FTX seems to be the story that keeps on giving as more and more information gets revealed following the downfall of what was one of the world’s largest crypto empires.
Now, a new report indicates that a number of cryptocurrencies that were traded by Alameda Research saw their price pumped by bots.
Outlined in a report from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and reported by Forbes, researchers found out that an army of Twitter bots was pumping prices of numerous cryptocurrencies.
The bots were supposedly used to help pump the price of numerous coins traded by insiders at Alameda Research, Forbes reports. Recall that this is the hedge fund and the sister firm of Sam Bankman-Fried’s former crypto empire – FTX.
The researchers pointed out that following promotional tweets by the official account of FTX, the activity for the coins grew massively inauthentic over time – speaking of 18 different cryptocurrencies.
It’s worth noting that this study didn’t link FTX or Alameda directly as being the operators or in any way responsible for the bot accounts.
Recall that FTX turned out to be a massively mismanaged operation that failed to honor the withdrawal requests of users and revealed a multi-billion hole in its balance sheet.
BOBA, GALA, IMX, RNDR, and SPELL are some of the tokens that saw a tremendous increase in social chatter, according to the report.
Fake tweets regarding these coins increase tremendously – in some cases by more than 30% – after the official listing on the FTX trading platform.
Per the report:
The pattern of account creations and bot-like activities paints a picture of an orchestrated effort, possibly aiming to artificially manipulate market sentiment and trading behavior around these tokens.