Solana, FTT Bounce Hard on Binance Buyout — Then Crash Harder

Sam Bankman-Fried’s Twitter account has posted a thread claiming that Binance has bought FTX, the exchange that he had built into a global crypto titan.

FTX’s native token, FTT, is soaring following disclosure of the alleged impending Binance buyout, and has recovered from a low of $14.57 to over $19 — a 36% recovery. FTT went on to crash to below $10, down nearly 60% on the day as of 1:30 pm, ET.

Solana’s native asset, also heavily backed by Bankman-Fried, had recovered 22% from its local low of $24.77 posted earlier today. The token had fallen up to 30% throughout the public feud, which had mostly played out via Twitter. It’s now hovering back around those lows.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao tweeted about the deal, noting that, “This afternoon, FTX asked for our help.”

“There is a significant liquidity crunch. To protect users, we signed a non-binding LOI, intending to fully acquire FTX.com and help cover the liquidity crunch. We will be conducting a full DD in the coming days,” Zhao said.

Bitcoin and ether are both recovering fast since a precipitous drop on Saturday night — when Zhao declared Binance would soon dump hundreds of millions of dollars in FTX’s native token FTT in response to rumors of Alameda Research’s insolvency.

Despite the neutral name, Alameda Research is Bankman-Fried’s quantitative crypto trading shop, which sometimes doubles as a venture capital firm. 

It’s technically a separate company to crypto exchange FTX, but leaked documents earlier this month suggested the unit maintained considerable exposure to Bankman-Fried-backed tokens FTT and solana.

Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison has said the leaked balance sheet omits some $10 billion in other assets, as well as investment hedges on its long positions cited in the document. 

While crypto markets overall had turned sour since the Binance founder effectively declared war on direct rival Sam Bankman-Fried, cryptocurrencies in the latter’s direct orbit were tanking far worse than the blue chips.

Serum, the native token of the decentralized exchange of the same name co-founded by Bankman-Fried, had lost 9% over the past three days as of 11:15 am ET. Bonfida (FIDA), another token powering Solana’s decentralized market ecosystem, was down 10%. 

Both assets, alongside solana and FTT, were featured in Alameda Research’s leaked balance sheet published last week.

Updated Nov. 8 at 1:18 pm ET.

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