FTX’s FTT Token Leads Market Gains With 55% Rally, What’s Driving It?

The utility token of the defunct crypto exchange FTX, FTT is one of the top gainers in the last few days, rising 55% in just 48 hours alone. This has led to speculations as to what may be driving the token’s rally. One of them relates to a recent event in the crypto industry. 

In a post on its X (formerly Twitter) platform, the market intelligence platform Santiment noted that the second rally for FTT came after the Binance news. The world’s largest crypto exchange and its former CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao had both pleaded to criminal charges and agreed to a settlement of over $4 billion in fines.

As to the correlation between both events, Binance and FTX have always been closely knitted in several regards. For one, CZ, in particular, has sometimes been credited for being responsible for FTX’s collapse. Prior to the bank run on FTX, the former executive had made a tweet about his company liquidating their FTT holdings. 

As such, it is believed that Binance, going through this difficult phase, comes off as bullish for the FTT token because of the animosity that the FTX and Binance ecosystem share. Interestingly, while FTT has continued to rally, Binance’s BNB has suffered an inverse fate. BNB is down by over 6% in the last seven days, according to data from CoinMarketCap. 

It is worth mentioning that the FTT rally didn’t just kickstart on the back of the Binance news. FTT’s market value is reported to be about 255% up against Bitcoin in the past 3 weeks. This resurgence began just after the 10 largest wallets began accumulating, with $12.8 million worth of FTT bought by these whales since November 3.

Interestingly, November 3 happens to be a day after FTX’s former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), was convicted. The FTX founder was convicted of all seven charges leveled against him. Going by this, it would seem that his conviction was conceived as bullish for these whales who decided to double down on their FTT holdings. 

Another factor that might also be contributing to the token’s resurgence is the talks about FTX making a comeback. The defunct crypto exchange is reported to have suitors who are interested in rebooting it. The Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler, had also noted that it was a possibility as far as the rules and guidelines are abided by.

At the time of writing, FTT is currently trading at around $4.50, up over 21% in the last 24 hours and up by over 336% in the past month, according to data from CoinMarketCap.