Nobody within the world of cryptocurrency has experienced a greater fall from grace than perhaps Sam Bankman-Fried.
The founder of the defunct FTX and Alameda Research was once hailed as a “wunderkind” prior to his crypto exchange-cum-hedge fund’s $32 billion implosion. Now, he’s under house arrest at his parent’s Californian residence; and currently being indicted for offences ranging from wire fraud, commodities fraud, and securities fraud to money laundering facilitated.
But despite the stringent bail conditions imposed upon him post-Bahamas arrest/extradition to the US, including zero contact with current or former FTX employees unless an attorney is present, modified electronic devices without internet capabilities, as well as being monitored by both the state and — get this — his own parents, that hasn’t stopped him from being linked to the recent rug-pulling of short-lived meme coin BALD token by blockchain sleuths.
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For background, the hype surrounding BALD saw its price skyrocket by a staggering 4,000,000% (289,000% in the first 24 hours alone) and attracted a staggering $68 million from investors, before it plummeted by approximately 85%. As you can imagine, many cried rug pull, which the developer quickly denied. Although that’s not exactly the most interesting detail here.
Given people generally want answers when their money goes missing, several motivated parties began investigating said developer’s on-chain past, and soon linked Sam Bankman-Fried to the Ethereum wallet address behind BALD token’s deployment.
“BALD token had received thousands of ETH in funding from wallets associated with FTX and Alameda Research,” reports Tom Mitchelhill of Cointelegraph.
“Adding further fuel to the rumour was Blockworks data editor Andrew Thurman, who found that the same wallet address had made approximately 400 transfers to blacklisted USDT addresses and had ‘serious Alameda connections for sure.'”
CoinDesk‘s Sam Reynolds and Shaurya Malwa adds: “Wintermute’s Head of Research, Igor Igamberdiev, tied another wallet address to Alameda, stating its owner showed strong technical capabilities and proved to be a savvy DeFi user — trading on the first version of dYdX and Oasis, as well as voting on the first proposals from SushiSwap.”
RELATED: The Graveyard Of NFTs (Dead Hype & Major Losses)
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— Igor Igamberdiev (@FrankResearcher) August 1, 2023
Alright, I've been sitting on this news all day, but let's look at the @BaldBaseBald deployer.
This is definitely someone from Alameda, but I don't think we can safely say that this is @SBF_FTX (even though he is a psycho)
Let's go👇 pic.twitter.com/qs7e2nMTI1
“However, Igamberdiev stated that while the actions seemed to be ‘definitely someone from Alameda,’ it was unlikely to be Bankman-Fried himself.”
Considering the aforementioned stringent bail conditions, and the fact that SBF (probably) isn’t stupid enough to enact such a scheme while all eyes are on him, the most likely scenario may very well be the least saucy (as rationalised by Igamberdiev): it ain’t Sammy boy.
What is rather saucy, however, is that Sammy boy is being represented by Bernie Madoff’s own former lawyer, Ira Sorkin, as well as Mark Cohen — an ex-federal prosecutor and partner at Cohen & Gresser who defended British socialite/convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Both of whom appear to be earning their fees, in light of the campaign finances charge that was dropped last week.
That Michael Lewis book could not come any sooner.
