Coinbase’s Director of Product Technique & Enterprise Operations and On-chain Sleuth Conor Grogan lately highlighted a few of Sam Bankman-Fried’s (SBF) lesser-known actions. These have been primarily on-chain transactions that the FTX founder carried out, however they have been by no means delivered to gentle during his trial.
How Sam Bankman-Fried On-Chain Transactions Harmed Crypto
Grogan revealed in an X (previously Twitter) post that Bankman-Fried, by means of Alameda Research, bought $75 million of staked ETH (stETH) in January 2022. This led to an enormous depeg occasion, which triggered the financial institution run on bankrupt crypto lender Celsius. That was additionally the tail occasion that introduced concerning the collapse of the bankrupt crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC).
Bankman-Fried can be stated to have used FTX customer funds to buy a bunch of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that didn’t essentially have any utility, together with CarolineDAO NFTs. CarolineDAO proudly claimed to be “SimpDAO for Caroline Ellison,” the previous CEO of Alameda Analysis and Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend.
Grogan additional revealed that Bankman-Fried and Alameda Research engaged in hundreds of wash-trading transactions to spice up the visibility of SBF’s holdings. Wash buying and selling is a type of market manipulation through which the identical dealer buys and sells an asset to offer the impression that there’s demand for it.
Alameda, being a market maker and with FTX clients’ funds at its disposal, had sufficient capital to govern the market. Sooner or later, the buying and selling agency was stated to have had extra buying and selling exercise than MEV bots.
One other approach Sam Bankman-Fried tried to play the market was when the FTX founder’s ‘test’ NFT was created and bought for $270,000, with Grogan speculating that it was most certainly purchased by SBF himself utilizing clients’ funds. Bankman-Fried was additionally at it once more when he acquired 2 million RAY tokens and proceeded to promote a part of them, regardless that they have been meant to be vested.
Extra On Bankman-Fried’s On-Chain Exercise
Shiba Inu (SHIB) was additionally caught within the combine as Bankman-Fried is alleged to have helped the token’s value skyrocket whereas constructing a big place. He finally offloaded his SHIB tokens, which prompted the meme coin to plummet. Apparently, this occurred when FTX had simply expanded its SHIB perpetual, which means SBF presumably shorted the meme coin, too.
SHIB wasn’t the one crypto token that Sam Bankman-Fried aggressively dumped. Grogan revealed that the FTX founder offloaded 35,000 SUSHI tokens whereas mendacity about not having dumped or shortened the coin.
The FTT token he “invented” additionally performed a large function in his on-chain transactions as he wrapped and rewrapped the change’s utility token to realize extra liquidity. That explains why Sam Bankman-Fried, virtually each week, publicly shilled FTT and pretended to TWAP the token.
Grogan additionally talked about that Bankman-Fried wasn’t lively on-chain till the crimes began. Alameda wallets, specifically, weren’t very lively till FTX’s Director of Engineering Nishad Singh created the bug, which enabled the buying and selling agency to withdraw limitless sums from FTX’s account.
FTT Token rice seems to be robust at $1.92 | Supply: FTTUSDT on Tradingview.com
Featured picture from Unchained Crypto, chart from Tradingview.com
