Alameda Research recovers 500 BTC, is this enough?

The ghost of Alameda Research, that infamous quant hedge fund tangled with FTX’s dramatic collapse, is still crawling with crypto.

Alameda’s wallets welcomed a fresh 500 BTC, worth around $58 million, pushing its total assets back over $1 billion.

This is real digital muscle flexing in the messy aftermath of crypto’s big meltdown.

Shadow wallets

The 500 BTC arrived via an intermediary wallet tagged WBTC merchant deposit, tied to Alameda’s old role as a WBTC merchant, probably meaning they could take real Bitcoin and mint the tokenized version, Wrapped Bitcoin.

This latest shuffle passed through a few shadow wallets, which have been active for weeks now.

The trail points to QCP Capital, which started funneling funds to Alameda’s wallets about three weeks ago.

Alameda, once a major player in the WBTC game, isn’t just sitting idle. Unlike back in FTX’s chaotic bankruptcy days when Alameda unloaded WBTC to cash out BTC, this time the 500 coins might actually be the fund reclaiming its own assets, unwrapped from token form, fully back under Alameda’s control.

After November 6th, Alameda only withdrew USD-stable tokens, Wrapped BTC or Ether from FTX US.

Of the $204M withdrawn:

$38.06M was in BTC (18.7%)
$49.39M was in ETH (24.2%)
$116.52M was in USD-denominated stables (57.1%) pic.twitter.com/lKRttdkPsZ

— Arkham (@arkham) November 25, 2022

Huge volumes of WBTC

Also, this little transfer isn’t just idle wallet juggling. It comes just days before a $1.6 billion FTX creditor payout, targeted at retail investors, is due.

But Alameda’s freshly topped-up wallets haven’t made a move into those bankruptcy pot funds yet, hinting they might keep this loot close for the future.

Alameda’s been a whirlwind in DeFi and WBTC dealings. At one point, they were redeeming up to 13,000 BTC in tokenized form.

This raises eyebrows about where these assets originally came from. Before the Celsius meltdown, Celsius dumped 24,000 WBTC onto FTX, controlling a massive chunk of WBTC linked to the exchange.

On-chain evidence suggests Alameda’s wallets handled huge volumes of WBTC likely connected to Celsius, mostly selling those tokens for stablecoins instead of redeeming them outright.

Celsius has settled its claims with FTX after pocketing $377 million in bankruptcy proceedings.

WBTC supply now sits around 127,237 tokens, stabilized after Alameda’s busiest periods of minting and redeeming.

FTX’s echo

This fresh movement shoves the spotlight back onto the broken but definitely not forgotten FTX brand.

There’s also buzz around the Pacifica perp decentralized exchange, launched by ex-FTX COO Constance Wang, hinting at FTX’s cultural echo still pulsing through crypto.

So, Alameda isn’t dead yet. Holding over 4 million SOL and more than 705 BTC in WBTC merchant wallets, it remains a heavyweight player in the crypto arena.