FTX Revival Plans Under Consideration

According to the latest court filing, the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX is considering a reboot plan. The filing, which was made on May 22, highlighted the work done by new CEO John Ray during the Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The review report mentioned a series of activities undertaken by Ray to ensure the debtor’s best interests. However, the mention of rebooting FTX caught the crypto community’s attention.

Ray first talked about rebooting the troubled crypto exchange in January. At the time, news reports suggested that the bankrupt crypto exchange had discovered $5.5 billion in liquid assets, with the new CEO working with creditors on a revival plan. In April, another report suggested the exchange had recovered $7.3 billion in assets, and the FTX team plans to restart the exchange by the second quarter of 2024.

The latest court filing document suggests a reboot plan is definitely under consideration. The court document highlighted that the new CEO had scheduled a series of meetings with creditors and debtors in the past month. Some key topics of the meetings involved planning for structuring the exchange, reviewing plans for restarting the exchange, and finalizing the material required for rebooting the crypto exchange as FTX 2.0. According to the document, it appears FTX will be entering a bidding process.

The news about the FTX reboot also boosted the price of the native FTX Token FTT, which jumped by over 13% as news about the relaunch became public.

It remains to be seen whether FTX will be able to successfully reboot, as well as how the US Congress will react. While I welcome competition in this arena for centralized exchanges, there can be no repeat of the first FTX debacle.