Fetch.ai CEO Offers $250,000 Bounty Amid Allegations of Multi-Million Dollar Token Misappropriation
The ongoing dispute between Fetch.ai CEO Humayun Sheikh and the Ocean Protocol Foundation has taken a dramatic turn, with Sheikh posting a $250,000 bounty for information related to an alleged misappropriation of multi-million dollar tokens. This move comes after Sheikh claimed that an Ocean Protocol-related team wallet misappropriated approximately 286 million Fetch.ai (FET) tokens, valued at around $80 million as of press time.
A multisignature or multisig wallet is a cryptocurrency wallet that requires multiple signatures to execute and process a transaction. The $250,000 bounty offer is for information about the signatories of OceanDAO’s multi-signature wallet and their connection to the Ocean Protocol Foundation. Sheikh made the offer in an X post on Tuesday, seeking to uncover more details about the alleged misappropriation.
Background on the Allegations
The allegations of token misappropriation stem from the 2024 merger of the Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) Alliance, which united Fetch.ai, Ocean Protocol, and SingularityNet into a common token framework. According to Sheikh, prior to the merger, Ocean Protocol minted and transferred millions of OCEAN tokens and converted them into FET tokens before transferring them to centralized exchanges without the required disclosures.
The feud between Sheikh and the Ocean Protocol Foundation has escalated into legal threats, with Sheikh pledging to fund class action lawsuits in three or more jurisdictions and calling on Binance, GSR, and ExaGroup to investigate. The Binance exchange announced on Thursday that it would end support for OCEAN token deposits, although it did not cite the dispute as a reason for the decision.
Impact on the Market
The escalating dispute has also impacted the price of the FET token, which fell 9% in the last 24 hours and was trading at $0.25 as of 8:47 p.m. UTC, according to data from Cointelegraph. The price drop is a significant concern for investors, who are closely watching the developments in the dispute.
Ocean Protocol has denied the allegations, but on-chain data suggests that a multi-signature wallet linked to Ocean Protocol converted approximately 661 million Ocean tokens into 286 million FET coins, according to blockchain data platform Bubblemaps. This has raised concerns about the transparency and accountability of the Ocean Protocol Foundation.
LATEST Developments
According to Bubblemaps, Ocean Protocol has moved $120 million worth of FET tokens to Binance and OTC provider. This includes 160 million FET tokens transferred to Binance and 109 million transferred to GSR Markets. The transfers have sparked concerns about the potential for market manipulation and the impact on the price of FET tokens.
Ocean Protocol withdrew from the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance on October 9 without mentioning the token transfers. The Protocol has denied the allegations and said it would prepare a formal response to the “various unfounded allegations.” The dispute is ongoing, with both parties presenting different versions of events.
For more information on this developing story, please visit https://cointelegraph.com/news/ocean-protocol-250k-bounty-120m-crypto-dump-allegations?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss_tag_blockchain&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound
