With a public promise to keep each other’s tokens for three years, or until November 2, 2024, BitDAO and Alameda exchanged 100 million BIT tokens for 3,362,315 FTT tokens on November 2, 2021.
The dramatic drop in BIT pricing on November 8, 2022, sparked a rapid response from the BitDAO community, who suspected Alameda of dumping the BIT tokens and breaking the three-year mutual no-sale public promise.
The BitDAO community asked for a budgetary allocation to monitor and confirm Alameda’s commitment to keeping BIT coins to pinpoint the causes of BIT’s price decline.
By publishing an address that demonstrates BitDAO Treasury owning all 3,362,315 FTT tokens, BitDAO demonstrated that it was upholding its side of the commitment.
In exchange, the community gave Alameda a 24-hour deadline to demonstrate its commitment, requesting that:
“The preferred method is for Alameda to transfer the 100 million BIT tokens to an on-chain (non-exchange) address for the BitDAO community to verify and hold until the end of the agreement.”
While nothing is yet proven, Ben Zhou, the co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, summarized the situation by saying that the BitDAO community wants evidence of funding from Alameda.
The CEO of Alameda Research, Caroline Ellison, rebutted the charge by stating that there was no misconduct on the part of the company and making a commitment to provide Zhou with the evidence of funding.
“Busy at the moment, but that wasn’t us, will get you proof of funds when things calm down.”
The CEO of the blockchain analytics company, Nanse, Alex Svanevik, looked into the on-chain data and discovered that Mirana Ventures, the venture capital arm of Bybit, had removed 100 million BIT from FTX. Nevertheless, he cautioned the cryptocurrency community not to believe rumors since Alameda doesn’t necessarily sell when it withdraws money.
Since November 6, several FTX users have experienced delays and issues while trying to withdraw money from the exchange.
By emphasizing the matching engine’s efficient operation, FTX allayed investors’ fears. However, the exchange consented to delays with Bitcoin withdrawals due to constrained node traffic.
Additionally, customers experiencing difficulties in stablecoin withdrawals were told that withdrawal speeds would return to normal once banks began weekday operations.