The latest court filings in the bankruptcy case of FTX suggest that the company is working on a plan to reboot its operations.
The filings show that new CEO John J. Ray III has been working on a “2.0 reboot of exchange material for distribution” to investors.
Ray first floated the idea of restarting FTX in January of this year. “Everything is on the table,” he said at the time. “If there is a path forward on that, then we will not only explore that, we’ll do it.”
At the time, there were reports that the failed exchange had uncovered and retrieved $5.5 billion in liquid assets. Ray was also working with creditors on a potential revival plan.
Then last month, another report said FTX had recovered $7.3 billion in assets and was thus considering reviving its crypto exchange operations sometime in the second quarter of next year.
The new court documents indicate that a reboot plan is indeed in the works. In the “Summary of Time and Fees by Professional”, Ray charged $1,040 for less than an hour of work to “Review and finalize 2.0 reboot of exchange material for distribution” to investors.
These included seeking help from cybersecurity firm Sygnia to improve the security of the crypto exchange, as well as analyzing a term sheet for restructuring the company as part of the plan.
Fresh Capital Injection Needed
In April, FTX’s lead attorney Andy Dietderich also advocated for an FTX reboot. According to Dietderich, restarting the exchange would require substantial capital, regardless of whether it would offer services to only U.S.-based customers or operate internationally.
The latest court filings suggest FTX will likely be entering a bidding process.
San Francisco-based VC firm Tribe Capital, which was an investor in the exchange before it went under, is allegedly considering leading a fund-raising campaign to jump-start revival efforts. Per Bloomberg, the rebooted exchange would keep the FTX name.
Members of the crypto community have touted the relaunch plan as an opportunity for over a million FTX creditors to be made whole. For one creditor DegenSpartan, FTX 2.0 “is the most likely path to maximum recovery”.
FTX’s native token, FTT, surged 12.8% on Monday following the news of a potential reboot of the collapsed crypto empire of SBF.
At press time, FTT is trading at $1.13, according to CoinMarketCap. The bankrupt exchange’s token was down 98.68% from its $84.18 all-time high set back in September 2021.
