The CEO and founder of Waves Platform, Alexander Ivanov, accuses Alameda Research of manipulating the WAVES price and organising a FUD-campaign to trigger panic selling of the asset. FTX CEO and founder of Alameda Research Sam Bankman-Fried called such claims “a poorly crafted conspiracy theory.”
Get your popcorn ready: @AlamedaResearch manipulates $waves price and organizes FUD campaigns to trigger panic selling.
I hope I caught your attention. Follow me.
— Sasha Ivanov 🌊 (1 ➝ 2) (@sasha35625) April 3, 2022
obv bullshit conspiracy theory
— SBF (@SBF_FTX) April 3, 2022
In March the native token updated its historical high near $61.3, rising 234.3%. Ivanov linked this to the opening of a US office and the publication of a new roadmap, which spurred demand for WAVES and increased TVL in the DeFi ecosystem.
In the latter part of March, Ivanov noted a growing number of people who doubted the continuation of the WAVES rally and intended to open shorts. The culmination was a post by a user under the handle 0xHamz with paid trolls among his followers.
“Anonymous lynch-mob,” as the Waves CEO described him, stated that WAVES growth was stimulated by borrowings in USDC/USDT at 35% on Vires.Finance. This, in turn, was necessary to expand the issuance of the USDN stablecoin (which links Waves and USDN with UST and LUNA in the Terra project), which was used as collateral in the protocol.
Repeated repetition of such actions, as the detractor claimed, endowed the mechanism with Ponzi-scheme-like properties. The algorithm has limitations and vulnerabilities — when the WAVES price falls, the USDN stablecoin loses its peg, and the ecosystem faces an “Armageddon”, 0xHamz said.
On April 2, USDN lost its peg to USD; on April 5 the asset traded below $0.75 on the BITTREX exchange.
Ivanov described the arguments as an attempt to declare borrowings “criminal.” He also doubted that a few million dollars could influence the price of an asset with a daily trading volume above $1 billion, as suggested in the thread by his opponent.
Statements by 0xHamz led to liquidity withdrawals from Vires.Finance pools. Someone contacted the team for a loan of 1 million WAVES (presumably to open a short). The company declined “on ideological grounds.”
Subsequently, Ivanov noted that an address linked to Alameda Research (3PHkZUJpS3AfmnXBNLCBmpqL25GJZb1hGiE) borrowed more than 631,478 WAVES (~$30.98 million) through Vires.Finance at an annual rate of 19.97%.
Since March 20 the account has been redirecting borrowed tokens to Binance to sell them and form a dump. The transactions coincided with the FUD organized by 0xHamz, Ivanov emphasized.
According to the Waves CEO, the initial manipulation triggered the WAVES rally on FTX. For Ivanov this came as a surprise — from Bloomberg he learned of a substantial top-up to the exchange wallet with the wrapped version of the asset on Ethereum. The project, however, had no business with FTX and previously refused a $1.5 million fee for the integration.
According to Ivanov, Alameda Research’s subsequent “short” proved extremely unsuccessful due to further growth in the asset. As a result, to exit they allegedly organised the scheme described above.
In December 2021, FTX published an article outlining its view of fair regulation of the digital assets market.
On December 8 in the US House of Representatives, hearings were held on the topic “Digital Assets and the Future of Finance: Understanding the Challenges and Benefits of Financial Innovation”. Among the participants was Bankman-Fried.
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