protos.com
The slogan for Arkham Intelligence is ‘Deanonymizing the Blockchain’ — providing public access to real names associated with crypto wallets. On its social media, the company periodically doxxes blockchain wallets, naming sales and holdings by individuals like Donald Trump or companies like Tesla, NYDIG, Marathon, or ETF sponsors.
Last week, however, Arkham moved millions of dollars worth of its proprietary token ARKM into a number of third-party wallets — a move that will make it difficult to trace those tokens’ ownership and sale on the blockchain.
On July 17, Arkham admitted that it intended to move ARKM to ‘an intermediary address.’ Later, that wallet would transfer tokens to ‘Coinbase Custody addresses.’
Coinbase Custody is ‘directly integrated’ with Coinbase’s over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk. Moreover, price and trade confirmations inside Coinbase Custody may occur before moving funds. Although funds held at Coinbase Custody are typically segregated, it’s unclear whether the Coinbase suite of services permits trading via omnibus wallets or otherwise pooled funds.
These ARKM tokens belong to “some employees” Arkham said, without further clarification — further frustrating its claims of transparency.
‘Core Contributors’ own 200 million ARKM and Arkham’s ‘Foundation Treasury’ owns 172 million ARKM. Core Contributors’ allocation began unlocking on July 18 linearly over three years. Foundation Treasury allocation began unlocking a year ago and will continue to unlock for six more years.
Read more: Arkham Intelligence, Reserve, and the Leverage Research ‘cult’
Will Coinbase Custody veil sales of Arkham tokens?
The CEO of a competitor tweeted skepticism regarding Arkham’s transparency. In an effort to promote his own service, he claimed Arkham was being hypocritical by operating an on-chain tracking service while moving ARKM into Coinbase Custody for eventual disbursement or sale.
To be clear, moving ARKM tokens into Coinbase Custody to manage vesting schedules and ultimate distributions or sales by ‘some employees’ is not necessarily an evasive or non-transparent act. Arkham promises that all sales of employees’ allocations of ARKM “will be subject to compliance and transaction monitoring.” Moreover, tokens’ vesting schedule will not change from Arkham’s original tokenomics promise.
Protos reached out to Arkham for comment but had not received a response by press time.