The Alameda Research and FTX army led by legendary trader Sam Bankman-Fried has become a force that cannot be ignored in the DeFi world.
Written by: Xiao Mao
The waves are magnificent and travel thousands of miles a day. The crypto world is developing and changing at an extremely fast speed. The journey of embarking on the wave of the crypto world is full of unknowns. The transition from “returned by the public” to “targeted by the public” is often only one step away.
With the decentralized financial (DeFi) tide hit, the legendary trader Sam Bankman-Fried led by market makers and Alameda Research Center of the Exchange FTX is living in the vortex center DeFi focus of the event, leading the wave has become can not be ignored Power .
Sam Bankman-Fried (hereinafter referred to as “SBF”)’s recent moves are dazzling. He led FTX to acquire the crypto asset management tool Blockfolio (the sixth largest M&A transaction in the cryptocurrency industry so far) at a price of US$150 million , and also promoted a team to build a new decentralized trading platform Serum DEX based on the Solana public chain , And personally took over the control of SushiSwap , a liquid mining project in a crisis of confidence in the founder. His every move has attracted the attention of the entire crypto world. Even the photo of him sleeping in a simple bed in the office after finishing a sleepless day of overtime work has been widely circulated and the encrypted community talks about it.
Chain smell was in the ” encryption world gangs, look ,” the article wrote that “the world has a lot of encryption admission day talents, have the potential to become the emerging field of superstars, and may even build next Coinbase.”
As more professionals flood into the encryption industry, the pattern of the encryption world is also quietly changing. If we jokingly call the groups and affiliates with huge influence in the crypto world as ” gangsters “, FTX exchanges, decentralized trading platform Serum, and behind professional market maker Alameda Research and other affiliates, are they likely to become the main ” transactions “? A new ” crypto gang ” with core business?
This is worth checking out.
What kind of grand “trading landscape” is SBF building?
First, let’s sort out the core business and timeline of FTX and related companies.
Sam Bankman-Fried is the co-founder of FTX and Alameda Research . Now, he has the new title of ” Co-founder of Serum “, but all the stories start from his “old business” as a trader. And the core business line of the entire territory also revolves around ” transactions .” The two most directly related and core companies of SBF include:
- Exchange FTX main derivatives transactions: the exchange on May 1, 2019 formally launched, providing OTC, futures, indices and spot trading, the exchange of its currency index cottage, leverage tokens innovative trading products known for ；
- Alameda Research: initially located in the FTX proprietary quantitative trading company, to provide liquidity for the encryption market, but also the FTX behind encryption currency exchange and Serum to the center of exchanges initiated by the team.
But from the beginning of this year, with the introduction of decentralized Serum Exchange, we found that Alameda Research not only positioned as a self-employed quantitative trading company, is also involved in a number of investment projects and startups block chain, the entire Alameda Research / FTX Group in the ever-expanding territory.
In the center of the trading business compliance platform, in early May this year, FTX encryption assets in the United States launched a stock exchange “FTX.US.” The exchange has been registered as a money service business (MSB) in the US Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and has obtained most US state-level money transfer licenses (MTL).
In late August, FTX announced a $ 150 million purchase price of the encryption monetary asset management tools Blockfolio, which is as of now the sixth largest industry encryption currency deals, the exchange also shows attempts to accelerate growth in the retail market determination. After the acquisition, Blockfolio has already stated that it will launch trading tools.
In terms of decentralized trading platforms, the actions of Alameda Research and FTX are even more dazzling.
First of all, the decentralized exchange Serum launched by Sam Bankman-Fried based on the high-performance blockchain platform Solana has officially launched. Lianwen once wanted to build a DeFi ecosystem Serum on Solana after the legendary trader SBF became bigger and FTX. What kind of chess is this? “Serum is introduced in detail in the article. The DEX chain Solana on the new public building, not only to achieve interoperability via Ethernet Square, propose Bitcoin cross chain solutions to open up the asset level of interoperability, while supporting cross-chain swaps and other functions, in order to achieve a full range of decentralized Transaction infrastructure.
Recently, Sam Bankman-Fried temporarily took over the AMM transaction agreement SushiSwap from the anonymous team, and proposed to create a SushiSwap branch in Serum. If the proposal is implemented, it will also bring new opportunities for the Serum ecosystem.
The following is the possible future layout of Sam Bankman-Fried and related companies around “transactions” compiled by the chain:
- Centralized exchange: FTX + FTX.US
- Decentralized exchange: Serum + AMM transaction agreement SushiSwap (community project, not directly controlled, but SBF has considerable influence in the project)
- Quantitative trading and investment institutions: Alameda Research
- Blockfolio: A cryptocurrency asset management tool acquired by FTX for USD 150 million. So far, Blockfolio end mobile downloads has exceeded six million, Nikkatsu hundreds of thousands of users from more than 90 countries and regions
It is also worth mentioning that Jump Trading , a Wall Street high-frequency trading company, promoted by Sam Bankman-Fried, announced earlier this month that it invested in the decentralized exchange Serum and will provide liquidity for the DEX. This is the traditional Wall Street giants involved in the transaction to the center of the financial sector milestones. Jump Trading, a US high-frequency trading company, was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Chicago. The company was responsible for providing liquidity for the well-known trading software Robinhood in 2018.
