The head of product business operations at Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, Conor Grogan, has recently uncovered what appears to be a connection between the creator of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency Shiba Inu ($SHIB), Ryoshi, and Alameda Research, FTX’s sister company.

In a tweet Grogan shared with his over 140,000 followers on the microblogging platform, he revealed that using blockchain analysis he found a Bitkub deposit address that was linked to an account on the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea called “ALAMEDA.” That address, he said, was used by Ryoshi to make two deposits in 2020 and 2021.

The Coinbase executive noted that the link was discovered because Bitkub doesn’t generate new deposit addresses whenever it’s used, which allowed him to connect it to the OpenSea account.

Interestingly, the account has also minted non-fungible tokens (NFTs) called “SBF Legendary,2 referring to the co-founder of both Alameda and FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried. Bankman-Fried s being charged with two counts of wire fraud conspiracy, two counts of wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering over FTX’s collapse and misuse of customer funds.

Gorgan speculated that the creator of Shiba Inu may have taken over the Alameda handle on OpenSea to be “squatting for the memes.” Gorgan also pointed to a previous connection he spotted between Shiba Inu, as the largest SHIB farmer unstaked $107 million worth of SHIB and sent them to exchanges the same day FTX expanded its perpetual futures contracts for the cryptocurrency.

The Coinbase executive also noted that open interest for SHIB futures contracts at the time sparked to 1.1 trillion, worth around $85 million. Grogan’s findings have sparked much interest and speculation, but there has been no response so far from the SHIB community’s chief developer, Shytoshi Kusama

Notably, users on social media seem to have made the connection between Ryoshi and Alameda as far back as October 2021.

As CryptoGlobe reported, the total number of addresses holding onto SHIB has recently grown to surpass 1.3 million, ahead of the expected launch of the project’s layer-2 scaling solution Shibarium.

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