Explaining The Twitter Fued Between FTX SBF and Binance CZ
Explaining The Twitter Fued Between FTX SBF and Binance CZ.
The crypto world has been shaken by the report that came out about the balance sheet of Alameda Research, the crypto hedge fund owned by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). Since then many speculations about the insolvency of the company owned by SBF also discussed.
More questions arised especially the CEO of the biggest crypto exchange in the world, Changpeng Zhao (CZ) announced that he is going to liquidate its remaining FTX Tokens ($FTT) holdings.
Since then, SBF and CZ, have been going back and forth on Twitter over the last 48 hours.
“There’s clearly bad blood between two of the crypto industry’s largest names and thus the two largest exchanges. Binance CEO @cz_binance and FTX CEO @SBF_FTX. Over the past 48hrs this bad blood has become quite public,” said tedtalksmacro, an analyst on twitter.
1/ FTX vs BINANCE
CZ and Sam have been going back and forth on Twitter over the past 48 hours, so what has happened and how did we get to this point pic.twitter.com/1lZt4etFb1
— tedtalksmacro (@tedtalksmacro) November 7, 2022
The Trigger
Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao previously announced that his company would liquidate its entire position in FTX Token, the native token of competitor FTX. Zhao said in a tweet that he made the decision based on “recent revelations.”
As part of Binance’s exit from FTX equity last year, Binance received roughly $2.1 billion USD equivalent in cash (BUSD and FTT). Due to recent revelations that have came to light, we have decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on our books. 1/4
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) November 6, 2022
Read More: What Is Happening With Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX And Alameda Research?
A later tweet from CZ explained the FTT liquidation was simply post-exit risk management based on Terra’s Luna Classic’s (LUNC) failure and how it affected market participants.
FTX’s token was liquidated by Binance because of CoinDesk reports about a recently leaked balance sheet by Sam Bankman-Fried founded Alameda Research, claiming billions of dollars of Alameda’s assets are tied to the token.
However, according to tedtalksmacro, CZ appears dissatisfied with SBF’s recent political lobbying, which may negatively impact Binance’s US and global operations.
Liquidating our FTT is just post-exit risk management, learning from LUNA. We gave support before, but we won't pretend to make love after divorce. We are not against anyone. But we won't support people who lobby against other industry players behind their backs. Onwards.
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) November 6, 2022
“It’s aruguable that CZ has a distaste for SBF’s political lobbying recently and perhaps CZ sees the lobbying will be to the detriment of Binance’s operations in the US and across the globe,” he said on Twitter.
Maybe this recent fued actually started before the Alameda report came out. In a deleted tweet, SBF seems to be making fun of CZ through replying the tweet of Co-CEO of FTX, Ryan Salame.
5/ Last week, FTX big wigs took aim at CZ over the ongoing lobbying. Clearly CZ isn't impressed that the FTX guys are calling him out publicly. pic.twitter.com/0TSOKpKrRx
— tedtalksmacro (@tedtalksmacro) November 7, 2022
Tedtalksmacro further explained, “Adding further fuel to the fire, there are rumors that FTX helped push a FUD campaign against Binance recently. Where Binance allegedly facilitated trading for sanctioned Iranian firms.”
It appears that CZ is fed up with the actions of the guys at FTX, based on the analyst’s observation. CZ chose to act on that emotion these past few days, which resulted in a sharp sell-off in the native token $FTT.
The Response
Learning about the plans for Binance to liquidate all the $FTT holdings, Caroline Ellison, CEO at Alameda Research joined in by saying that Alameda would happily buy all FTT tokens at $22, to minimize market impact. “@cz_binance if you’re looking to minimize the market impact on your FTT sales, Alameda will happily buy it all from you today at $22!”
With the huge decrease in the value of FTT tokens, led to CZ replying on how can Alameda afford to pay Binance $22 per coin.
🤷♂️
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) November 7, 2022
This led Ryan Salame to reply “dude is literally the worst, someone straight up offered to buy otc to avoid any retail being hurt and he chose instead to cause pain.”
dude is literally the worst, someone straight up offered to buy otc to avoid any retail being hurt and he chose instead to cause pain. https://t.co/8HBnzFXDEH
— Ryan Salame (@rsalame7926) November 7, 2022
To end it all up, in tedtalksmacro’s view, In spite of the clarification, CZ stepped in and used this as an opportunity to tell the market that they planned to dump $FTT over the next few months – perhaps this was a tactic to scare investors away.
“The interesting part of this is that CZ knows that FTX are in the middle of a capital raise and obviously $FTT fud would help derail that process and add an extra headache for FTX.”
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