Axie Infinity Boss Denies AXS Trading Accusations Made By "Insiders"

Game play-to-earn berbasis blockchain, Axie Infinity. (Axie Infinity)

JAKARTA – The CEO of play-to-earn gaming company Axie Infinity, Trung Nguyen, has been accused of being involved in insider crypto trading. Nguyenn recently stated that the allegations were "baseless and false."

As is known, in March, Ronin Bridge, the network created for the blockchain game Axie Infinity, became the victim of the biggest hack in the crypto industry. How not, hackers managed to break into 173,000 ETH which is an asset of Axie Infinity. The amount is worth 600 million US dollars (around Rp. 8 trillion).

The theft of crypto assets has become the center of public attention. Meanwhile, the results of an investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimated that the hackers were carried out by a hacker group from North Korea called the Lazarus Group.

Due to the theft, the Axie Infinity team is committed to compensate the affected clients. In June, Ronin Bridge began operating again to refund users who were victims of the hack.

As Ronin and Axie began to emerge from the incident, Bloomberg alleged that Axie Infinity CEO Trung Nguyen was involved in insider trading by moving $3 million worth of AXS tokens to the Binance crypto exchange. The news outlet reports that the move was made hours before the hack.

The CEO of Axie Infinity immediately responded to the allegations. Trung Nguyen stated that the narrative "included insider trading speculation." Commenting on the AXS transfer, Nguyen revealed that the token transfer did occur but was intended to stop AXS short sellers from dumping the token.

He further stated that not only was the AXS token shipment not only that big, but there was also $7.5 million in AXS that was moved from the Axie multi-sig wallet to the Ronin Network. This is intended to relieve the shock caused by the hack.

“My job is to bring Axie Infinity and the community we created together. I take ownership of the security breach and will use it as a learning experience," Nguyen said in a Twitter post.

After the hack, Binance boss Changpeng Zhao informed that his company was found in funds worth 620 million US dollars stolen by a North Korean hacker group. They have transferred the stolen funds by spreading to 86 accounts to trick the trading platform.