Alameda CEO: Binance to Sell Rest of FTX Token Holdings

The CEO of Alameda offered to purchase Binance’s FTT tokens at $22 each.

In response to a CoinDesk exclusive concerning trading business Alameda Research’s balance sheet, Binance’s CEO tweeted on Sunday that he would sell the remaining FTT tokens he acquired as part of his withdrawal from Alameda sister firm FTX last year.

As part of the cryptocurrency exchange’s withdrawal from FTX equity last year, Binance earned around $2.1 billion in the form of BUSD (Binance’s stablecoin) and FTT. However, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao did not disclose how much FTT his company would sell.

As part of Binance’s exit from FTX equity last year, Binance received roughly $2.1 billion USD equivalent in cash (BUSD and FTT). Due to recent revelations that have came to light, we have decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on our books. 1/4

— CZ ? BNB (@cz_binance) November 6, 2022

The CEO of Alameda, meantime, claimed that her trading firm’s financial position is better than the balance sheet CoinDesk published. In response to the Binance CEO’s statement, she also offered to purchase his company’s FTT tokens for $22 apiece.

@cz_binance if you're looking to minimize the market impact on your FTT sales, Alameda will happily buy it all from you today at $22!

— Caroline (@carolinecapital) November 6, 2022

Speculation around the FTT token caused considerable price volatility during the Twitter exchange.

In his initial tweet, CZ said Binance’s sale would be executed in a way that “minimises market impact” and could take “a few months to complete.”

Saturday afternoon, Blockchain researcher Etherscan revealed an address transferring 23 million FTT (valued roughly $530 million) to a Binance exchange wallet.

?⚠️ Transfer $583M worth of $FTX Token from 0x04b4 to 0x28c6 on Ethereum ?https://t.co/zwjwAFxdlu

— DeFi Sniper (@DefiSniper) November 5, 2022

According to CoinMarketCap, the price of FTT decreased 14% over the last 24 hours to $22.02, its lowest price since June. At the time of publication, the price of FTT rose to $23.03.

CZ’s revelation follows speculations over the financial health of Sam Bankman-Fried’s business, Alameda Research, after a leaked balance sheet examined by CoinDesk suggested the firm possessed $5.8 billion of FTT tokens (including FTT tokens pledged as collateral) as of June 30. It was disclosed that Alameda has $14.6 billion in assets and $8 billion in liabilities, including $7.4 billion in unknown loans.

Caroline Ellison, the chief executive officer of Alameda Research, replied to the claims on Saturday by tweeting that Alameda has over $10 billion in assets “not shown” on the stolen balance sheet. Ellison noted that Alameda had in place concealed hedges and had repaid the majority of its outstanding debts.

CZ said that the selling of Binance’s FTT holdings should not be viewed as an attack on a rival exchange.

“We typically hold tokens for the long term. And we have held on to this token for this long,” tweeted CZ. “We stay transparent with our actions.”