A Controversial Plan to Cross-Own Property
On November 25, Arkham Intelligence published a bombshell report in which they revealed that Alameda had started making withdrawals from FTX.US. The investigation found that the transfer of half of the assets took place after November 6, and the majority of them were stablecoins that were tied to the USD. Alameda Research retrieved $205 million that was being housed at eight different FTX US addresses as a result of the finding, which depicts a shadowy aspect of the Sam Bankman-Fried enterprise.
Arkham Intelligence, in communicating this revelation, stated that the withdrawal was just the tip of the scandalous iceberg that hid the demise of the Bankman-Fried empire through cross-ownership in affiliated enterprises. The transaction trail of withdrawals found from FTX US assets was communicated by Arkham in a tweet that was published on November 25. The finding revealed that the transaction involving Alameda Research unexpectedly increased the flow of $49 million to FTX Exploiter and $40 million to Amber Group respectively.
A Breakdown of the Bulk Withdrawal Carried Out by Alameda Research
According to the findings of Arkham's study, Alameda Research moved $142.4 million, which constitutes 69.8% of the amount taken, to wallets controlled by FTX International. This discovery demonstrates that Alameda Research operations were acting as a bridge between the two sibling firms that are part of the FTX Group.
The finding that was revealed by the company that specializes in blockchain research lends credence to the claims that FTX Group engaged in unethical business activities by squandering consumers' money. The investigation revealed that $116.52 million was denominated in US dollars, which accounted for 57.1% of the total, while another $49.39 million was denominated in ether and $38.06 million was denominated in bitcoin. After November 6, any wBTC that was withdrawn could be tracked back to the Alameda WBTC Merchant wallet. The trail of transactions demonstrated that they had successfully connected to the Bitcoin blockchain.
According to the exhaustive examination of the flows, FTX was the eventual destination of $35.52 million ETH, while the remaining $13.87 million was sent to the active trading wallet of Oxa2O. Arkham stated that Alameda Research was the one responsible for organizing the covert token transfers, despite the fact that Oxa20 is still actively involved in OTC trading and the process of transferring tokens. Despite this, Arkham admitted that they did not know for certain whether the $14 million ETH flow that was traced to Oxa20 represented actual trade or whether Alameda was simply fulfilling internal transfer obligations.
The Split Transfer was used to move USD-Stable Coins.
The investigation that Arkham conducted into the massive withdrawal made by Alameda Research revealed that USD-stable tokens were transferred using split transactions that involved USDC, BUSD, TUSD, and USDT. The research company was able to track $10.04 million USD back to Binance, while also determining that $32.17 million USDT was converted to USDC and sent to FTX.
The FTX market received direct flows totaling $47.38 million USDT and $10.15 million. In the end, FTX was given $500,000 TUSD as well as $16.285 million BUSD. The breakdown of the split transfer as it was executed days before the bankruptcy filing demonstrates the plundering of users' depositions in the Bankman-Fried empire prior to the filing of the bankruptcy.
