FTX’s token is down over 58% in the past 24 hours to roughly $2.28 following news that Binance is backing out from the planned acquisition deal.
“We have decided that we will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX.com,” Binance wrote on Twitter Wednesday afternoon.
As a result of corporate due diligence, as well as the latest news reports regarding mishandled customer funds and alleged US agency investigations, we have decided that we will not pursue the potential acquisition of https://t.co/FQ3MIG381f.
In the turbulent wake of the last few days, FTT is now down a shocking 91% for the week, and is down 97% from its all-time high of $84.18 back in September 2021, according to price data from CoinGecko.
Reports of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) investigating FTX and its dealings are also likely to have spooked investors and contributed to FTT’s continued decline on Wednesday.
Earlier this week, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao wrote on Twitter that FTX was suffering from a “significant liquidity crunch.”
In response, Binance—one of FTX’s earliest backers—offered to acquire FTX in its time of crisis. The news of the possible acquisition made the future of FTX and its FTT token unclear. If Binance had acquired FTX, would FTT lose its utility?
Now, it looks like FTX has bigger problems.
Price of FTT over time. Image: CoinGecko.
On Tuesday, FTT had already fallen 78% from the previous day, plummeting from roughly $22 to under $5.
“In the beginning, our hope was to be able to support FTX’s customers to provide liquidity, but the issues are beyond our control or ability to help,” Binance wrote today on Twitter of its struggling rival. “Every time a major player in an industry fails, retail consumers will suffer.”
Zhao also suggested Wednesday that FTX’s days were numbered in a note to employees he later shared on Twitter.
“FTX going down is not good for anyone in the industry,” Zhao said. “Do not view it as a ‘win for us.’”
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
Crypto dark markets have rebounded weeks after Telegram shut down the world's largest illicit marketplace, with successor platforms processing equal volumes, amounting to roughly $27 billion.
Elliptic reported Monday that Tudou Guarantee marketplace has captured most of the transaction volume from Huione Guarantee, which Telegram banned on May 13 following the blockchain analytics firm's investigation.
The report shows how Huione Guarantee's activity collapsed to zero immediately after May 11,...
The wildest clips from Iran's bombing attacks weren't captured by Pentagon cameras or CNN crews. They were cooked up by Google's AI video maker.
After Iran's missile barrage against Israel earlier in the week, fake AI videos started spreading like a nasty rumor, showing Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion Airport supposedly getting hammered.
The scenes were highly realistic, and though the strikes were real, the videos going viral all over the internet were not, according to forensic firms.
This is the stat...
Midnight Network, a privacy and data protection blockchain with connections to Cardano, will offer NIGHT tokens to users of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and other major networks as part of its launch airdrop.
The protocol revealed its two-token system and “Glacier Drop”—a multi-phase token distribution event—plans in a 45-page tokenomics white paper on Monday.
“Traditional tokenomic models rely on a single token and require users to spend tokens for every transaction, creating economic uncertain...