Crypto Twitter has been abuzz with debate after a new conspiracy theory has suggested FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried may be secretly behind one of the most controversial new memecoins on Base.
The BALD memecoin, which draws its namesake from a humorous reference to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, was launched on July 30 and witnessed an incredible 289,000% gain within the first 24 hours of trading.
just to catch you up SBF the guy with the fake crypto exchange and responsible for one of the biggest frauds in history may have launched a $30m scam last weekend under a memecoin called BALD while on house arrest in his parents basement using the blockchain of a man who was… pic.twitter.com/VjnSJCxg0E
After the token’s anonymous developer removed thousands of ETH in liquidity, the price of BALD plummeted more than 85% — sparking allegations of a rug pull, which the developer has denied.
The ordeal led a number of blockchain sleuths to dig into the developer's on-chain past, prompting some to draw a link to SBF as the Ethereum wallet address responsible for deploying the Bald token had received thousands of ETH in funding from wallets associated with FTX and Alameda Research.
One of the conspiracy theorists, anonymous decentralized finance (DeFi) commentator Downsin suggested that the link between the two meant that it was SBF “legit trying to make it all back from prison.”
However, it’s worth noting that SBF is not in prison, he’s awaiting his October trial under house arrest at his parent’s home in California.
Go back to the $BALD deployer funding, it's legit @SBF_FTX trying to make it all back from prisonhttps://t.co/tuDsIEqI4G pic.twitter.com/QDn3LYWB0l
Adding further fuel to the rumor was Blockworks data editor Andrew Thurman,
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