Few, if any of the crypto community's members haven't heard of FTX's legal (and financial) woes.
After crashing so drastically in late 2022 and leaving nearly $10 billion in unpaid fees and customer funds, there may yet be some hope (and some interesting) developments going on with the crypto exchange.
Let's figure out what these developments are:
Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX's former CEO, has been on trial for a while now.
So far, several witnesses have come up to the stands, and have testified that Bankman-Fried was indeed the mastermind of the entire FTX-Alameda scandal that nearly crippled the entire crypto market in November 2022.
This did not seem to stop FTX from trying something though.
Over the past few days, Bitcoin's (and the rest of the market's) performance has been impressive over the last few weeks.
After a prior rally straight up from around $26,000 to $30,000, Bitcoin took one more leg up and broke through $35,000 to the upside, sometime on Tuesday this week.
During this stellar rally from the flagship cryptocurrency, on-chain data shows that FTX has reportedly transferred more than $10 million worth of crypto to Coinbase and Binance.
According to data from Arkham Intelligence and from SpotOnChain, the transfers happened sometime on Wednesday, 25 October.
In detail, Arkham Intelligence shows that this transfer contained 2,904 Ethereum (worth about $5.18 million at current prices), 1,341 Maker tokens (worth about $2.02 million), 198,000 Chainlink tokens (with a value of around $2.26 million), and 12,000 (AAVE tokens totalling approximately $1.03 million).
Interestingly enough, there was no Solana transfer involved.
Despite this, however, one crypto exchange transferring $10 million worth of funds into another was bound to raise suspicion.
Crypto community members have wondered whether these transfers are directly related to FTX's ongoing bankruptcy proceedings in court, the trial of Bankman-Fried, or part of an effort to "raise cash after FTX's collapse".
Notably, FTX has been active in recent months. So far, the exchange recently staked about $150 million worth of Ethereum and Solana earlier this month.
This is without mentioning the plans they recently announced to migrate bridged tokens from various networks to their respective native blockchains.
So far, FTX has not come out with explanations regarding this $10 million transfer.
According to recent reports, FTX is considering relaunching its trading operations.
Kevin Cofsky, an investment banker representing the exchange, has revealed that FTX is actively reviewing proposals from three different entities, on how to relaunch and start offering crypto exchange services to customers.
Reports from Bloomberg state that Cofsky mentioned during a hearing in court, that FTX might either choose to relaunch independently or relaunch through a strategic partnership.
Another possibility too, is that the crypto exchange's management may consider selling it off. However, there may not be a final decision until mid-December.
FTX Exchange has also mentioned a settlement strategy that could see customers receiving over $9 billion of their lost funds by 2024.
Under this plan, FTX will return up to 90% of frozen customer assets. And while the specifics haven't been released yet, customers may now have a ray of hope, as FTX attempts to regain customer trust for a possible relaunch.
According to charts from TradingView, FTT, FTX's native cryptocurrency has been bullish for as long as Bitcoin has.
FTT has come a long way from its $85.7 all-time high. During the FTX implosion last year, the cryptocurrency fell by more than 98% to where it now sits at around $1.
In the 1-hour chart, we can see that FTT has rallied by more than 25% since 18 October, from around $1 to about $1.25.
At the time of writing, FTT is trading atop its 50 and 20-day EMAs and appears to be making consistently higher highs.
As long as FTT doesn't break below $1.15 again, we expect to see more upside as it attempts to reclaim the $1.3 high it last held early this month.
Disclaimer: Voice of Crypto aims to deliver accurate and up-to-date information, but it will not be responsible for any missing facts or inaccurate information. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile financial assets, so research and make your own financial decisions.