The new CEO of FTX, John J. Ray III, is reportedly examining the possibility of relaunching the exchange. He has reportedly established a task force to evaluate the restart of FTX.com, due to the technology behind the CEX, which is still valid and praised by many customers.
"Everything is on the table," Ray said to the press. "If there's a path to follow on this, then we not only explore it, we'll do it."
In this sense, the new CEO will evaluate whether the relaunch of the exchange can recover more value than his team can by simply liquidating assets or selling the platform.
However, even in the case of a reopening, the prospects for FTX's customers remain highly uncertain. Ray's task is not easy, as he will have to identify any "pockets" of value to cover a lack of liquidity that has never been officially revealed.
Nevertheless, there are still those who trust in the new CEO's abilities, as he has previously been able to successfully complete similar operations with Enron Corp., where he helped return billions of dollars to the energy trader's creditors.
The situation may be further complicated by the possibility that the co-founders of FTX have actually misused customer funds, and the fact that a centralized registry that identifies where the company kept its funds has never been found.
In any case, Ray has reviewed the structure of FTX in the last two months, cutting dozens of employees, starting procedures to sell some of the subsidiaries, and having more than 30 terabytes of data sifted through by various teams of lawyers. Just last week, thanks to this, $5 billion in liquid assets and a $4.6 billion investment portfolio were found.
Criticism from SBF
Sam Bankman-Fried, confined to his parents' house in California, continues to criticize the way FTX is being managed. For example, by publishing alleged bank balance sheets that show a surplus of several hundred million dollars to cover requests from US customers.