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

Cryptocurrencies in Bankman-Fried’s orbit were dumping hard until the Binance buyout was announced

article-image

Source: Shutterstock

share

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.

SOL and FTT briefly pumped before tanking considerably

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.


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template.png

Research

RTK networks are critical to enabling a world of ubiquitous autonomous drones, vehicles, and industrial robots. We believe the GEOD token enables both a cost and product advantage for the GEODNET RTK network, which will allow it to out-compete multi-billion dollar incumbents Trimble and Hexagon.

article-image

As EIP-4844 “blobs” transform the economics of Ethereum layer-2s, a growing debate pits long-term scalability against immediate ETH value

article-image

Prosecutors argued that FTX co-founder Gary Wang cooperated in their case against former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

article-image

The two largest crypto exchanges respectively run the second- and sixth-largest Solana validators

article-image

MicroStrategy’s bitcoin buying has exploded — it now holds 1.7% of the asset’s circulating supply

article-image

The MiCA era will reward the prepared and punish the rest

article-image

The market is, presumably, confused about what a Trump win means for the social media company