Coinbase’s Director of Product Strategy & Business Operations and On-chain Sleuth Conor Grogan recently highlighted some of Sam Bankman-Fried’s (SBF) lesser-known activities. These were primarily on-chain transactions that the FTX founder carried out, but they were never brought to light during his trial.
How Sam Bankman-Fried On-Chain Transactions Harmed Crypto
Grogan revealed in an X (formerly Twitter) post that Bankman-Fried, through Alameda Research, sold $75 million of staked ETH (stETH) in January 2022. This led to a massive depeg event, which triggered the bank run on bankrupt crypto lender Celsius. That was also the tail event that brought about the collapse of the bankrupt crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC).
Bankman-Fried is also said to have used FTX customer funds to purchase a bunch of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that didn’t necessarily have any utility, including CarolineDAO NFTs. CarolineDAO proudly claimed to be “SimpDAO for Caroline Ellison,” the former CEO of Alameda Research and Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend.
Grogan further revealed that Bankman-Fried and Alameda Research engaged in thousands of wash-trading transactions to boost the visibility of SBF’s holdings. Wash trading is a form of market manipulation in which the same trader buys and sells an asset to give the impression that there is demand for it.
Alameda, being a market maker and with FTX customers’ funds at its disposal, had enough capital to manipulate the market. At some point, the trading firm was said to have had more trading activity than MEV bots.
Another way Sam Bankman-Fried tried to play the market was when the FTX founder’s ‘test’ NFT was created and sold for $270,000, with Grogan speculating that it was most likely bought by SBF himself using customers’ funds. Bankman-Fried was also at it again when he received 2 million RAY tokens and proceeded to sell part of them, even though they were meant to be vested.
More On Bankman-Fried’s On-Chain Activity
Shiba Inu (SHIB) was also caught in the mix as Bankman-Fried is said to have helped the token’s price skyrocket while building a large position. He eventually offloaded his SHIB tokens, which caused the meme coin to plummet. Interestingly, this happened when FTX had just expanded its SHIB perpetual, meaning SBF possibly shorted the meme coin, too.
SHIB wasn’t the only crypto token that Sam Bankman-Fried aggressively dumped. Grogan revealed that the FTX founder offloaded 35,000 SUSHI tokens while lying about not having dumped or shortened the coin.
The FTT token he “invented” also played a massive role in his on-chain transactions as he wrapped and rewrapped the exchange’s utility token to gain more liquidity. That explains why Sam Bankman-Fried, almost every week, publicly shilled FTT and pretended to TWAP the token.
Grogan also mentioned that Bankman-Fried wasn’t active on-chain until the crimes started. Alameda wallets, in particular, weren’t very active until FTX’s Director of Engineering Nishad Singh created the bug, which enabled the trading firm to withdraw unlimited sums from FTX’s account.
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