A number of wallets that were associated with Alameda Research, the trading desk founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, came to life on Tuesday evening and began swapping different cryptocurrencies.
A data journalist named Martin Lee from Nansen was one of the first few blockchain sleuths to notice that during the late hours of December 27th, there was a lot of activity taking place amongst wallets belonging to Alameda Research.
The transactions
There were a number of Ethereum-based tokens that had been consolidated into two wallets and then swapped for Tether (USDT) and Ethereum (ETH) later on.
A total of 3,263 Convex Finance (CVX) tokens were involved in the transactions, which had a value of $11,390 and were sent to a wallet belonging to Alameda Research from Convex Finance.
There were also 74,112 CRV tokens involved, which had a value of $39,152. These tokens were eventually transferred from a wallet belonging to Alameda Research to a Meta Mask wallet.
There was also a third transaction executed, which involved 45.6 ETH tokens that were valued at $55,219.
These ETH tokens had first been sent to an unknown address before being transferred to instant exchange services FixedFloat and ChangeNow.
The concerns
Lee said that the transactions that were taking place seemed to be a bit odd because they were not really being consolidated.
They were first transferred to fresh wallets before being sent to FixedFloat and ChangeNow. OXT, a research firm, also said that the method used for swapping the funds was sending off alarm bells.
ZachXBT, an on-chain sleuth, also disclosed that the funds had eventually been swapped for Bitcoin (BTC).
There had been speculation that FTX liquidators could have initiated the transfers, but ZachXBT was skeptical of this and said that it was unlikely that services like ChangeNow and FixedFloat would be used by them.
Who is responsible?
It remains unclear for now as to who is behind the transactions being carried out, but the timing is certainly interesting.
It is only a few days after Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX founder and former CEO were released on bail under a bond agreement worth $250 million.
SBF is now currently awaiting trial and is currently in Palo Alto, California, under house arrest, with his location being monitored electronically.
Likewise, the terms of the release also include a restriction on firearms, business activities and spending. However, no restrictions on internet access have been mentioned in the court document.
Therefore, some are speculating that the crypto mogul could be behind the transfers. Eight criminal charges have been brought against him in the US and he was arrested in the Bahamas before he was extradited.
There are allegations of fraud, as it is believed that he used customer funds deposited on FTX to place bets through Alameda Research.
Caroline Ellison, his ex-girlfriend, and CEO of Alameda has already pled guilty to charges of fraud. She has also admitted that customer funds were indeed misappropriated and used by Alameda Research.