Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, stated in a Twitter thread on Tuesday that he had no intention of fighting with Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of FTX, despite the fact that some users withdrew from FTX after Zhao’s surprise sale announcement after CZ’s tweet announcing the liquidation of the FTT token from the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
I was out with friends yesterday when the topic of whale alerts came up. Following our principles, I decided to be transparent. So I wrote a thread in 5 mins, and posted it. Little did I know it was going to be “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” 1/4
— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) November 7, 2022
How it all started
“Last night, when I was out with pals, the subject of whale alarms came up. I chose to be open-minded in accordance with our ideals. Therefore, I submitted a thread that I created in five minutes,” Zhao stated in the Tuesday thread. Little did I realize that would be “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” as the saying goes.
Due to “recent revelations,” Zhao stated on Monday that Binance would eliminate all FTT tokens from its books. He then retweeted a post that showed that nearly 23 million FTT tokens had been transferred to the Binance exchange.
A balance sheet for FTX’s sister company Almeda Research was made public by the cryptocurrency media source CoinDesk last week, raising the possibility that SBF’s empire has liquidity and insolvency problems.
“Funny memes, the media, and some individuals attempted to portray this as a ‘battle. I’m sorry to disappoint, but I want to build instead of fight,” Zhao wrote in the tweet thread.
On Monday, there was a rush of withdrawals from FTX. According to crypto data analytics company Nansen, over US$451 million worth of cryptocurrency deposits have left the exchange in the last seven days as of 12:00 a.m. Hong Kong time. Twitter user complaints about sluggish withdrawals were documented on FTX Monday.
In a tweet on Monday, SBF guaranteed that “We have been processing all withdrawals, and will continue to be.”
According to Larry Cermak, vice president of research at The Block, “the difficult issue is that it’s always wise to withdraw, even if you think the rumors are like 1% likely to be true.” According to Cermak, the likelihood of FTX going bankrupt is “near 0%.”
