John Ray, the new Chief Executive Officer of the defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, met with a reporter from the Wall Street Journal on January 19 to explore possible strategies for resurrecting the business.
During the interview, it was disclosed that Ray has assembled a specialized group of industry professionals to look into the possibility of relaunching FTX.com, which is the principal international exchange that FTX owns.
Ray, who took over as CEO in November, is certain in his conviction that the company can make a return, and he is now implementing measures to increase the likelihood of this happening.
The CEO also said to the Journal that he would investigate whether or not restarting FTX’s international exchange would recover more value for the company’s clients than he and his team could receive from merely liquidating assets or selling the platform.
FTX token surges following the news and SBF replies
After the news broke, there was a precipitous rise in the price of the FTX token, also known as FTT. The value of the token as of the time this article was published has increased by thirty percent in the last twenty-four hours.
Sam Bankman-Fried, often known as “SBF,” who established and was responsible for driving the company into bankruptcy, responded to the news.
After many months of stifling such attempts, he said he is relieved that Ray is now giving some lip service to the idea of turning the exchange back on. And apparently:
I’m still waiting for him to finally admit FTX US is solvent and give customers their money back.
Sam Bankman-Fried
Notably, this is not the first time that people have suggested that FTX may be receiving a fresh start in the form of a reboot. Only a week ago, lawyers for the FTX creditor committee warned that publicizing the identities of the exchange’s 9 million clients might be detrimental to any future efforts to resuscitate the business.
After a bank run on the exchange in November, which compelled the business to confess that it did not have one-to-one reserves of client funds, FTX was forced to declare bankruptcy and shut down. Because of the flaw, the exchange was unable to fulfill the withdrawal requests made by its customers.
It is alleged that Bankman-Fried stole billions of dollars from the consumers of the exchange in order to cover debts accumulated by Alameda Research, the cryptocurrency-focused hedge fund that he manages.
He is facing allegations of fraud, although he has entered a not-guilty plea to the allegations against him, and his trial is scheduled to take place in October of this year.
His closest friends and acquaintances have pled guilty and are actively helping the government’s investigation.
