The token of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX is enjoying a bullish push in price as it climbed up by over 90% in the last 24 hours.
$FTT is currently changing hands for $2.36, which is significantly up from its previous price range that was around $1.38. This happened as the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), Chair Gary Gensler, gave a nod to a rebooted FTX as long as it’s done “within the law”.
He expressed this in the seventh annual DC Fintech Week of 2023. Gensler reportedly was open to a revived FTX under new leadership which would have a clear grasp and understanding of the law.
The SEC chair addressed this while referring to reports of former president of the New York Stock Exchange, Tom Farley, contending to buy the now-bankrupt crypto exchange.
As per previous reports, Farley is among a short list of three bidders vying to get a hold of FTX. He is doing this through his newly-launched digital asset exchange called Bullish, which is one of the final contenders in the bankruptcy auction.
Gensler commented on this saying: “If Tom or anybody else wanted to be in this field, I would say, do it within the law. Build the trust of investors in what you’re doing and ensure that you’re doing the proper disclosures — and also that you’re not commingling all these functions, trading against your customers. Or using their crypto assets for your own purposes.”
According to Wall Street Journal, the other two contenders in line are fintech startup Figure Technologies and cryptocurrency venture capital firm Proof Group.
Will a rebooted FTX succeed?
After a long trial that lasted for over five weeks, the New York jury found Sam Bankman-Fried guilty on all seven counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud related to his defunct-crypto exchange FTX.
In the case, the prosecutors successfully managed to prove that the FTX founder looted around $8 billion from the exchange’s users to exploit in a variety of purchases and investments, including real estate, sports sponsorships and venture investments.
Recently, 117 Partners Founder, Thomas Braziel, expressed his doubts on whether a rejuvenated FTX would ever succeed. “It’s a head fake, $FTT is a zero, no buyer of the assets or relaunch partner is going to use or include FTT”, said Braziel.
Back in January, John J. Ray III, who was appointed the CEO of FTX in the aftermath of its November 2022 collapse, had suggested the idea of restarting the defunct exchange. He commented saying that “if there is a path forward on that, then we will not only explore that, we’ll do it”.
Ray has also reportedly established a task force to investigate the possibility of relaunching FTX.com, which is the primary international exchange operated by the company.
Talking about the close links that FTX had with its sister hedge fund Alameda Research, which led to the funneling of customer money from one to the other, Gensler said:
“We would never let the New York Stock Exchange also operate a hedge fund and trade against their members or trade against customers in the market.”
According to him, the existing securities laws are “very robust and strong.” They just need to be enforced as there stood no need to bring in new rules to regulate the industry.
“There’s nothing about crypto that’s incompatible with securities laws”, said the SEC chair. “You’ve got just a lot of worldwide actors that are currently not complying with these time-tested laws.”
