The newly launched Bald memecoin’s apparent “rug pull” caused its market value to spiral near obliteration. The crypto Twitter is now torn between a new conspiracy theory that suggests Sam Bankman-Fried – the founder of the disgraced crypto exchange FTX or someone from Alameda Research – may be secretly behind it.
BALD witnessed a meteoric rally over the weekend, but the removal of thousands of ETH in liquidity crashed it down just as sharply.
Bankman-Fried, currently under house arrest at his parent’s home in California, has been suspected to be the culprit behind the memecoin’s disaster after an anonymous developer withdrew a substantial amount of ETH from the liquidity pool.
This eventually caused BALD to lose over 90% of its value, sparking accusations of a rug pull. The developer, however, has refuted the claims so far despite acknowledging the abrupt liquidity withdrawal.
What makes this story even more interesting is the fact that the theory has not been perpetuated by a shady anonymous tipper. In fact, some of the well-known players in the crypto industry have unraveled the connection of the developer to Alameda Research, the failed sister-trading firm of FTX.
One such example is Wintermute’s Head of Researcher, Igor Igamberdiev. He claimed to have found an older wallet connected to a Bald deployer – which is the smart contract address used to create the memecoin on Coinbase’s layer-2 Base network.
As such, both the Bald deployer address and the older wallet shared the same deposit account on FTX. Moreover, Alameda had directly interacted with the latter but ceased to be active last summer.
The wallet in question was extremely active during 2019-20 on platforms such as Oasis, 0x v2.1, dYdX v2, and Set Protocol. Igamberdiev highlighted that the manner in which these interactions took place suggests that the owner of the wallet possessed substantial financial resources and demonstrated considerable technical expertise.
According to the researcher’s findings, the former Alameda CEO Sam Trabucco could be the person instead of Bankman-Fried. The Bald deployer activity started picking up just weeks after Trabucco’s announcement of exiting the firm. Igamberdiev found a few more details, such as the dates of some addresses’ activities correlate with Trabucco tweets.
Blockworks data editor Andrew Thurman also said the same wallet had carried out nearly 400 transfers to blacklisted USDT addresses. Thurman further added that it had “serious Alameda connections for sure.”
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There are a few more details, such as the dates of some addresses’ activities correlate with Trabucco tweets
For example, a tweet about the Stargate auction pic.twitter.com/fh86jpcehn
— Igor Igamberdiev (@FrankResearcher) August 1, 2023
While it’s unclear who’s to blame for the mess at a time when the SEC has ramped up scrutiny over the crypto market, all the fingers point towards Trabucco at the moment.
Bankman-Fried is highly unlikely to have orchestrated the entire fiasco since he apparently hasn’t had access to a normal phone or laptop since April 2023, when his bail conditions changed, according to crypto influencer Tiffany Fong, who spoke with SBF after his arrest.
