Alameda Research sues Waves founder to claw back $90 million

Quick Take

  • Alameda filed a lawsuit against Aleksandr Ivanov, the founder of Waves, to recoup assets worth $90 million previously deposited with Vires.
  • The FTX estate has filed more than 20 lawsuits against various entities over the past few days to claw back funds.

Alameda Research, the trading affiliate of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, has filed a lawsuit against Aleksandr Ivanov, the founder of Waves and its affiliated entities, in an attempt to claw back at least $90 million. 

In a Sunday filing, Alameda said that it seeks the turnover of assets worth $90 million belonging to Alameda and the debtors in the FTX bankruptcy case, adding that Alameda previously deposited the assets with Vires.Finance, a liquidity platform operating on Waves.

In March 2022, Alameda deposited about $80 million USDT and USDC on Vires, which had purportedly been converted to approximately $90 million worth of USDN, according to the filing. Vires users were encouraged to deposit assets via the Waves blockchain onto Vires to earn rewards, or interests, and obtain governance rights in the Vires DAO.

“While Ivanov marketed Waves and Vires as opportunities for lenders and other users to make substantial profits, Ivanov secretly orchestrated a series of transactions that inflated artificially the value of WAVES, while at the same time siphoning funds from Vires,” Alameda said.

Alameda noted that the debtors have “repeatedly attempted to regain custody of their frozen assets” and that Ivanov “agreed to join only one call with the debtors in January 2023.” However, Ivanov has since ignored all other outreach from the debtors, the filing said.

The Block reached out to Waves for comment.

Clawback

In the past few days, the FTX estate has filed over 20 lawsuits against various entities to claw back funds for creditors. Several of the noteworthy individuals include SkyBridge Capital CEO and one-time Trump administration official Anthony Scaramucci, the developers behind the game Storybook Brawl and Deltec Bank chairman Jean Chalopin, among others.

The price of Waves edged down 0.3% over the past 24 hours to trade at $1.12 at the time of writing, according to The Block’s price page. It has a market capitalization of around $112.3 million. In June, Binance delisted Waves from its platform, causing the token price to drop nearly 30%.


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About Author

Timmy Shen is an Asia editor for The Block. Previously, he wrote about crypto and Web3 for Forkast.News from Taiwan after spending more than three years in Beijing covering finance, entertainment business and current affairs at Caixin Global and Chinese tech at TechNode. His China-related reporting has also appeared in The Guardian. When he's not chasing headlines, you'll find him savoring hot pot and shabu shabu in a Taipei local haunt. Timmy holds an MS degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Send tips to [email protected] or get in touch on X/Telegram @timmyhmshen.

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