John Ray III, the new CEO appointed to oversee the bankruptcy process of the disgraced exchange FTX, has recently billed just over 6.5 hours working on materials related to what is believed to be FTX 2.0. This suggests that efforts are underway to potentially relaunch the exchange.
According to expense filings, Ray allocated 6.7 hours to tasks associated with “2.0,” which is widely speculated to refer to FTX 2.0, a planned reboot of the exchange. While there is currently no concrete evidence or a detailed plan for the exchange’s restart, internal sketches indicate that progress is being made. Ray has not completely ruled out the possibility, stating in January, “Everything is on the table. If there is a path forward on that, then we will not only explore that, we’ll do it.”
In April, FTX’s lead attorney, Andy Dietderich, mentioned the potential restart of operations, which would require significant capital. This could generate interest from customers for future exchange. However, he emphasized that this is just one of many possibilities, and no final decisions have been made.
VC firm Tribe Capital has reportedly shown interest in leading a funding round to support the exchange’s restart. Nevertheless, industry insiders have expressed doubts about the feasibility of such a plan due to ongoing technical deficiencies, including high latency and software bugs, which have plagued FTX since its inception and contributed to its financial collapse in 2022.
Given the substantial work required to fix FTX’s trading engine and address other issues, it may be more practical to build a new exchange from scratch, avoiding the challenges associated with the FTX brand.
On the news of a potential relaunch, FTX’s former token FTT has seen a 12% increase, according to CoinGecko data. However, if FTX were to be restarted, it is unlikely that FTT would play a significant role, as it is considered a security by the Securities and Exchange Commission.