SBF’s Alameda Research withdrew $35m of tokens from his FTX exchange before it froze deposits
16:02, 10 November 2022
Quant trading firm Alameda Research, the sister company of the embattled cryptocurrency exchange FTX, withdrew $35m worth of tokens from the platform as FUD around FTX was spreading across the market – according to on-chain data compiled by blockchain analytics firm Nansen, CoinDesk has reported.
Alameda’s relationship with FTX – founded by CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who is also known as SBF – was thrown into the spotlight after CoinDesk published Alameda’s balance sheet revealing 40% of the company’s assets were in the crypto exchange’s native ftx token (FTT).
FTX token (FTT) to US Dollar
The findings suggested there was a tighter relationship between FTX and Alameda, both owned by SBF, than was previously believed.
On Sunday 6 November, Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao, the CEO of Binance, a key competitor to FTX, added fuel to the fire when he announced that his company would be offloading its FTT holdings.
Nansen examined the biggest withdrawals by “smart money” from the FTX platform between 7 November 16:48 UTC and Tuesday 8 November 16:48 UTC.
According to Nansen, smart money is defined as follows:
- It is known to belong to an investment fund
- It has made at least $100,000 by providing liquidity to the decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols, SushiSwap and Uniswap, excluding so-called impermanent loss
- It is in the top 300 addresses ranked by realised profit, considering only on-chain trades that occurred on decentralised exchanges (DEXs)
Top 10 ‘smart money’ FTX withdrawals
Alameda Research withdrew $35m of tokens from FTX – Credit: Nansen/CoinDesk ResearchAlameda Research executed the second-biggest withdrawal among the ‘smart money’ transactions, worth more than $35m. Trading firm Jump Trading made the largest withdrawal – worth $118m – in the observed period.
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