Demystifying Alameda Research
Many people have noticed that Alameda Research may have started with a news item in February this year. Prior to the data Bitfinex rankings, around February 24 this year, certified as Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX account book in Bitfinex Fukui amounted to $ 13.12 million.
The FTX exchange subsequently issued a response in its official announcement to answer the ” hedging arbitrage trading ” article. The article stated that it is possible to go long on cheap targets and short those expensive ones (that is, go long on Bitfinex, which has lower transaction costs. And short the equivalent amount on BitMEX and other exchanges with higher perpetual contract funding rates) to achieve hedge arbitrage trading. From the subsequent official announcement, we learned, FTX although the exchange, but its founder founder Sam Bankman-Fried is also a self-employed market makers Alameda Research, which also shows, Alameda Research encryption in the money market Realize arbitrage through professional strategies such as quantitative or hedging.
There is not much information about Alameda Research on the market. From the limited information, you can learn Alameda Research initial main business is as a self-employed quantitative trading companies and market makers to provide liquidity, but from the beginning of this year, more and more public projects invested block chain Alameda Research the information shows that the agency has developed a rapid expansion of the investment business, the sale of its speed and scope of coverage, there may be boarded encrypted list of the most active venture.
We guess, Alameda Research plays a similar “think tank” role in the entire ecosystem in its business lines are trading business (+ quantitative trading market makers), OTC business, research and analysis business, investment business.
Alameda Research enters DeFi investment territory
According to published information, gathered Alameda Research smell chain off the current investment map:
Trading ecosystem solution UpBots
UpBots, a trading ecosystem solution, aims to combine DEX and CEX to form a trading system, and integrate various DeFi protocols that support mortgages and loans, and support seamless switching of robot transactions and manual transactions. The project completed a $1.1 million token sale financing at the end of August. Other investors include CMS, Taureon and other institutions. UpBots also revealed that the project is seeking to be listed and traded on the decentralized exchange Serum .
DeFi Derivatives Protocol Perpetual Protocol
The Perpetual Protocol , a DeFi derivative protocol, comes from Taiwan and claims to have introduced an automatic market maker mechanism called ” vAMM ” (virtualized AMM). vAMM uses the same constant product formula as Uniswap, but it does not store real asset pools, and real assets are stored in smart contracts. The project was formerly known as ” Strike Protocol “, and previously completed a $1.8 million financing with Multicoin Capital leading the investment, with participation from Three Arrows Capital, CMS Holdings and Alameda Research. Binance is also an investor in the project.
DeFi mobile application Frontier
The DeFi mobile application Frontier aims to provide integrated services for mobile access to a variety of DeFi applications. The project announced in August that it had completed a private equity financing of US$1.85 million , including Alameda Research, FTX, Woodstock Fund, Mechanism Capital, NGC Ventures, CoinGecko, Spark Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Digital Capital, Black Edge Capital, AU21, TRG Capital, Bidesk and Matic Network participated in the investment. The FRONT token plan will be listed on the decentralized derivatives exchange Serum built on the Solana public chain, and the Frontier application suite will also add support for Solana token SRM.
Decentralized option trading protocol Hedget
Hedget block chain is started by the project Chromia to the center of options trading agreement that allows investors to trade and create different options products in the chain, and hedge against price fluctuations and risks of mortgage lending position brings. In addition, the agreement also uses the Chromia blockchain to increase support for the second-tier network to make transactions faster and lower costs. Alameda Research announced in August a strategic investment of US$500,000 in the decentralized options trading protocol Hedget (HGET) in exchange for 100,000 HGET tokens. Currently, Hedget has become the latest IEO project of FTX.
RAMP, a cross-chain liquidity solution
RAMP DEFI provides a cross-chain liquidity unlocking solution, allowing non-ERC-20 token holders to mortgage digital assets and make effective use of them. Specifically, it allows users to generate a stable currency rUSD based on mortgage assets, and then use the stable currency to borrow, lend, and trade another ERC-20 token, eUSD, so as to staking asset owners on various chains Unlock liquidity . The project was completed in August it announced more than $ 1 million private placement oversubscribed, private equity investors, including Alameda Research, ParaFi Capital, XRP Capital , IOST, Signum Capital, Ruby Capital and Blockwater VC. .
Stablecoin aggregation protocol mStable
Square mStable is Ethernet-based aggregation protocol stable currency, which is injected into the other by a stabilizing credits (e.g., DAI, USDT, USDC), stable casting mStable protocol credits (e.g. MUSD) contract intelligent system, the user may be destroyed mUSD can redeem other stablecoins and pay a part of the redemption fee. F TX has launched mStable’s token Meta (MTA) spot, quarterly and perpetual contracts at the end of July.
