The FTX/Alameda plot thickens as wallets belonging to Alameda suddenly become active. $1.7 million is put through mixers and swapped for stablecoins and BTC.
On December 28th, 30 cryptocurrency wallets associated with Alameda Research, the bankrupt sister company of the FTX crypto exchange, became active after being inactive for four weeks. These wallets were used to mix and swap over $1.7 million worth of cryptocurrency assets through various crypto-mixing services.
Crypto mixers are often used to obscure the transaction path, making it difficult to trace the funds back to the original source. The sudden movement of funds from the Alameda wallets just after Sam Bankman Fried was released on bail has raised suspicions in the cryptocurrency community, and it appears that the individual behind the fund transfers took extensive measures to hide the transaction routes.
In an article published earlier today by CoinTelegraph, data from crypto forensic group Arkham was used to track the wallet movements. The first transfer of funds from the Alameda addresses began with the swapping of tokens for Ether, which was then sent to crypto mixers. Most of these transfers were traced to two main wallets with the addresses starting with 0xe5D and 0x971.
The tokens from the Alameda wallet were first sent to an address starting with 0x738 and then on to an address 0x64e. This 0x64e wallet then divided the ETH and sent it to smaller wallets in amounts generally around $200,000 and $50,000.
After that, the ETH was sent to mixers such as Fixedfloat and ChangeNOW. Another wallet was used to swap for stablecoins, with the assets from the wallet first being swapped into USDT and then sent to Fixedfloat.
A total of 800,000 USDT was swapped out using mixers, while another 400,000 USDT was funnelled through other methods. An additional 200,000 USDT worth of stablecoins were sent to the BTC network using renBTC.
The transfer of funds from the Alameda wallet through mixing tools has generated a lot of discussion in the cryptocurrency community. Some have questioned the legality of the fund transfers, while others have pointed to the use of mixing services and the inability of authorities to prevent such activity.
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