Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX token falls more than 20% amid Binance feud
Crypto exchange FTX’s native token, FTT, fell more than 20% in afternoon trading in Asia amid reports rival exchange Binance is selling off its holdings of the token.
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Fast facts
FTT fell more than 23% percent over 24 hours to trade at around US$17, according to data from CoinMarketCap, with most of the plunge happening in Asia afternoon trading.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of the rival exchange Binance, tweeted on Sunday that his firm would sell its FTT, due to “recent revelations” about the FTX exchange token.
Last week, crypto media outlet CoinDesk reported that a balance sheet of FTX’s sister company Almeda Research showed a majority holding of FTT. The leak led to speculation that the company might have solvency issues.
Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison tweeted that the company would happily buy Binance’s FTT tokens for US$22 each on Sunday.
A Monday tweet from FTX’s official Twitter account also suggested users were suffering from a backlog in withdrawals.
Over US$376 million worth of stablecoins have been withdrawn from FTX in the last seven days, as of press time, according to crypto data analytics firm Nansen
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