FTX Token (FTT), the native token of crypto exchange FTX, briefly spiked 30% as former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried posted on X for the first time in two years.
In his first post since being sentenced to 25 years behind bars over the FTX collapse, Bankman-Fried said in a Feb. 25 post he had a lot of sympathy for government employees because he hadn’t checked his email in a few hundred days either.
Source: Sam Bankman-Fried
“Firing people is one of the hardest things to do in the world. It sucks for everyone involved. More often, the problem is that the company just doesn’t have the right job for them,” he said.
“I’d tell this to everyone we let go: that it was as much our fault for not having the right role for them, or the right person to manage them, or the right work environment for them.”
The former FTX CEO was seemingly referencing the recent email campaign by Elon Musk’s US Department of Government Efficiency asking government workers to respond with a list of what they had been working on in the past week or lose their jobs.
Despite having nothing to specifically do with crypto exchange FTX, after SBF’s post, FTT surged briefly from $1.63 to over $2, representing a roughly 30% increase, according to CoinMarketCap.
It was a short-lived rally, with FTT quickly retreating to $1.75 within about 30 minutes.
The token is still down over 97% from its all-time high of $85.02, which it hit on Sep 10, 2021, before the FTX exchange collapsed in November 2022.
FTT saw a surge in value after former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried posted on X for the first time in two years. Source: CoinMarketCap
The last time Bankman-Fried posted was Jan. 19, 2023, about his drafted congressional testimony when the token price was around $2.50.
He also retweeted a post from crypto lawyer James Murphy on Jan. 20, known online by his X handle, MetaLawMan. Murphy was discussing how a judge refused to allow Daniel Friedberg, FTX’s former chief regulatory officer, to testify through Zoom during SBF’s trial.
Related: SBF cozies up to Republican Party amid clemency push
Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial concluded in November 2023, when he was found guilty of seven charges, including wire fraud, securities fraud and commodities fraud. SBF received a sentence of 25 years on March 28, 2024, and is currently serving it at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons register.
Citing anonymous sources, Bloomberg News reported on Jan. 30 that SBF’s parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, were seeking a presidential pardon for their son and meeting with lawyers and other figures close to the Trump administration to determine if clemency was possible.
US President Donald Trump recently pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who had served 11 years out of a double life sentence for his involvement in the dark web marketplace.
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