FTX International Could Reopen in the Future, New CEO Suggests
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FTX International Could Reopen in the Future, New CEO Suggests

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Created 1yr ago, last updated 1yr ago

John Ray also attacked Sam Bankman-Fried in an interview, saying: "We don't need to be dialoguing with him. He hasn't told us anything that I don't already know."

FTX International Could Reopen in the Future, New CEO Suggests

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FTX International could be revived, according to the doomed exchange's new CEO.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, John Ray revealed that a taskforce has been established to see whether the trading platform could one day open its doors to customers once again.

Of course, the unknown quantity here is whether retail investors would ever be willing to put their trust in the company again — with billions of dollars in customer funds allegedly misused by sister trading firm Alameda Research.

Ray claimed that some customers have praised FTX's infrastructure and indicated that they would like to see the exchange make a return, adding:

"Everything is on the table. If there is a path forward on that, then we will not only explore that, we'll do it."

A key reason for examining whether FTX should be revived is this: Millions of customers who are frozen out of their savings could end up getting more of their crypto back.

The interview with Ray also uncovered some staggering revelations — including the fact that "there was no centralized register that identified where the company stored its funds."

He also had some choice words for Sam Bankman-Fried, who has been questioning the decisions made by FTX's new management in Substack posts.

"We don't need to be dialoguing with him. He hasn't told us anything that I don't already know."

This led to a sharp response from SBF in a text message obtained by the WSJ, where he said:

"This is a shocking and damning comment from someone pretending to care about customers."

Ray also dismissed claims that FTX US is solvent and customers can be made whole immediately — as Bankman-Fried has repeatedly suggested. Warning that this would involve compensating users with funds belonging to international account holders, the new CEO said:

"This is the problem. He thinks everything is one big honey pot."

Another bone of contention concerns how much Ray is being paid — with court filing showing that he gets a whopping $1,300 per hour for serving as FTX's chief restructuring officer. He's also brought in many of his own (expensive) people because there are some existing employees he struggles to trust. When asked about the fact these funds could be put toward making customers whole, he responded:

"Crime is very expensive. It does a lot of damage to people. And one of the damages is that people like me have to come in and fix it."
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