FTX ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried may have broken bail conditions, on-chain analysis shows
An in-depth analysis of the latest transactions by former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and now-defunct venture capital firm Alameda Research suggests that SBF may have broken his bail conditions.
On Dec. 27 — just a few days after Bankman-Fried left jail on a $250 million bail — an address that he personally confirmed to be his back in September 2020 transferred all of his remaining assets to a fresh address.
The transaction moved about $800 of ethereum to the unknown address, where it was met by over half a million worth of cryptocurrency from multiple addresses, many being known Alameda Research addresses.
The former FTX CEO has denied any involvement in an on-chain activity, but he claimed ownership of one of the addresses involved in the tweet mentioned above. Moreover, according to a Dec. 22 CBS News report, Bankman-Fried’s bail included a condition to not spend more than $1,000 without the court’s permission.
A deep dive into on-chain data
Since the start of its on-chain activity on Dec. 27, the newly-created address has processed an astonishing 105 transactions — 52 on Dec. 27 and 53 on Dec. 28. The address received a total of $690,641 worth of cryptocurrency, including 32 transfers worth a total of $367,083 from known Alameda Research addresses.
The new address only sent five spending transactions, but those emptied all of its funds and left the wallet blank. The bulk of this was sent to two addresses, one starting with 0xE5cC0 which received a $60,450 transaction and one starting with 0x64e9B which received a $605,280 and a $24.080 transactions.
The 0xE5cC0 address (the one that received $60,450) sent only one transaction forwarding its entire balance to another address that had made well over one million transactions since Apr. 21, 2021. Even filtering for transactions performed since Dec. 27, the address sent well over 6,824 transactions — 3,331 of those are spending transactions. Unfortunately, tracking this transfer further than this is far from trivial.
The address that received the bulk of the funds, on the other hand, is also a newly-created address that showed no activity before Dec. 27. The 0x64e9B address received a total of 30 inbound transfers moving in $4.169 million worth of digital assets, including the fresh address that the confirmed Bankman-Fried address sent $800 to. This total may be more than the funds this address disposed of, considering that multiple incoming transactions were returning Metamask and Uniswap (UNI) swaps.
The 0x64e9B address’ transfers included a total of over $860,000 worth of digital assets moved to instant exchange Fixed Float. It breaks the transaction change, as a centralized custodian took those funds in exchange for a different digital asset. Another noteworthy outbound transaction is a $186,000 transfer to a null address of renBTC, which is a way to transfer the token between blockchains.
Did Sam Bankman-Fried break his bail conditions?
On-chain data and the former FTX’s old tweet indicate that he did transfer about $800 worth of digital assets to an address that was then involved in draining Alameda Research addresses. While this suggests that Bankman-Fried is likely behind those transactions, there is no easy way to prove that he only sent $800 worth of cryptocurrency to the same address that just happened to have also received significant transfers from Alameda Research and others.
The transactions clearly and undeniably linked to Bankman-Fried are just $200 shy of his $1,000 limit. Still, we cannot be sure that he has no such permission. His denying making any transfers makes it rather unlikely that those transactions are of a legal nature and that he had the judge’s permission to move any significant quantity of money. Still, without further investigations, probably by law enforcement, it cannot be said whether he had.
