Bankrupt FTX’s native token FTT surged more than 10% after court filings showed CEO John J. Ray III has considered a restart plan for the failed exchange.
FTX restart
According to a May 22 court filing, Ray’s billing report for April highlighted several activities he performed toward a possible restart of the platform.
According to the filing, Ray spent roughly seven hours on activities related to the exchange restart in April and billed more than $8,000.
While no restart plan has been formally instituted, Ray hinted that he might consider this path in January. At the time, he created a task force to investigate the possibility of relaunching FTX.com.
Speculations about a restart were further heightened when FTX postponed the potential sale process for its Japanese subsidiary to explore its reopening.
Additionally, venture capital firm Tribe Capital expressed interest in leading a $250 million fundraising campaign for the bankrupt firm.
Community debates a possible restart
A Twitter account advocating for the reboot of the exchange—FTX 2.0 Coalition—claimed restarting the exchange will happen faster than any liquidation efforts. However, they questioned the economics of restarting the exchange, wondering which U.S. institutions would be willing to work with the firm. He added:
“Do you really think the US government is just going to let an offshore & US entity run without any legal action? Who is going to bank the largest fraudulent brand in the entire world?”
FTT up 12%
News of the possible restart has pushed the FTT token up by 12% in the last 24 hours to $1.12353 at the time of writing, according to CryptoSlate’s data.
A crypto enthusiast Blessing Olaoye described the news of a possible restart as another way of pumping the token before dumping it all over again.
The exchange token experienced a heavy sell-off after Binance moved it to its innovation zone on May 10. At the time, the exchange moved the native tokens of other bankrupt firms like Voyager to this classification as well.
