Is SBF, Ryoshi? Coinbase Director Draws Links Between Shiba Inu Creator and Alameda

An OpenSea account connected to a wallet linked with Ryoshi shares the same name with SBF’s trading firm Alameda Research.

Coinbase Director of Project Strategy & Business Operations Conor Grogan has drawn links between Ryoshi, the anonymous Shiba Inu creator and Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research. 

Grogan did this in a Twitter thread yesterday, showing that a Bitkub deposit address used by Ryoshi was linked with an OpenSea account named “ALAMEDA.” As highlighted by Grogan, Ryoshi used the deposit address twice in 2020 and 2021. As explained by the Coinbase director, Bitkub does not change deposit addresses, a fact that the crypto creator may not have been aware of.

A wallet directly connected to the founder of Shiba Inu (via exchange deposit) has an… interesting Opensea account name pic.twitter.com/pq6koANFMu

— Conor (@jconorgrogan) March 6, 2023

Additionally, Grogan pointed out that the OpenSea account minted an SBF-inspired NFT. Meme Ltd. created the “SBF Legendary” collection in September 2020. It has only ten pieces, with eight owners at the time of writing. It is listed for 25 ETH, a little over $39,000 at current rates.

The Coinbase executive, who occasionally shares interesting blockchain data, disclosed that it is unclear why Ryoshi would take Alameda’s OpenSea handle in 2020, suggesting perhaps the SHIB creator was holding on to it for memes.

Meanwhile, it is not the first time Grogan has drawn links between the popular doggy-themed meme coin and Alameda. In a thread last month, the Coinbase director shared data that indicated that Alameda, at the time the largest SHIB farmer, likely formed the top of the last bull run for the meme coin by dumping it just as FTX expanded SHIB perpetual trading. 

Unsurprisingly, Grogan’s latest findings have led to speculation that SBF is Ryoshi. In response, some Shiba Inu community members have turned to @LucieSHIB, a popular community influencer and Shytoshi Kusama, the volunteer project lead, for responses. At the time of writing, both are yet to respond. 

It is worth noting that Ryoshi, following in the footsteps of Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous Bitcoin creator, disappeared from the scene in May 2021. Despite this, the community continues to follow Ryoshi’s vision for the project, an example being Shibarium, a proposed Ethereum Layer 2 protocol, which Kusama maintains will launch soon.