The crypto community kickstarted this week with quite some drama. The executives of two prominent crypto exchanges FTX and Binance were seen exchanging words on Twitter. Amidst all of this, FTT, a token formulated by the crypto exchange FTX was seen plummeting over the last hour.
As per data from CoinMarketCap, FTT was trading for $17.88, at press time. The asset plummeted from a high of $23.15 after enduring a 20.65 percent daily drop.
This sell-off may have been sparked by a recent argument between Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX and Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance. The former asserted during a Twitter argument that Binance will shortly sell its FTT holdings. CZ elaborated on the rationale for this action by drawing attention to Alameda Research’s balance sheet and claiming that “recent revelations” had compelled the exchange to act in this way.
CZ further revealed that Binance would liquidate its $500 million FTX position.
It was then brought to light that a whopping 22,999,999 FTT had been transferred from an unknown wallet to Binance. CZ further affirmed that it was a part of the liquidation process.
Following the aforeseen exchange, for the benefit of the sector, SBF pushed Binance to work with FTX. The CEO of Alameda, Caroline Ellison, then made the offer to buy Binnace’s FTT holdings for $22 per token.
Earlier today, CZ clarified that this exchange with SBF wasn’t a fight. Denying rumors about how he had “orchestrated this whole thing” he said,
“Everyone wants more transparency in our industry, right? My tweets were simple. There were questions about a large ($580m) FTT deposit to Binance, and we were transparent about the fact that we are closing our FTT position.”
Here’s how much FTT was liquidated
According to data curated by CoinGlass, there were over $2 million in FTT long positions that had been liquidated. This was done over the last 12 hours.
At press time, FTT liquidations were at $3.86 million over the last 24 hours. In addition to this, there was a whopping $200 million in open interest for FTT.