Alameda-Linked Wallets Move Over $1M Funds To Crypto Mixer Amid FTX Hack Probe

While the U.S. Department of Justice is reportedly looking into the controversial FTX hack that took place a few hours after the crypto empire and its over 100 affiliates filed for bankruptcy, 30 wallets associated with Sam Bankman-Fried founded hedge fund and crypto trading firm Alameda Research, moved over $1 million assets to cryptocurrency mixer this week.

November was an eventful month for Bankman-Fried and other top executives of collapsed FTX and its affiliated companies, but it looks like the intrigue and mind-blowing controversy did not stop last month.

Alameda Research, a firm that Bankman-Fried, or SBF, as he is colloquially called in the crypto space, founded in 2017, is facing another controversy, this time related to sleeping wallets associated with the firm suddenly waking up and moving funds.

The best thing about blockchain technology is that every transaction made is transparent or can be seen by anyone.

This is what happened this week when crypto intelligence firm Arkham reported movements of these Alameda Research-linked wallets, which it described as "inactive for multiple weeks before."

The report said that the final transactions these wallets made were on Dec. 1 before they went inactive, but on Wednesday, "sharp-eyed users may have noticed a number of interesting movements," including "multiple Alameda addresses" starting to "swap tokens for ETH/USDT, sending them to crypto mixers."

Most of the suspicious transfers were traced to two major wallets, 0xe5D and 0x971, that sent funds to an address beginning with 0x738 and then to an address 0x64e.

The address 0x64e eventually split up the Ethereum and moved it to smaller wallets in sums of $20,000 and $50,000 and then were moved to FixedFloat and ChargedNOW.

At least 30 cryptocurrency wallets linked to Alameda Research swapped and mixed more than $1.7 million worth of crypto assets via different crypto-mixing services.

While many initially thought it was the move made by the court-appointed liquidators, the use of crypto-mixing tools negated this possibility since mixers are often used by exploiters and cybercriminals to obscure the path of transactions, so funds would not be easily traced.

The movement also raised suspicion in the crypto space since it took place just a few days after Bankman-Fried was released on a $250 million bail bond.

ChangeNOW, in its latest statement, said it "stands against fraudulent actions amid Alameda wallets' suspicious activity," adding that it "is putting serious effort into preventing such incidents as the recent Alameda wallets' case."

The team also said, "the ChangeNOW risk management system has a proven performance record, with several successful cases of fraud and money loss prevention occurring in the past" and noted that it is "open round-the-clock for investigation inquiries and fraudulent activity alerts" with "illicit operations are detected and investigated in strict accordance with the Security & Trust Protection Terms."