On the 10th of November 2022, Larry Cermak, who has been watching the FTX liquidity crunch, released evidence of suspicious activities on the FTX platform.
The withdrawals from FTX seem really weird. Some of them actually go to Binance deposit addresses, and some of them appear to be fresh wallets which could indicate a consolidation. Some pretty large (100k+) processing as well
— Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) November 10, 2022
After days of halting withdrawals, the FTX project opened withdrawals on the 10th of November. With barely 24 hours, withdrawal seems to be weird. Some funds are being sent to freshly opened Binance wallets, while huge amounts were being processed. A single Binance wallet was receiving $400k worth of withdrawals.
With both insurmountable evidence of favoritism and Etherscan lagging due to the heavy traffic, the question becomes who are these people and why is FTX giving preferential treatment?
Many of the unlabelled wallets with successful withdrawals are brand new/burner wallets.
Is it just me or is this sus?
— Moose👻 (@CryptMoose_) November 10, 2022
With withdrawals still unsure for the general public, many of the wallets successfully pulling out funds are brand new accounts. Some speculations are that FTX is trying to clear out its backlogs. Yet, if that was the case, the accounts should be that of established users, not new and burner accounts.
Then a Twitter account, Tree of Alpha, made a discovery.
NEW: Account that managed to get 6 figures out of FTX on the Solana network seems to be a Twitter account with 100 followers, including @SBF_FTX , lending credence to the theory that Sam is ensuring withdrawals for privileged people as we speak.
By @0xFib https://t.co/3BJTeuJXpA
— Tree of Alpha (@Tree_of_Alpha) November 10, 2022
- It seems the account that was able to pull out 6 figures withdrawal actually belongs to an employee. It’s an account on the Solana network that has a Twitter account attached.
The Twitter account has just 100 followers, one of which is SBF himself. This has solidified the belief that SBF is fully aware, and he is giving withdrawal privileges to a special few.
First, withdrawal was only open to users residing in the Bahamas, and by extension, the whales that can sacrifice hundreds of dollars to get their millions back. Now it’s open to members of the FTX team, from the lowest employees, all the way to the top.
At this point, there’s no idea what’s going on. For a crypto project to be prioritizing certain people over others, this is not the decentralization we want to achieve in the Web3 space.
To top it off, there has been no comment from FTX or SBF yet.