(Kitco News) – John J. Ray III, the new CEO of FTX who previously handled the restructuring of Enron, surprised crypto enthusiasts during an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Thursday when he said that the embattled exchange could possibly be revived.
“Everything is on the table,” Ray told the Journal while discussing comments from customers who have praised the exchange’s technology and suggested that there would be value in restarting the platform. “If there is a path forward on that, then we will not only explore that, we’ll do it,” he said.
This was Ray’s first interview since taking over FTX in November after the crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy, which sparked a cascade of platform failures and enforcement actions from authorities around the world.
The point of focus in exploring a revival of FTX international will revolve around whether the move would help recover more value for the exchange’s customers than Ray’s team could get by liquidating assets or selling the platform. “There are stakeholders we’re working with who’ve identified what they see is a viable business,” he said.
For now, Mr. Ray’s job is to identify any existing sources of value that could help fill the substantial shortfall of digital assets owed to its users and creditors. Even if the exchange is able to once again offer its services, it’s unclear what level of customer retention it would achieve.
The new FTX head also used the interview to criticize comments that former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) has made to the media and elsewhere, calling them unhelpful and self-serving. “We don’t need to be dialoguing with him,” Ray said. “He hasn’t told us anything that I don’t already know.”
Bankman-Fried has said on multiple occasions that FTX did not need to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and has been critical of Ray’s decisions in handling the bankruptcy. In response to the above comments from Ray, SBF sent a text message to the WSJ saying “This is a shocking and damning comment from someone pretending to care about customers.”
Ray also lambasted how SBF handled operations at the exchange, citing numerous instances of lax record-keeping and questionable multimillion-dollar deals during the good times in the crypto industry.
“Sometimes there were no purchase agreements, or the agreements weren’t signed,” he said. Ray added that the bankers on his team have had to call companies in which FTX invested to discover how much they paid for the stake and what the underlying business is.
At the heart of the issues with how SBF ran FTX was the comingling of funds between the exchange and its sister company, Alameda Research. “This is the problem,” Mr. Ray said. “He thinks everything is one big honey pot.”
The exchange’s native FTX Token (FTT) responded positively to the comments of a possible revival from Ray. Data from TradingView shows that after the WSJ report was released, the price of FTT spiked 49.25%, jumping from $1.76 to an intraday high of $2.64.
FTT/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
FTT has since retraced and now trades near support at $2.36, a gain of 30.45% on the 24-hour chart.
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Read More:FTX CEO Ray says the exchange could be revived, sparking a 50% spike in FTT price
2023-01-19 18:31:00
