidding
Less naive observers have speculated the possiblity of wash trading.
There is some evidence of this.
The wallet responsible for purchasing the CrypToadz NFT today recently received an infusion of approximately 1,116 ETH from another wallet.
This preceding wallet, in turn, received approximately 1,200 ETH from the Ethereum coin mixing service known as Tornado Cash in September.
Tornado Cash
Tornado Cash is an automated service that enables users to obscure the flow of cryptocurrency to and from wallets by mingling funds from various users into a shared pool.
Regulators suggest that the platform's role as a cryptocurrency mixer played a key part in what could be one of the most significant money laundering operations within the digital currency realm
This practice disrupts the public, on-chain tracking of cryptocurrency flow between wallets, rendering it more challenging to trace how ETH is being moved.
Tornado Cash was prohibited in the United States following Treasury Department sanctions in 2022.
Coinlive previously reported on how Roman Storm, one of the co-founders of Tornado Cash, recently entered a plea of not guilty in response to the charges lodged against him.