Summary:
- The founder of Waves has accused Alameda Research of shorting WAVES and spreading FUD to benefit from the trade
- Sam Bankman-Fried of Alameda and FTX has denied the allegations of manipulating the price of the digital asset
- The trade is worth $31 million and Alameda seems to be benefiting from the negative funding rates on Waves
- A proposal has been suggested in the Waves community to prevent future short positions of this magnitude
The founder of the Waves blockchain, Sasha Ivanov, has accused Alameda Research of manipulating the price of WAVES and organizing FUD campaigns to trigger further panic selling.
According to Ivanov, the ongoing short position on Waves was brought to his attention during a Bloomberg interview after which he set out to investigate. In his research, he found out that the team at Alameda had borrowed roughly 631,477 WAVES worth $30.98 million from Vires Finance.
Ivanov added that this amount in Waves was then sent to Binance and sold to lower the price of the digital asset. At the same time, Alameda had orchestrated a FUD campaign to bring the price lower and benefit from the negative funding rate on Waves.
Sam Bankman-Fried Responds to the Allegations of Alameda Shorting Waves
The CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, who is also an asset manager at Alameda Research, responded to the findings by Ivanov as ‘bullsh*t conspiracy theory’.
obv bullshit conspiracy theory
— SBF (@SBF_FTX) April 3, 2022
Proposal to Halt Future Short Positons of this Magnitude
Sasha Ivanov was also keen to admit that he understood that crypto was mostly about money. He said:
I understand that crypto currently is mostly about money. I hate that. We work for the people, since 2016. We will keep up the work no matter what, cause we’ve seen much worse :) Waves is gonna be a hard nut to crack guys. Do not sell us short!
As the saga unfolded on Twitter, Ivanov suggested a new proposal in the Waves community specifically targeting the Alameda trade and preventing future short positions of this magnitude.
This proposal temporarily reduces ‘the liquidation threshold for Waves and USDN borrowing to 0.1%’. It also proposes ‘to limit the maximum borrow APR to be 40%’.
If passed, the proposal will force Alameda to close its 631k WAVES short position to avoid being liquidated over a 0.1% price movement to the upside.
Waves Community Members Criticize the Proposal
However, the proposal has not gained full acceptance in the Waves community as many have pointed out that it would kill the Vires Protocol.
‘I think “No!”. This looks like a proposal to protect one large borrower of usdc/usdt….and liquidate usdn /eurn/waves borrowers on an instant after activation. This will kill the protocol’, said one Waves community member known as justwaitingabit.
Community member Martox added, ‘This is a terrible proposal. Just because we don’t like that a party took a big short position doesn’t mean we should change the protocol to target them back. They are using the platform as intended. Just let it play out and enjoy the rewards.’
Voting on the proposal begins tomorrow, April 5th.