Wallets tied to the bankruptcy estate of the defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its affiliated trading firm Alameda Research have moved 27,372 Ether (ETH), valued at roughly $75.32 million, to algorithmic market maker Wintermute across six separate wallets.
On-chain monitors indicate the transaction pattern points to an entrusted or over-the-counter (OTC) sale rather than a direct deposit on a centralized exchange (CEX) such as Binance or Coinbase.
Blockchain security firm PeckShield first flagged the flow at 02:03 UTC on September 23, 2026, reporting that an address labelled as belonging to Alameda Research and the FTX bankruptcy estate had transferred 23,639 ETH, worth about $65 million, to a Wintermute-tagged wallet.
Explorer records show the single largest leg of the transfer settled at 20:54:59 UTC on September 22, 2026, and was included in block 26,035,546. The confirmed transaction moved 23,639.225 ETH, valued at $64,980,921 at a reference price of $2,753.25 per ETH, and was executed through the sendMultiSig function. The destination address is labeled Wintermute 5 (0xF02e86D9…17fE0713).
On-chain analyst EmberCN, also known as Yu Jin, reported separately that the estate’s liquidation team routed a combined 27,372 ETH, or roughly $75.32 million, to Wintermute through six wallets, and pointed to the Arkham-tagged address 0xCe84449A8Ebec019AC110a4b6662E55d0fD9f228 as the receiving cluster. In the same post, EmberCN described the movement as the estate “commissioning” the market maker to sell.
Blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain identified the 23,639 ETH deposit as originating from the Alameda Research (FTX Bankruptcy Estate) entity, stating that the estate had “deposited 23,639 ETH ($65.05M) into Wintermute 4 hours ago to sell.”
A Shift in Sell-Side Routing
The direction of these ETH flows toward Wintermute marks a change in execution path, not a change in seller. In earlier rounds of estate liquidation, the same cluster of wallets moved assets directly onto Binance and Coinbase.
The wallet cluster previously transferred about $59 million in assets in October 2023, deposited ETH to Coinbase and Binance in February 2024, and liquidated nearly $100 million in May 2024. Related seized wallets tied to the same case were emptied by the United States government in July 2026, following on from the ongoing movement of forfeited FTX and Alameda tokens through Coinbase Prime reported earlier in the year.
Routing through a market maker such as Wintermute is generally regarded as a quieter execution path. OTC sales or delegated execution reduce visible impact on public order books at centralized exchanges and lower the risk of being front-run.
Wintermute has already been active on the sell side of Ether this month. On September 11, 2026, The Crypto Times reported that the firm moved 61,847 ETH, worth approximately $160.3 million, onto Binance and Coinbase as Ether rejected the $2,667 resistance level. That flow was first flagged by Lookonchain and verified through blockchain intelligence firm Arkham.
The FTX estate has transacted with Wintermute in previous cycles as well. On May 6, 2024, FTX and Alameda-labelled wallets sent approximately 2,000 ETH, worth about $6.3 million, along with 860 Tether Gold (XAUT), worth roughly $2 million, to Wintermute in a combined $8.3 million transfer that was first flagged by PeckShield.
Context Within the FTX Wind-Down
FTX and Alameda Research filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States on November 11, 2022, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, under case number 22-11068, after customer funds were reportedly used within Alameda’s trading operations. The estate has since carried out a multi-year asset recovery and creditor repayment program under the FTX Recovery Trust.
The July 2026 creditor distribution alone amounted to approximately $900 million, with several creditor classes now receiving payouts at or above 100% of the value of their claims as measured on the November 2022 petition date. The estate has also previously routed unstaked Solana (SOL) to distribution-linked wallets as part of the same broader wind-down. Residual token holdings are being sold into market strength rather than in a first liquidation.
What the Transfer Does Not Confirm
A deposit to Wintermute does not automatically translate into an immediate open-market sale. The Ether received can remain in Wintermute’s inventory, be hedged against derivatives exposure, or be worked off over hours or days, in line with the firm’s role as a two-sided liquidity provider. At the time of the on-chain alerts, no public statement from the FTX Recovery Trust had confirmed this specific batch.
For the market, the observable position is straightforward. Following a rebound in Ether prices, a known forced seller has delivered a $75 million ETH block to one of the largest market makers in the digital asset industry. Any subsequent selling activity will show up in Binance and Coinbase order books over the coming sessions.
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