In July 2021, the venture raised $900 million at an $18 billion valuation from over 60 investors, including Softbank, Sequoia Capital, and other firms. In August 2020, FTX acquired Blockfolio, a cryptocurrency portfolio tracking app, for $150 million. Changpeng Zhao of Binance purchased a 20% stake in FTX for approximately $100 million, six months after Bankman-Fried and Wang started the firm. FTX is an abbreviation of 'Futures Exchange'.

FTX began within Alameda Research, a trading firm founded by Bankman-Fried, Caroline Ellison, and other former employees of Jane Street in 2017, in Berkeley, California. Sam Bankman-Fried and Zixiao 'Gary' Wang founded FTX in May 2019. Speaking of its previous management, Ray stated: 'Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.' He added that 'this situation is unprecedented.' Ray III, who specializes in recovering funds from failed corporations. On December 12, 2022, founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested by the Bahamian authorities for financial offences, at the request of the US government. Binance signed a letter of intent to acquire the firm, with due diligence to follow, to ensure that customers could recover their assets from FTX in a timely manner, but Binance withdrew its offer the next day, citing reports of mishandled customer funds and U.S. FTX was unable to meet the demand for customer withdrawals. Following this revelation, rival exchange Binance's CEO Changpeng Zhao announced that Binance would sell its holdings of the token, which was quickly followed by a spike in customer withdrawals from FTX.

Public concern began when a November 2022 CoinDesk article stated that FTX's partner firm Alameda Research held a significant portion of its assets in FTX's native token (FTT). Since November 11, 2022, FTX has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the US court system. FTX is closely associated with FTX.US, a separate exchange available to US residents. FTX is incorporated in Antigua and Barbuda and headquartered in the Bahamas. The exchange was founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang and, at its peak in July 2021, had over one million users and was the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume. FTX Trading Ltd., commonly known as FTX (short for 'Futures Exchange'), is a bankrupt company that formerly operated a cryptocurrency exchange and crypto hedge fund.

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