Coin Metric’s Head of R&D Lucas Nuzzi thinks Alameda’s liquidity crunch dates abet to the second quarter, which observed the demise of several leading crypto corporations, including Singaporean hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.

“I stumbled on proof that FTX can accumulate offered a enormous bailout for Alameda in Q2 which now got here abet to haunt them,” tweeted Nuzzi on Tuesday. His suspicions stemmed from a series of irregular transactions that took space over 40 days within the past, when 177 million FTT tokens fee $4 billion grew to turn into active on-chain.

Nuzzi furthermore stumbled on that $8.6 billion fee of FTT moved on Sept. 28, marking a truly valuable day-after-day circulate within the token’s historical previous.

After scanning thru all transfers made that day, he observed a particular transaction that interacted with a contract from the FTT ICO.

“This 2019 contract *robotically* released 173 Million FTT from the token’s ICO,” said Nuzzi, sharing a hyperlink to Etherscan that paperwork the transfer.

The Coin Metrics security researcher stumbled on that the transaction recipient used to be none rather then Alameda Research, which straight away transferred this total steadiness of FTT fee $4.19 billion to FTT’s contract creator.

“In other words, Alameda auto-vested $4.19 billion greenbacks fee of FTT ethical to send it straight away abet to FTX,” said Nuzzi.

Nuzzi theorized that FTX outdated the money to bail out Alameda. In his thought, Alameda “blew up in Q2 with 3AC” and the becoming reason it got here out unscathed used to be the 172 million FTT tokens it outdated as “collateral” to trusty funding, assured to be vested four months later.

“Undergo in mind, the FTT ICO contract vests robotically. Had FTX let Alameda implode in Will also, their crumple would accumulate ensured the next liquidation of all FTT tokens vested in September. It might possibly possibly accumulate been frightful for FTX, so that they had to search out a capacity to lead sure of this scenario,” said Nuzzi.

On the day of those transfers, Sam Bankman-Fried tweeted that FTX used to be “rotating a few FTX wallets” as section of periodic transfers.

Nuzzi emphasised that this theory used to be ethical hypothesis, nonetheless believes that it used to be this Alameda bailout that attach the categorical dent in FTX’s steadiness sheet.