Leaked conversation among industry leaders, CZ accuses SBF of shorting USDT, attempting to decouple the stablecoin.

The New York Times exposed over 10 messages from a Signal group of cryptocurrency bigwigs on November 10th, with the main content being Binance founder Zhao Changpeng accusing SBF of shorting USDT in an attempt to detach USDT.

Each to their own

In practice, selling $250,000 USDT on Curve only results in approximately 0.0013% slippage. Even with $25 million, the price difference is only about 0.0073%, and this gap is quickly closed by arbitrage.

An anonymous OTC trader revealed that he had been monitoring the funds on FTX US (when FTX US still allowed withdrawals). He noticed that on November 11, FTX US had only $38,000 in USD reserves, while nearly $50 million remained in USDT. Therefore, it is highly likely that Alameda simply swapped USDT for USDC on November 10.

FTX US holds a combination of stablecoins USDC and BUSD, indicating that the USDC reserves were below $38,000 at that time.

Indeed, as suspected by SBF and CZ, $250,000 hardly affected the stability of USDT.

However, given the prevailing rumors at the time, with concerns about FTX's solvency potentially impacting various crypto companies and causing more fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD), CZ's accusations were not entirely baseless.

In their final exchange, CZ advised SBF to put on a suit, return to Washington DC, and honestly confront all the issues.