Quadriga co-founder Michael Patryn trades UST crash for $760,000 gain

Quick Take

  • Quadriga co-founder and crypto trader Michael Patryn bought the dip when UST lost its peg overnight.
  • He made $760,000 on the trade, according to PeckShield.

Michael Patryn, the co-founder of now-defunct exchange Quadriga CX, took a profitable punt on the stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) as it broke its peg with the dollar yesterday. 

According to transaction analysis by PeckShield, the Ethereum address associated with the ENS name Sifu.eth, which is owned by Patryn, made several UST trades in the last 24 hours — netting him $760,000.

We were unable to contact Patryn for comment.

UST is an algorithmic stablecoin that attempts to remain pegged to the US dollar through its relationship with the token Luna (LUNA). Yet over the last few days, it has lost its peg as large holders have rushed to sell the tokens. The Luna Foundation Guard — a non-profit entity designed to support UST — used its bitcoin reserves in an attempt to shore up the peg. Despite this, however, the token traded as low as $0.61 to the dollar on Monday.

While some were cautious that the token could fall lower, Patryn took the bet that it would return toward parity with the dollar. According to transaction analysis by PeckShield, he swapped $2.8 million of tether (USDT) for 3.88 million UST when it was near its lowest point. 

After that point, the value of UST rose toward the dollar mark — rising as high as $0.94. During this rally, Patryn sold the UST back for $3.56 million of USDT, resulting in a $760,000 profit. He then bridged some of the funds over to the Avalanche blockchain.

Patryn, who formerly went by the name Omar Dhanani, became known in the industry as one of the co-founders of Quadriga when it collapsed and turned out to be largely devoid of its users’ crypto. After that, he became a crypto trader operating under the pseudonym Sifu. 

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Under this name, he co-founded a project called Wonderland — although he was forced to step down after his identity was revealed. 

In the last two years, Patryn claims he has made around $80 million from trading and investing — pointing his Twitter followers to a crypto wallets that has been associated with him. After leaving Wonderland, he transferred significant sums to Tornado Cash, a mixing service designed to obfuscate transactions. This means it is not clear to see where the majority of his funds are now held, although some remained in his public address.

Getting liquidated

The recent crypto market volatility wasn’t all clear sailing for Patryn though. It appears that another of his wallets was liquidated by none other than the Wonderland treasury itself.

According to screenshots shared by pseudonymous Twitter user dcfgod, Wonderland co-founder Daniele Sesta informed the Wonderland community that he had made money for its treasury by liquidating a bunch of crypto addresses. This is a practice where anyone can liquidate a position on a DeFi protocol that has become underwater and get paid for doing so. 

Yet Sifu responded in the same Discord server that he was included in the list of addresses, meaning that at least one of his addresses was liquidated by the very treasury that he used to manage.


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About Author

Tim is the Editor-In-Chief of The Block. Prior to joining The Block, Tim was a news editor at Decrypt. He has earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of York and studied news journalism at Press Association Training. Follow him on X @Timccopeland.