US Government Swaps Seized ANT Tokens for ETH as Aragon DAO Winds Down

The US government is moving some of the holdings seized from Alameda research, swapping tokens for the more liquid Ethereum (ETH).

The US government is swapping some of the holdings seized from Alameda research, changing the less liquid ANT tokens for ETH from one of the main wallets.

According to Arkham Intelligence, the ANT tokens were sold in two transactions for a total of $550K and $518K in ETH.

These transfers mark the first activity on the wallet in the past two years. Just before the transactions, the US government wallets received a small transfer from a high-balance wallet, which is not related to the ANT liquidations. Additionally, the US government wallet added another small ETH inflow from the Coinbase hot wallet.

The transactions interacted with the Aragon DAO redemption wallet, which converts the funds to ETH. The DAO is phasing out its ANT tokens after abandoning the idea of a fully community-owned organization. One fear was that Aragon DAO would end up with a Sybill attack or a voting takeover attempt from hidden whales.

The US government used the loophole to turn the ANT tokens into more easily tradable ETH. The Aragon DAO contract is still open and redeeming both retail and large-scale professional investors. Aragon DAO is considered a failed project, which has also locked its X account.

The move by Alameda is a way to salvage value, as Aragon DAO is in the process of dissolving its tokens. The last swaps and redemptions will be possible before November 2. Despite the chaotic market price for residual ANT trading, the swaps are performed at a fixed rate. Aragon will not dissolve completely but will gather any remaining funds after November 3 and focus on new developments.

The liquidation comes just days after the US government appeared to be moving funds from the Bitfinex vault, which turned out to be malicious activity. Later, the hacker returned nearly all the funds, close to $20M.

Alameda still shows activity in some of its wallets

The most recent transfers reorganized the wallet, which now contains more than $980K in ETH and various other tokens. Compared to the overall distribution by FTX, which is expected to compensate investors with $12B and distribute more than $16B including fees and expenses, the wallet is relatively small.

While the recent distribution is small, it may indicate that the final repayment is approaching or that there are other shifts in preparation for reimbursing investors. Alameda was exempted from the auto-liquidation protocols of FTX and retained some of its tokens.

While most of the addresses are already emptied and contain dust amounts of assets, some still hold valuable tokens. One of the wallets holds more than $500K in AMPL tokens. Smaller AMPL stores also existed on other known Alameda addresses.

Some of the known wallets of Alameda Research continue to show trading activity, as recent as two months ago. Alameda traded FTM tokens in a series of DEX transactions.

In addition to remnant ANT, AMPL, and FTM, Alameda is also liquidating its World (WLD) holdings. In the past day, Alameda sold another chunk of its WLD allocation, sending 143.77K to Binance.

Due to the price appreciation of WLD, Alameda still retains more than $46M in value. One of the known wallets of the hedge fund now contains close to $200M, after the latest market expansion. Alameda has now sold WLD for months, with an average price of $1.71. After the latest transfer to Binance, WLD trades at close to its weekly lows at $1.99.

Additionally, the wallet received residual TEL tokens from KuCoin, as well as a dust amount of meme tokens from unknown addresses.

There are also rumors that Alameda and FTX hold up to 10% of the Solana (SOL) supply. For now, no significant SOL wallets have been discovered, and most of the SOL was liquidated years ago.

In the past few days, the FTX Liquidator Wallet also received almost constant inflows of residual tokens. The liquidator wallet holds $4.18M in various assets, which would also have to be converted to fiat for repayment.