Picture this, it’s late 2020, and a big chunk of Solana tokens, let’s call it about 190,000 SOL, worth a mere $350,000 back then, gets locked away in cold storage by Alameda Research.
Fast forward nearly five years, and those same tokens are now a whopping $35.5 million. That’s a hundredfold jump. And guess what? Alameda just unstaked those bad boys.
FTX repayments
Why does this matter? Well, Alameda’s move to unlock $35 million worth of Solana is stirring up speculation, cue the dramatic music, about whether this cash might finally be funneled back to creditors.
Or a sell-off is coming, but that’s unlikely. You remember the whole FTX sh*tshow, the empire that stumbled hard in 2022 after Sam Bankman-Fried’s oh-so-public fall from grace?
Since then, the new management’s been scrambling to pay back $6.2 billion, with a third major payout scheduled for September.
Claims for that round close August 15, and the total repayments could hit up to $16.5 billion, depending on the market mood.
Yield revenue
Now, just a week before Alameda took out their Solana stash, both FTX and Alameda cold wallets had strategically staked a combined $125 million in Ethereum and Solana.
Alameda funneled $80 million worth of ETH into Figment around July 30, big moves in a high-stakes game.
IS ALAMEDA RESEARCH ABOUT TO DISTRIBUTE $35M OF SOL?
An Alameda Research staking account just unstaked $35M of SOL that had been staked in late 2020. It was then worth $350K – up 100x since it was initially staked.
Will this be finally returned to creditors? pic.twitter.com/g3ehbfbw92
— Arkham (@arkham) August 11, 2025
This unstaking action seems like a pivot, maybe a shuffle of priorities, as these bankrupt firms figure out how to manage their crypto leftovers in the cat-and-mouse game of bankruptcies and creditor repayments.
Some crypto sharpies argue that Alameda and friends should keep these tokens staked. Why? Because staking means yield, that’s why.
Take the money, put it to work. Return it now, and you might sacrifice some future gains.
Yet, with legal deadlines looming like a bad storm on the horizon, unstaking looks like it’s tied directly to getting cash back into creditor hands pronto.
Payday for creditors?
The drama’s thick. Will those $35 million in Solana serve as the big payday for creditors, or just another chess move in Alameda’s story?
The FTX fallout keeps shaking the crypto community. Like a real mob boss story, it’s got betrayal, big stakes, and a tense countdown to the next move.
So yeah, for the everyday Joe watching from the sidelines, maybe in the office cubicle or during a watercooler chat, this is the kind of cliffhanger that could change the game.
The real question is how?
Cryptocurrency and Web3 expert, founder of Kriptoworld
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With years of experience covering the blockchain space, András delivers insightful reporting on DeFi, tokenization, altcoins, and crypto regulations shaping the digital economy.
