The battle between FTX and Binance: why, will FTX crash？

Nov 07, 2022

Photo by Decrypt

With CoinDesk’s disclosure of Alameda’s financial data, which had nothing to do with Binance, but Binance’s attacks never stopped.

Binance co-founder He Yi said to the event: “Binance does not give unsecured loans, does not participate in trading, does not blindly buy companies, does not blindly spend money on sponsorship, 20% of FTX equity has been sold, a clear conscience and keep building.” The first sentence, in particular, implies that FTX made large unsecured loans to Alameda.

On November 6, someone said Binance wallet 0xd9… d7d7 transfers 23 million FTT’s (worth about $580 million) to FTX address 0x04… 8379 for sale. According to Wu’s further on-chain checks, address 0xd9…d7d7 may be the address where Binance invested in FTT to receive the linear unlock, while address 0x04…8379 is also attributed to Binance as a transit for transferring FTT to Binance’s official wallet. Perhaps because all FTT shares have already been unlocked, Binance is transferring all FTT into the official wallet at once.

On the evening of November 6, Alameda CEO Caroline responded that the particular (CoinDesk disclosed) balance sheet is for a subset of our corporate entities, and that we have over $10 billion in assets not reflected there; that we have now returned most of our loans given the tightening of crypto credit space this year; and that we obviously have unlisted hedges. But Caroline’s simple response, which did not address the connected transactions and funding with FTX, hardly fully assuages outside concerns.

Just when we think the storm will come to an end, who knows, Binance founder cz suddenly come down and drop a bombshell himself.

CZ suddenly said that Binance received about $2.1 billion equivalent in BUSD and FTT for exiting a portion of FTX last year. due to recent revelations, Binance decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on its books. Binance will attempt to liquidate in a way that minimizes market impact, which is expected to take several months to complete due to market conditions and limited liquidity. FTT plummeted as a result. Caroline, for her part, responded in the interim that Alameda would be happy to buy FTT from you today at $22 if you want the FTT sale to have minimal impact on the market.

SBF, which has been silent on the Alameda story, also had to come out and speak up, saying that he has a lot of respect for what you’ve done to build the industry we see today, whether they return it or not, and whether we use the same methods. Including CZ. no matter what — as always — it’s time to build. Make love (and blockchain), not war.

CZ’s response was straightforward: liquidating our FTT was just post-exit risk management, learning from LUNA. We’ve supported it before, but we’re not going to pretend to have sex after the divorce. We’re not against anyone. But we will not support those who lobby behind the scenes against other industry players (alluding here to the previous controversy over SBF’s proposal to strengthen blacklisting and DeFi front-end KYC for the crypto industry).

SBF then responded again: a bunch of unfounded rumors have been circulating. FTX’s finances are audited and while it sometimes slows us down on our products, we are highly regulated and we have processed billions of dollars in deposits/withdrawals today. (Implying there were large withdrawals after the rumors surfaced, but access is normal) There are also large dollar <> stablecoin conversions going on. At the end of the day you should do what you want to do and trade where you want to trade. We thank those who stayed; we will welcome others back when this is over.

On The morning of November 6, research by The Data Nerd revealed that Alameda Research received 56 million USDC from the Circle and then transferred them to the FTX. They have sent $257m to FTX in the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, FTX has seen the largest stable coin outflows of any exchange over the past seven days. The net outflow was $292 million. Binance has seen inflows of $337 million in the past seven days, the largest stablecoin inflow entity, according to Nansen, which now has a balance of $26.6 billion.

SBF’s restraint, it seems, made it impossible to continue the “quarrel”, and the matter seemed to be closed for the time being. What was the reason for the heated battle? We think there are three angles: Binance’s feud with FTX; FTX has recently challenged Binance; Binance has always been wary of its competitors.

1、 Binance was an investor in FTX, and this investment has been one of Binance’s biggest returns. But it is clear that Binance investment does not care about the return, the essence is strategic investment. CZ must be furious that its investment target has become its biggest competitor. Binance announced it was pulling out of the investment, and while it’s not clear what happened behind the scenes, the relationship did take a turn for the worse.

2、 Both FTX and Binance are wrestling with the rescue and acquisition of distressed assets such as Celsius Blockfi Voyager. They have a huge number of U.S. users and licenses, undoubtedly an asset that both sides are vying for. FTX scored a comprehensive victory. This seems to be related to their good relations in the US. In contrast, Binance previously had a U.S. CEO who left and went around attacking Binance and criticizing it as a Chinese company. CZ also had to respond with a long article explaining that it was Canadian. In contrast, FTX is leading the investment in some recent big projects such as Atpos, while Binance Labs can only follow, showing once again the dominance of FTX in the US cryptocurrency community.

3、 Binance’s DNA has always been wary of competitors. Not long after Huobi Junstin Sun made friendly with Chinese trader KOL liangxi , Binance immediately followed up with $150,000, which shows that it will not be superior because it has become the No1. In the face of FTX’s global ecological overshoot, it is indeed routine to crack down in every possible way.

Finally, for the average user, the future of FTX and FTT may be of interest. Is FTX risky? We offer a few observations of our own that do not represent investment advice, and are likely to be wrong due to the severe opacity of the data.

1、 The FTX capital is still using their money. (Although CEX is a black box, we can only tell from the appearance of some actions, such as quick payouts to victims of previous hits; Lots of lead investments, buyouts, political donations, etc. FTX is still spending big)

2、 Alameda’s complex correlation transactions with FTX are certain to exist, and this is where Binance attacks, and SBF does not dare to respond. The procedure is one side, the result is the other. As some professionals have analyzed, unlike 3AC and others who believe in the bitcoin supercircle and bet on the direction leading to the debacle, SBF and Alameda’s cold style (known for dumping their own investment project tokens) and biased shorting and bearish approach does not seem like another 3AC so far, but we don’t know what will happen next.

3、 What’s wrong with FTX? Indeed, he would be less able to withstand a future of multiple negative events, such as a hacking attack as a trigger. In addition, the opaque relationship between FTX and Alameda will also cause users’ concerns. The huge contrast between Three Arrow Capital and Three Arrow Capital has led to a high level of distrust in centralized institutions, which has led to the emergence of a large number of coin withdrawals (Binance will certainly not be absent from future attacks).

We hope that SBF can take advantage of this incident to show more transparency, such as regularly disclosing FTX and Alameda’s audit report or part of the audit content (for example, who is the audit institution? Learn from Tether), give the public more confidence, and even turn the tide on Binance.

Update: After a day of mass withdrawals, FTX appears to have stood the test, although many users waited hours to withdraw stablecoins.

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