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Axie Infinity developers accused of insider trading in cryptocurrency after hacker attack on the game
YouTube blogger Asobs accused Axie Infinity developers of insider trading in cryptocurrencies after a hacker attack on the game — Sky Mavis representatives denied the accusation.
As it became known, the YouTuber published a video in which he accused Trung Nguyen and other founders of Sky Mavis of insider trading in AXS tokens. According to Asobs, after the hacker attack on the Ronin sidechain and before the public announcement of the large-scale incident, 48,838 AXS (more than $ 3.2 million at the time) were transferred from Nguyen’s cryptocurrency wallet to Binance. According to the YouTuber, other addresses identified by Asobs as Sky Mavis employees also made large transactions during this period.
Sky Mavis CEO Trung Nguyen called Asobs' accusations «baseless and false.» As Sky Mavis spokesperson Kali Moore explained, the address from which the 48,838 AXS transfer was made is indeed controlled by Trung Nguyen. According to Moore, the Sky Mavis CEO wanted to strengthen the company’s liquidity amid the impending crisis and was forced to execute the transaction in a «non-obvious way for the market».
As a reminder, a hacker attack on the Ronin sidechain was carried out back in March. Back then, the attackers used an exploit that affected Sky Mavis validator nodes. The company suffered losses of 173,600 ETH and $ 25.5 million — 1/3 of the stolen assets belonged to the company, but more than 100,000 ETH were gaming assets. However, immediately after the attack, users were promised a full refund. Also, it has recently become known that hackers were able to steal funds thanks to spyware downloaded by one of Axie Infinity’s developers.