Institutional trading communication platform Paradigm
Paradigm is intended to be institutional-grade encryption currency trading communications platform that allows users to customize the layout of the transaction, to provide a modular interface, multiple tools side by side trading. The project is based on protocol-built transactions, provides front-end interfaces and order matching engines, allows exchanges and traders to enter a single global liquidity pool, abstracting a proprietary liquidity model. At the same time, Paradigm provides developers with platforms and financial tools to implement settlement logic, supports spot, derivative transactions, loans, etc., has offline order relay for on-chain settlement, and allocates fees proportional to contract usage to developers.
Encrypted quantitative trading company Folkvang
Folkvang is headquartered in Hong Kong’s new quantitative trading and liquidity provider, the company and the Alameda Research is encrypted with quantitative trading company specializing in computer trading strategies and algorithms. Alameda Research carried out more than a million dollars to invest in this competition in March this year. Folkvang stated at the time that it would restrict Alameda to prevent the latter from gaining any unfair trading advantage.
Ontology-based DeFi project OIN Finance
OIN Finance is a DeFi project based on Ontology, which aims to build a DeFi ecosystem centered on the Ethereum blockchain. According to the white paper project, OIN cross-link technology can support decentralized chain across asset exchange, its cross-chain architecture is designed to promote the integration of ecological and other public DeFi DeFi ecological chain of the OIN.
Synthetic Asset Agreement Linear Finance
Linear Finance is a DeFi synthetic asset agreement, similar to Synthetix . The project announced this month that it received $1.8 million in private equity financing . Participating institutions include NGC Ventures, Alameda Research, Hashed, CMS Holdings, Genesis Block, Kenetic Capital and other institutions.
In summary point of view, Alameda Research currently projects to invest the majority of the project DeFi or trading areas. In addition, many newly invested projects will be listed and traded on FTX , or there are plans to be listed and traded on the decentralized exchange Serum .
As of press time, Hedget, a decentralized option trading agreement invested by Alameda Research, has become the latest IEO project on the FTX exchange. We can guess that the projects invested by Alameda Research are likely to empower the entire ecosystem through FTX IEO or the newly launched Serum DEX in the future.
In addition, the official attitude towards the aforementioned investment portfolio is also quite worthy of attention. Alameda Research told Lianwen that they did not want to promote its investment portfolio with a focus on investment. They pointed out that because some of the projects Alameda Research only participated in a ” very small amount ” of investment, and also conveyed to the invested project parties ” Investment does not represent the concept of ” endorsement “. The Alameda Research team particularly emphasized that it hopes to remind investors “not to make irrational decisions just because certain projects are Alameda Research’s investment portfolios.”
Meet the traders behind Alameda Research
As we all know, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is also one of the founders of Alameda Research, but if you open the team information on the official website of Alameda Research, it is difficult to define the core team members with various so-called workplace titles. For example, if you open the LinkedIn pages of several key members on the Alameda Research website, you will find that they only hold the position of a simple Trader in Alameda Research. So, who are the “traders” behind Alameda Research?
Caroline Ellison in Alameda Research is a critical core members, she graduated from the Department of Mathematics, Stanford University, have had to work with Sam Bankman-Fried known in Wall Street trading firm Jane Street, then served as stock traders. According to her description in the podcast, after a brief coffee shop meeting with Sam Bankman-Fried in 2018, she decided to quit her job on Wall Street, devote herself to the cryptocurrency industry, and joined Alameda Research.
Caroline Ellison
The Alameda Research website has published the introductions of six team members, most of whom have experience in the field of traditional financial transactions:
- Sam Trabucco and Troy Tsui earlier in quantitative trading company SIG respectively as bond traders and fixed income trader;
- Responsible for OTC business of Ryan Salame had to work in Ernst & Young;
- Nate Parke, who was previously an engineer at UC Berkeley RISE Lab , is currently responsible for the engineering development of Alameda Research.
In addition, it is also worth reviewing the personal experience of Sam Bankman-Fried , Alameda Research’s “most important trader”. Sam Bankman-Fried graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Physics, previously served as the well-known ETF traders on Wall Street trading firm Jane Street, and automatic design of the company’s OTC trading system.
Sam Bankman-Fried
Must say, we were surprised to find the whole FTX team only has about 40 members, compared to other moving the hundreds, or even more than one thousand employees of the exchange or block chain company, we can say the whole team, “small but excellent” .
Alameda Research is more distinctive. The team introduction on the company’s official website is also different from the corporate system established by traditional companies. Alameda Research does not highlight the so-called workplace identity and title. The CEO SBF ranks at the bottom of the team. The introduction of the team members only returns to the pure ” trader ” or ” engineer ” status, and each performs its own duties, preferring openness and equality The corporate culture is also evident.
However, this lean, compact and magical team is to the center of the financial world to break new soil, is affecting the future direction of this new world. Their actions cannot be ignored.
