‘FTX Accounts Drainer’ Offloads 50,000 ETH, Entity Uses Ren’s Bitcoin Gateway to Acquire BTC

The ethereum wallet known as the “FTX Accounts Drainer” has started to offload the ethereum it collected this past week after becoming the 27th largest ether address. On Nov. 19, 2022, the wallet held 250,735 ether, but by 7:44 a.m. (ET) on Nov. 20, the “FTX Accounts Drainer” transferred roughly 50,000 ether out of the wallet. By leveraging Ren’s bitcoin gateway, the entity has been swapping out the ethereum in exchange for bitcoin.

The ‘FTX Accounts Drainer’ Entity Wants Bitcoin

The wallet known as “FTX Accounts Drainer” has dropped from the 27th largest ethereum wallet position to the 37th position after unloading roughly 50,000 ether worth around $58.3 million on Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022. The day prior, Bitcoin.com News reported on the wallet becoming the 27th largest ether wallet after it consolidated more than 250,000 ETH.

Onchain analysis indicates that “FTX Accounts Drainer” has sent the 50,000 ethereum through Ren’s bitcoin gateway, a platform that tokenizes bitcoin (BTC) on the Ethereum blockchain. The “FTX Accounts Drainer’s” identity is currently unknown as some believe it’s a malicious entity, others believe it’s a former FTX executive, and some people believe it may be a white hat hacker.

The entity’s other address, which holds over 100 ERC20 tokens, has remained untouched for a week now and it’s worth roughly $189 million. Choosing to offload through Ren’s bitcoin gateway indicates that the user wants to get bitcoin in exchange for the ether. Using Ren instead of swapping into WBTC was likely chosen because WBTC is managed by Bitgo.

The Renvm protocol is more decentralized as it can mint tokens that represent non-Ethereum-based cryptocurrencies. While tokenized BTC products like WBTC are popular, RENBTC is a lot less liquid in comparison.

What do you think about the “FTX Accounts Drainer” offloading ethereum for bitcoin using Ren’s bitcoin gateway? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.