Allegations Against SBF
A CoinTelegraph article suggests that Bitcoin fell short of reaching $100,000 during the 2021 bull market due to allegations that the now-defunct exchange FTX continuously dumped BTC.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on October 12, Joe Burnett, the senior product marketing manager at Unchained, a Bitcoin financial services company, joined others in suggesting that FTX executives may have suppressed BTC’s price.
Recent testimony during the trial of former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried is revealing potential market manipulation.
In this week’s proceedings, Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of affiliated firm Alameda Research, allegedly told the court that Bankman-Fried had asked her to sell BTC if its spot price exceeded $20,000. Notably, this was done using FTX customer funds without proper authorization.
AUSA: What was Celsius?
Ellison: A crypto lending desk.
[Inner City Press covers US v [Celsius' Alex] Mashinsky: https://t.co/ngrDywJvCI— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) October 11, 2023
In response, Burnett implied that these activities might have cast a shadow over the entire Bitcoin bull market.
“Alameda was insolvent even during the bull market. It appears they used (or ‘borrowed’) FTX customer bitcoin and other customer assets to buy ‘Sam coins’ (FTT, Solana, and Serum),” he noted, referring to reports indicating Ellison’s company had a deficit of $2.7 billion in 2021.
“Without this fake sell pressure, maybe bitcoin would have hit $100,000 in 2021.”
In the 2021 bull market, BTC/USD did reach a record peak of $69,000. However, expectations at the time were aiming for significantly higher figures.
