The founder of the collapsed crypto exchange was suspected of creating the BALD token
Date: 2023-08-02 Author: Karina Ziganova Categories: BUSINESS
The cryptocurrency community pointed to the connection between the smart contract of the BALD token and the addresses affiliated with the crypto exchange
The notorious creator of the now collapsed FTX crypto exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried, may be behind the acclaimed BALD token. Such assumptions were voiced by members of the crypto community on Twitter. As cryptocurrency trader @DeFiDownsin noted, the address that deployed the smart contract for the BALD token in the Base sidechain (0xcc…6389) received large transfers in ether (ETH) from the FTX exchange wallet.
According to the history of transfers, the first transaction from FTX to the wallet took place on December 17, 2021 (about a year before the bankruptcy of FTX). Then the address received only 0.5 ETH. However, this is far from the only transfer from FTX, and far from the largest one. Since then, much more weighty transfers of several thousand ETH have been received from FTX to wallet 0xcc…6389. Moreover, FTX is far from the only exchange that has sponsored the wallet.
For example, on July 30, 2023, 99 ETH (more than $180,000) was received from the Binance wallet to 0xcc…6389. It is not clear who exactly sent such a large amount from Binance to 0xcc…6389, however, in order to withdraw it, the exchange probably had to know the identity of the sender of funds.
About 7,000 more ETH to address 0xcc…6389 came from Coinbase wallets in July 2023, according to Etherscan. With strict KYC requirements, Coinbase also needs to know exactly who sent such large amounts to the wallet. Over the entire history of its activity, the address 0xcc…6389 has received more than 449,759 ETH (over $752.6 million).
The connection of 0xcc…6389 with the Bankman-Fried structures is also indicated by transactions related to the Alameda Research hedge fund, which was actually supervised by the founder of FTX. Andrew Truman, an analyst at the Blockworks crypto publication, drew attention to this. Igor Igamberdiev, head of the research department at the blockchain project Wintermute, doubts that Bankman-Freed is behind the address, but admits that the owner of the wallet is connected to Alameda Research. According to Igamberdiev, the address belongs to Sam Trabucco, the former CEO of Alameda Research. This, according to the analyst, is indicated by the correlation between wallet activity and Trabucco's tweets.
