On July 29, a developer whose Twitter account is “Bald” announced the launch of the BALD token on the Base Network. This token quickly gained 289,000% in the first 14 trading hours. However, yesterday on July 31, Twitter users started reporting that the developer had withdrawn 1,034 ETH in liquidity (worth $1.9 million) from the market. This caused the price of BALD to drop to almost zero.
In a recent post on social media, the BALD developer denied the above allegations, and said that (s)he has not sold a single token since its launch. (S)he just added/removed 2 sided liquidity and bought. However, another crypto trader argued that adding two sided liquidity is essentially a token sale.
Some blockchain watchers say that the wallets used in this rugpull appear to belong to Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of the FTX exchange. Adam Cochran, partner at Cinneamhain Ventures claimed that: “The BALD dev is like 90% SBF or an Alameda person at this point. Apparently some of the former FTX members also thought it was Sam.”
Adam also pointed out that one of the wallet addresses also joined the SushiSwap community many years ago. Bankman-Fried was credited with rescuing funds from Uniswap, moving them to SushiSwap in September 2020.
According to an investigation by the Reddit community, the BALD developer’s wallet is said to have been receiving deposits from FTX and Alameda for over 2 years with a balance of around 12,331 ETH (worth $22 million). Another Twitter user also pointed out that an address that regularly made deposits into developer BALD’s Binance wallet appears to be one of the wallets that caused the massive drop in Terra USD (UST) in May of last year. There is currently no evidence to support these allegations, and the community’s investigation into BALD is still ongoing.