During the weekend, a new crypto token called BALD stole the limelight. It quickly rose up in value by nearly 4,849,900%. A few hours back, the BALD deployer removed 11,137 ETH liquidity [~$20M], triggering an 87% collapse of the token.
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Several members of the community have started speculating that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, might be behind the project. Blockchain securities and analytics firm PeckShield recently used the SBF hashtag in one of its recent tweets and pointed out that the FTX was one of the top counterparty CEXes used by the address to move the rugged ETH.
Now others have also started making rigid allegations. Connecting the dots, people have started finding several sentence structure and language similarities between the BALD deployer and SBF. The deployer was also allegedly the first voter on all SushiSwap proposals and the biggest dYDx farmer. Additionally, the Twitter handle of Serum was changed and was allegedly used to endorse BALD. Adam Cochran recently tweeted,
“Ok yup it’s SBF or another Alameda person. Only a handful of people had access to Serum Twitter account. And other than SBF senior harem, nearly none of them were around at the time of Sushiswap votes. So I think SBF just rugged people again.”
Crypto Twitter Mounts Evidence
Community members have also been fervently digging into developers’ on-chain history. They have been drawing links to SBF because the Bald deployer’s Ethereum wallet address had received thousands of ETH in funding from wallets associated with FTX and Alameda Research. DeFi commentator ‘Downsin‘ pointed out that this could mean that SBF is “legit trying to make it all back from prison.”
That being said, it should be noted, that SBF is not in a prison. He is under house arrest at his parent’s home in California, waiting for his October trial. When viewed from the surface level, the aforementioned claims do not seem to hold water, because SBF’s bail conditions restrict his internet usage. Tiffany Fong pointed out that SBF has been using a “flip phone without internet connection” since his bail conditions were revised in April. With respect to the linguistic similarities, she pointed out that SBF would use double spaces between sentences. She added,
“He specifically does NOT have access to Twitter, so the claims that he’s [behind] BALD due to “sentence structure” seem like a stretch to me.”
Even analyst ‘Wolf Of All Streets’ was on the same page and called Crypto Twitter “ridiculous.” However, others pointed out that SBF “has connections everywhere,” leaving the doors open for speculation.
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