- When SBF was under house arrest, he cashed out $684,000 to an exchange in Seychelles
- SBF’s public address made a large transfer of ether to a newly created address, originally owned by Sushiswap creator Chef Nomi
Blockchain data indicates that the founder of defunct crypto exchange FTX Sam Bankman-Fried is cashing out large amounts of cryptocurrency after his release on bail. When SBF was under house arrest, he cashed out $684,000 to an exchange in Seychelles, DeFi analyst BowTiedIguana reported, cited by CoinTelegraph.
Gross violation of bail release terms
On December 29, BowTiedIguana tweeted about a series of concealed wallet transactions reportedly linked to SBF, indicating the former FTX CEO violated bail terms to spend a maximum of $1,000 without permission from the court.
Allegedly, SBF’s public address made a large transfer of ether to a newly created address (0x7386d), originally owned by Sushiswap creator Chef Nomi. In a matter of hours, the new address received transfers worth $367,000 in total from 32 addresses identified as belonging to Alameda Research. According to the analyst, all funds were sent to RenBridge and a centralized crypto exchange in Seychelles.
BowTiedIguana encouraged the US SEC to look into the matter, stating:
As the Ethereum blockchain is an immutable public ledger, this on-chain evidence is permanently available to law enforcement and the courts.
Not everyone agrees this was a violation of bail release terms, as the funds already belong to SBF, and this doesn’t necessarily qualify as ‘spending’ money. In addition, some have speculated that SBF is Chef Nomi, the pseudonymous co-founder of Sushiswap. According to Conor Grogan, Coinbase head of strategy, a large number of the recent SBF-linked transactions were associated with early Sushiswap activity. He said:
These wallets — assuming they all belong to him — were heavily involved with LPing Sushi early on, well before Chef Nomi handed off the project to SBF.
Back in 2020, SBF denied having anything to do with building Sushiswap.
SBF out on a $250m bond
The transactions purportedly linked to SBF took place about a week after he was granted bail under a $250 million bond that his parents secured. Earlier, he claimed that he only had $100,000 after FTX went bust.
Recently, the government of the Bahamas announced they had seized $3.5 billion worth of crypto from FTX. They claimed they took this action to avoid a risk of the funds disappearing after SBF warned about cyberattacks on his exchange in mid-November.
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