Axie Infinity CEO Trung Nguyen dismisses accusations of Ronin Hack-related insider trading

Months after the attack on the Ronin Network, it was reported by Bloomberg that Trung Nguyen, the co-founder and CEO of the video game Axie Infinity, moved $3 million worth of AXS, the game’s native token, to the major cryptocurrency exchange platform Binance hours before the hacking incident was made public.

Nguyen recently acknowledged transferring $3 million worth of AXS to “ensure that short-sellers would not be able to front-run the news” but asserted that the allegations of insider trading against him are “baseless and false.”

As many of you know, I prefer to operate behind the scenes, but there is a story that dropped today that I want to address with the community, personally.

— trungfinity.ron (@trungfinity) July 28, 2022

Notably, in March 2022, the Ethereum sidechain for Axie Infinity, Ronin Bridge, faced one of the largest crypto hacks ever, with attackers breaching its security to steal over 173,000 Ethereum units, worth more than $600 million at the time.

The high-profile hack shook the entire crypto industry, which resulted in the major involvement of regulatory bodies worldwide. The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned crypto mixer Blender.io for its alleged role in Ronin Bridge hack, as TheCoinRise reported.

The Axie Infinity team committed to refunding impacted customers despite the multi-million dollar theft. In June 2022, Ronin Bridge resumed its operations with all user funds returned, as we reported.

Axie Infinity CEO is proud of his actions

Dismissing the accusations of insider trading, Axie Infinity CEO posted a thread of tweets that said that, indeed the $3 million trader occurred, but his goal was to stop AXS short sellers from front-running the news.

Nguyen further revealed that in order to lessen the disruption brought on by the breach, the Founding Team even transferred $7.5 million from an Axie multi-sig wallet to Ronin Network.

The executive then indicated that this news did not “fit the predetermined narratives” of some media outlets and expressed his pride in the fact that operations have been resumed and all victims have regained their lost funds. He stated:

“My life’s work is Axie Infinity and the community we’ve created together. I take ownership of the security breach and will use it as a learning experience.”