Crypto Sleuths Discover Potential Connections Between Sam Bankman-Fried and BALD Rugpull

Connections can be found between Sam Bankman-Fried’s trading firm Alameda Research and the deployer of an alleged crypto scam called BALD.

According to members of the crypto community who have analyzed on-chain data, the deployer of the meme coin, which was built on Coinbase’s new layer 2 blockchain Base, has in the past interacted with wallets controlled by Alameda Research.

A screenshot of the on-chain activity with a wallet address flagged as belonging to Alameda Research was shared among community members on the social media platform X:

https://www.twitter.com/redactedp4mp/status/1686095057143881729

The BALD price rallied by a whopping 4,000,000% from its issuance, gaining a market capitalization of over $68 million at its peak.

On Monday this week, the deployers of BALD suddenly removed millions of dollars in liquidity from the tokens trading pairs on decentralized exchanges (DEXs), leaving holders unable to sell their tokens at anywhere near the formerly high prices.

Not likely to be SBF

Despite the deployer contract appearing to be linked to Alameda Research, there is currently no evidence to suggest that Sam Bankman-Fried himself was the person behind the token launch.

Alameda wallets could theoretically also be used by the trading firm’s former CEO Caroline Ellison, or by a number of Alameda traders or other people who worked for the firm before it went bankrupt.

This was also pointed out on X by crypto news reporter Colin Wu, who said the probability that Bankman-Fried or any of core team members at FTX or Alameda were behind the rug pull is “very low.”

The probability that the BALD deployer is SBF himself or the FTX/Alameda core team is very low. As @FrankResearcher said, there are more than $40 million in funds flow with Coinbase, and it is unlikely to use fake KYC to maintain.

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) August 1, 2023

Others, meanwhile, made the case for why they think the person behind the meme coin could be Bankman-Fried’s former business partner Sam Trabucco, who was Alameda’s co-CEO until August of 2022.

“[To be honest] I think that it’s Sam T, but no hard evidences yet,” said Igor Igamberdiev, head of research for crypto trading firm Wintermute, while sharing a long list of reasons for why Trabucco more likely is behind BALD than Bankman-Fried.

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Alright, I've been sitting on this news all day, but let's look at the @BaldBaseBald deployer.

This is definitely someone from Alameda, but I don't think we can safely say that this is @SBF_FTX (even though he is a psycho)

Let's go👇 pic.twitter.com/qs7e2nMTI1

— Igor Igamberdiev (@FrankResearcher) August 1, 2023