FTX: Will the crypto exchange reopen?

On November 11, 2022, after a brief but violent simmering in the rumor mill, the sad certainty prevailed: The crypto exchange FTX around the dazzling CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is insolvent. This was preceded by a look at the balance sheets of Alameda Research on November 2nd. A cinematic spat ensued among the giants of the crypto market. Changpeng Zhao, head of the world’s largest crypto exchange Binance, resigned via Twitter according to the research of Coindesk announced their intention to liquidate Binance’s position in FTT tokens. This threatened the risk that the FTT price could collapse from around USD 22 at the time to as much as USD 3 – which is what happened. And drove both FTX and Alameda Research into bankruptcy.

In the course of the unfolding events, many FTX customers were still trying to withdraw their assets from the fourth-largest crypto exchange at the time. The “CZ”, who was just considered an adversary, suddenly appeared as a rescuer. He announcedthat a possible takeover of FTX is being examined. But even for Binance, the liquidity gap was too big.

FTX crash: One of the biggest scandals in crypto space

But the real scandal only unfolded after the bankruptcy. The FTX team led by Sam Bankman-Fried had achieved historic things. Both in terms of the amount of damage and the extent of the sloppiness and alleged misappropriation of customer funds. The current loss for affected customers is in the billions. Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial is set for October 2023. Up to 115 years in prison are threatened.

But now there is hope for all the injured parties who were no longer able to secure their assets from FTX in good time: as part of the insolvency proceedings 7.3 billion USD to be recovered and a reopening of the crypto exchange is being considered. The second quarter of 2024 is under discussion. The price of the FTT token immediately responded to this news with an increase of more than 100 percent. It shot up to over $2.80.

So we asked you if you think it’s likely that FTX will reopen. The possible answers were:

• Yes!
• No!
• Perhaps.
• I don’t care.

A total of 1,811 votes were cast on our social media channels. And the majority of the participants simply don’t care. 40 percent do not feel affected by this event. Possibly a good sign, they probably didn’t lose any crypto assets in this incident. The voices that assume a reopening and those that rule it out are close together. 25 percent rule out that FTX will open its digital gates again. 22 percent, however, affirm the possibility of reopening. And 13 percent are not entirely sure about “maybe”. In the interests of all crypto investors and traders who have suffered damage, the reopening is of course desirable in the hope that they will recover as much of their assets as possible.