Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX token falls more than 20% amid Binance feud

Crypto exchange FTX’s native token, FTT, fell more than 20% in afternoon trading in Asia amid reports rival exchange Binance is selling off its holdings of the token.  

See related article: Alameda says ‘wasn’t us’ amid speculation about BitDAO’s 20% plunge

Fast facts

• FTT fell more than 23% percent over 24 hours to trade at around US$17, according to data from CoinMarketCap, with most of the plunge happening in Asia afternoon trading.
• Changpeng Zhao, CEO of the rival exchange Binance, tweeted on Sunday that his firm would sell its FTT, due to “recent revelations” about the FTX exchange token.
• Last week, crypto media outlet CoinDesk reported that a balance sheet of FTX’s sister company Almeda Research showed a majority holding of FTT. The leak led to speculation that the company might have solvency issues.
• Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison tweeted that the company would happily buy Binance’s FTT tokens for US$22 each on Sunday. 
• A Monday tweet from FTX’s official Twitter account also suggested users were suffering from a backlog in withdrawals. 
• Over US$376 million worth of stablecoins have been withdrawn from FTX in the last seven days, as of press time, according to crypto data analytics firm Nansen

See related article: CZ vs. SBF tweet exchange is no ‘fight,’ Binance CEO claims