Is SBF Hiding Money? Did he just cash out $684k – $1.5m
There have been reports of suspicious transactions involving Alameda accounts. Money has reportedly moved from several Alameda accounts into wallets associated with SBF. The money has then been cashed out. This reportedly totals between $684 thousand and $1.5 million.
The series of transactions is relatively complex. But, a summary is below:
- Funds were transferred to a Seychelles exchange that has no KYC.
- Some moved through Ren (the Ren protocol is a gateway that allows anyone to send BTC, ZEC, and BCH across blockchains). This enabled some anonymity.
- Three sets of 200k USDT moved to FixedFloat (Self custodian crypto exchange)
The events appeared to proceed as follows:
- A new address was created several hours after SBF’s release on bail. The new wallet address is 0x7386df2Cf7e9776bCE0708072c27d6a7135D51CB.
- All ETH on SBF’s public wallet was sent to the new address. We know that this was SBF’s wallet because he had tweeted as such.
- This wallet then received 569.95 ETH from more than 100 transactions from dozens of wallets. Some of these wallets are associated with Alameda research.
- The wallet then sent around $629k of tokens (519.95 ETH) to another wallet address – 0x64e9B9cD74A46f71e7631CB033afA6E7849a8683. This wallet contained 800,000 USDT. This was then transferred in four 200,000 USDT transactions. They then consolidated the funds into an additional wallet.
- The 0x64e9 wallet then exchanged most of its ETH for USDT.
- Then, around 200,000 USDT was swapped for 10.33 renBTC, which was bridged to Ren.
- A further 200,000 USDT was sent through several wallets and consolidated in an additional wallet.
- Next 310.85 ETH were sent via 8 wallets to a further consolidated wallet, reportedly associated with ChangeNOW.
This resulted in around $1.485 million being cashed out. It looks as if SBF might be involved given that he is associated with one of the wallets, and some of the transferors are Alameda wallets. However, it is possible that someone previously knew, or obtained, SBF’s wallet details, enabling them to do the transactions. No doubt authorities will be looking into this.
SBF has denied wrongdoing. He has asserted that he has no access to the relevant wallets; and thus, could not perform the transfers. People seem unconvinced. No doubt regulators will investigate this further.
The greater concern how this was even possible. It is odd that regulators (and/or incoming administrators) had not been able to take control of all accounts and move the funds into a safe location that the old administration could not access.