Alameda Research moved 198,425 SOL worth approximately $16 million to an FTX bankruptcy distribution wallet, continuing a pattern of monthly unstaking tranches from its remaining $294 million Solana position.
Alameda Research unstaked 198,425 SOL — roughly $16 million at current prices — and transferred the tokens to an address linked to the FTX bankruptcy estate's creditor distribution process, according to on-chain data tracked by Arkham Intelligence on 13 April.
The move is the latest in what has become a predictable monthly rhythm. In mid-March, Alameda performed a near-identical operation, unstaking approximately 197,000 SOL worth $17 million and routing the funds to the same distribution address. Before that, transfers of 192,000 and 196,611 SOL — valued at $45 million and $16 million respectively at the time of each move — followed the same pattern. The estate has now moved more than $1 billion in SOL out of staking contracts and into liquid wallets throughout the bankruptcy process.
Solana barely reacted. The token traded roughly flat on a 24-hour basis around the low-$80 level, which tells you something about how thoroughly the market has priced in these periodic liquidations. When the FTX estate first sold $1 billion in discounted Solana tokens back in April 2024, the market convulsed. Two years on, monthly tranches of $16 million are a rounding error for a token with daily trading volume measured in billions.
Alameda-linked wallets still hold approximately 3.5 million SOL, valued between $294 million and $320 million depending on the day. At the current pace of roughly 200,000 SOL per month, the remaining position would take approximately 17 months to fully unwind — a timeline that stretches into late 2027. Whether the estate accelerates that schedule depends on a combination of court approvals, market conditions, and the ongoing demands of creditor repayment.
The broader repayment picture has improved considerably since the darkest days of the collapse. A New York court ordered FTX and Alameda to repay $12.7 billion in total; $7.6 billion of that has been distributed so far, leaving $5.1 billion outstanding. The bankruptcy plan confirmed in late 2024 initially projected that creditors holding allowed claims under $50,000 would receive their funds first, with larger claimants following in subsequent tranches. That sequencing has broadly held, though the timeline has slipped repeatedly.
The curious detail in the Alameda SOL situation is the staking yield. While the tokens sit in staking contracts awaiting unstaking, they earn rewards — a fact that has not gone unnoticed by creditor committees. The estate has effectively been running a modest staking operation as a side effect of its liquidation strategy, generating returns on assets it plans to sell. Whether those staking rewards accrue to creditors or to the estate's administrative costs has been the subject of at least one motion in the Southern District of New York, though no ruling has been made public.
For Solana's price, the overhang matters less than it once did. The 3.5 million SOL remaining represents roughly 0.6 per cent of Solana's circulating supply — large enough to notice on a cap table, small enough that steady monthly sales at current volumes won't move the market. The token's trajectory depends far more on network activity, developer adoption, and whether institutional products like spot Solana ETFs materialise in the coming months than on Alameda's liquidation schedule.
Sam Bankman-Fried, whose trading firm accumulated the Solana position during the 2020–2021 bull market at prices well below $10, is serving a 25-year federal sentence for fraud and conspiracy. The tokens he bought cheaply have appreciated enormously — even at $80, the remaining stake is worth roughly thirty times what Alameda paid for most of it. That appreciation is, perversely, the main reason creditors stand to recover as much as they have.
