Holpop News

According to the New York Times, Sam Bankman-Fried used his influence in the crypto industry to inflate the price of some coins through a coordinated strategy with Alameda Research.
To keep FTX and its subsidiaries profitable, Bankman-Fried approached project developers, insisting that they initially start trading on FTX.
The market maker Alameda Research would then come into play and buy back the coins to raise their value.
Such pump-and-dump scams were done with Serum, Maps, FTT, etc. coins. Some of these coins have been used as collateral for loans to Alameda.
For example, in March 2021, Alameda agreed to buy up to $80 million worth of Reef Finance tokens.
Alameda did not sign a legal contract for the deal, instead asking the team to work on a trust basis.
After the deal was announced, Reef’s price skyrocketed. However, shortly after Reef shipped the first $20 million worth of Alameda tokens, the company simply transferred them to the Binance exchange to sell.
“We couldn’t understand why Alameda, our long-term strategic investor, got rid of its tokens. This action hurt retail investors and should be a cautionary tale,” Reef developers wrote in 2021.