GoldenTree Moves $5M of SUSHI, Sparking Fear It’s Exiting
Much of the asset manager’s Sushi trove was deposited at Binance in the last 24 hours.
Mar 23, 2023 at 4:45 p.m. UTC:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/BTPYDCYZ3FEBVBTRVVBQSMPSX4.jpg)
(DALL-E/CoinDesk)
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GoldenTree Asset Management made waves last year with a $5.2 million bet on decentralized crypto exchange SushiSwap. But the asset manager just moved the majority of its SUSHI token holdings, sparking fears in the Sushi community that it is exiting its position.
At press time, GoldenTree’s crypto wallet held just $1 million in SUSHI tokens, a precipitous drop from its nearly $7 million in exposure earlier this week.
The move comes as Sushi, a decentralized exchange for trading cryptocurrencies on the Ethereum blockchain, faces fresh scrutiny from U.S. regulators. On Tuesday, Sushi’s leader, Head Chef Jared Grey, revealed he and the decentralized autonomous organization were subpoenaed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Grey didn't elaborate on the focus of the apparent investigation but called on the DAO to raise a $3 million legal defense fund.
SUSHI is the governance token for Sushi DAO and gives its holders a voice in how the exchange operates. It was trading at $1.22 immediately before Tuesday’s news but has fallen 11% in the days since and was around $1.08 at press time, according to CoinGecko.
A GoldenTree employee who goes by MarkOKW, who last October announced the firm’s SUSHI investment, didn't immediately comment. Grey declined to comment on GoldenTree’s SUSHI position.
On-chain activity reveals how GoldenTree has shuffled its holding in recent days. The asset manager started the week with xSUSHI tokens worth over $7 million. Then on Wednesday, it swapped 4.4 million of those tokens for 5.95 million SUSHI tokens that it had staked with Sushi. CoinDesk identified the wallets using Nansen.
On Wednesday night and Thursday morning, it sent two batches of tokens valued at $5.4 million total to an address controlled by crypto trading desk Cumberland. Cumberland sent the first half to a Binance deposit address Wednesday night; the other half hadn't moved out of Cumberland’s wallet at press time.
Members of SUSHI’s Discord server speculated the on-chain activity indicated GoldenTree had already sold its position.
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Danny is CoinDesk's Managing Editor for Data & Tokens. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL.