Market Analyst Suspects Money Laundering in Ongoing FTX Case

Dylan LeClaire, a self-claimed market intelligence personality, suspects a case of money laundering in the ongoing FTX saga. According to LeClaire, Alameda minted 36 billion USDT and only redeemed about 4 billion USDT which is enough to suspect that the entity was “a bank mule for other actors” behind the scenes.

So Alameda minted 36b USDT, and only ever redeemed ~4b USDT, a net figure of 30b+ USDT.

So did Alameda wire Tether $30b+ USD? If so, with what money? One possible “good” explanation is that they were a bank mule for other actors.

Alternative explanations are… not great.

1/4 pic.twitter.com/62AOeJTP9w

— Dylan LeClair 🟠 (@DylanLeClair_) October 19, 2023

In a recent post on X, LeClaire shared a screenshot showing that Tether received an outstanding $36.65 billion from Alameda research within an unspecified period. The company redeemed only about 4 billion USDT from that amount, leaving a net figure of over 30 billion USDT.

Furthermore, LeClaire noted that the 36 billion USDT figure would not be noteworthy if they were a frequent large redeemer. However, they only redeemed approximately 4 billion USDT, most of it during the LUNA/UST crash. Hence, he suspects massive funds had to be wired to Tether to mint such a significant volume.

The 36b USDT figure wouldn’t be all that noteworthy if they were a frequent large redeemer, but again, they only ever redeemed ~4b of USDT, a majority during LUNA/UST crash.

So *presumably* there was a massive amount of USD that had to be wired to Tether to mint all it all.

2/4 pic.twitter.com/Lih025vulT

— Dylan LeClair 🟠 (@DylanLeClair_) October 19, 2023

LeClaire was curious about the lack of mention of funds wired to Tether in the ongoing SBF trial. He suspects it is a deliberate effort, as Caroline Ellison, a former employee of SBF, mentions $2 billion of FTX funds used for stablecoins conversions to USDC but avoids mentioning the tens of billions of dollars wired to Tether. Otherwise, someone else may have wired the funds without the knowledge of Ellison.

Digging deeper, LeClaire noted that all other stablecoins were valued at $1 on FTX, except USDT, which ranged between $0.95 and $0.975. Despite considering it strange, the acclaimed market intelligence personality thinks there was some foul play in the process.

According to LeClaire, the only “good” explanation is that other entities wired funds to Tether, who then sent USDT to Alameda wallets for some reason.

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