• Data negates the possibility of liquidators behind the fund transfers due to the use of mixing tools and extensive planning to hide transaction paths.
• Nearly 24 hours later, it seems the culprit behind these fund transfers used extensive planning to hide transaction routes.
• Tokens from the Alameda wallet were first sent to an address starting with 0x738, and then on to an address 0x64e.
On December 28th, 2020, 30 wallets linked to the bankrupt sister company of crypto exchange FTX, Alameda Research, suddenly became active after four weeks of inactivity. These wallets transferred and mixed over $1.7 million worth of crypto assets through various crypto-mixing services.
Crypto-mixing services, also known as tumblers, are often used to obscure the transaction path and make it difficult to trace the funds back to the original source. This has raised suspicions among the crypto community, especially considering that the transfers occurred shortly after Sam Bankman Fried was released on bail.
When investing the activity of these wallets, data from the crypto forensic group Arkham revealed that the tokens were first sent to an address starting with 0x738, and then on to an address 0x64e. This 0x64e wallet then split up the Ether and sent it to smaller wallets with sizes of generally $200,000 and $50,000. After that, it was sent to services such as Fixedfloat and ChangeNOW.
By analyzing the activity of these wallets, it seems that the culprit behind these transfers used extensive planning to hide transaction routes. This data negates the possibility of liquidators being behind the fund transfers.
The sudden activity of the Alameda wallets is still a mystery, as the source of the funds and the purpose of the transfers remain unknown. However, this case serves as an important reminder of the importance of using crypto-mixing services to protect the privacy of crypto transactions.