On-chain data suggests that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is reportedly withdrawing a significant amount of cryptocurrency shortly after being granted bail.
DeFi educator BowTiedIguana’s on-chain investigation reveals that SBF has cashed out $684,000 in crypto to a Seychelles exchange while under house arrest.
On December 29, a decentralized finance (DeFi) analyst named BowTiedIguana reported on a series of obfuscated wallet transactions that were allegedly linked to SBF. He suggested that the former FTX CEO might have broken the release conditions that stipulated that he could not spend more than $1,000 without the permission of the court.
BowTiedIguana’s analysis indicates that on December 28, SBF’s public address (0xD5758) sent all remaining Ether ETH tickers down $1,248 to a newly created address (0x7386d). BowTiedIguana mentioned that in August 2020, SBF took over the address that Sushiswap creator Chef Nomi had previously owned.
From 32 addresses identified as Alameda Research wallets, 0x7386d received transfers totaling $367,000 within hours, with additional $322,000 coming from other wallets. According to the DeFi analyst, all funds were sent to the crypto bridge RenBridge and a centralized cryptocurrency exchange in Seychelles.
A total of 519.5 Ether ETH tickers were transferred from 0x7386d to 0x64e9B, which also received funds from addresses marked Alameda Research. This transaction cost 0x64e9B approximately $629,000. Additionally, BowTiedIguana discovered five separate transactions totalling less than 51 ETH (or $61,000) that were utilized to transfer funds to newly established wallets and then “onwards to a Seychelles-based exchange.”
Additionally, the FixedFloat exchange received three tranches of 200,000 Tether (USDT) from the SBF-linked wallet 0x64e9B.
BowTiedIguana stated, calling attorneys from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate, that “this on-chain evidence is permanently available to law enforcement and the courts” due to the Ethereum blockchain’s status as an immutable public ledger.
Whether or not the transactions are associated with SBF, they do not necessarily imply that the founder of FTX has broken the terms of his bail release, according to some industry enthusiasts.
“I don’t know if this automatically counts as “spending” money. They are already his assets, according to one industry observer.
Online commenters also speculated that SBF was Chef Nomi, an unidentified Sushiswap co-founder. Conor Grogan, the head of strategy at Coinbase, said that a lot of the recent SBF-linked transactions had a lot to do with early Sushiswap activity. Grogan stated, “These wallets were heavily involved with LPing Sushi early on, well before Chef Nomi handed the project off to SBF,” assuming that they all belong to him.
In September 2020, SBF asserted that he was not involved in the development of Sushiswap.
The alleged SBF-linked transactions took place about a week after SBF was granted bail with a $250 million bond paid for with their home’s equity. The bond was secured by SBF’s parents. Prior to the collapse of FTX, SBF claimed that he only had $100,000 in his bank account.
The announcement comes shortly after the Bahamas’ official announcement that on November 12, local authorities seized $3.5 billion in cryptocurrency from FTX. After SBF warned about cyberattacks on FTX in the middle of November, the authorities claimed that the action was taken to avoid a risk of “imminent dissipation” of funds.